Model Railroader ( MR ) is an American magazine about the hobby of model railroading . Founded in 1934 by Al C. Kalmbach , it is published monthly by Firecrown Media of Chattanooga, Tennessee . Commonly found on newsstands and in libraries, it promotes itself as the oldest magazine of its type in the United States, although it is the long-standing competitor to Railroad Model Craftsman , which - originally named The Model Craftsman - predates MR by one year.
60-622: MR is considered to be a general-interest hobby magazine, appealing to a wide range of hobbyists, rather than specializing in a particular scale, or facet of the hobby (such as prototype operations or scratch building and kitbashing ). Model Railroader covers a variety of scales and modeling techniques for engines, rolling stock, right-of-way, structures, and scenery. It reviews products including ready-to-run models as well as kits, tools and supplies. The magazine presents blueprints and photographs of prototype equipment, as well as photographs of models and layouts. A longstanding philosophy of modeling
120-622: A page description . PDF has (as of version 2.0) 25 graphics state properties, of which some of the most important are: As in PostScript, vector graphics in PDF are constructed with paths . Paths are usually composed of lines and cubic Bézier curves , but can also be constructed from the outlines of text. Unlike PostScript, PDF does not allow a single path to mix text outlines with lines and curves. Paths can be stroked, filled, fill then stroked, or used for clipping . Strokes and fills can use any color set in
180-496: A PDF are: In later PDF revisions, a PDF document can also support links (inside document or web page), forms, JavaScript (initially available as a plugin for Acrobat 3.0), or any other types of embedded contents that can be handled using plug-ins. PDF combines three technologies: PostScript is a page description language run in an interpreter to generate an image. It can handle graphics and has standard features of programming languages such as branching and looping . PDF
240-450: A PDF. Within text strings, characters are shown using character codes (integers) that map to glyphs in the current font using an encoding . There are several predefined encodings, including WinAnsi , MacRoman , and many encodings for East Asian languages and a font can have its own built-in encoding. (Although the WinAnsi and MacRoman encodings are derived from the historical properties of
300-420: A PostScript file could be accurately rendered only as the cumulative result of executing all preceding commands to draw all previous pages—any of which could affect subsequent pages—plus the commands to draw that particular page, and there was no easy way to bypass that process to skip around to different pages. Traditionally, to go from PostScript to PDF, a source PostScript file (that is, an executable program)
360-409: A Scene with Kathy Millatt, It's My Railroad with Steve Brown, Rehab My Railroad , History According to Hediger with Jim Hediger, The Hills Line with James McNabb, Tuck's Toy Trains with John Truckenbrod and many more. MRVP made its debut back in 2013 and is available to magazine subscribers as part of trains.com . The model train hobbyists the magazine has profiled over the years include
420-477: A Web browser plugin without waiting for the entire file to download, since all objects required for the first page to display are optimally organized at the start of the file. PDF files may be optimized using Adobe Acrobat software or QPDF . Page dimensions are not limited by the format itself. However, Adobe Acrobat imposes a limit of 15 million by 15 million inches, or 225 trillion in (145,161 km ). The basic design of how graphics are represented in PDF
480-408: A boom in interest in model railroading. As of 2007, the magazine had a monthly paid circulation of more than 160,000. 2017 the year's final issue garnered a reported circulation figure that fell below 100,000. The magazine, and Kalmbach Publishing (now Kalmbach Media ), celebrated its 85th anniversary in 2019. The magazine had to relocate 4 times, the original location was on 545 S. 84th Street (now
540-416: A car wash) and later relocated to 1027 N. 7th Street (now part of Milwaukee Public Television and Milwaukee Area Technical College ), from 1989 to 2024, they moved to 21027 Crossroads Circle in nearby Waukesha and in 2024, Kalmbach recently sold their building to Silgan Containers and the staff moving to nearby Brookfield, Wisconsin . Another thing Model Railroader has is their own model railroad layout,
600-468: A certain prototype material (such as plastic sheet embossed with grooves to mimic a scale brick wall). For example, to scratch-build a small board fence, the modeler could use plastic rod stock to form the vertical posts, then use plastic bar stock to form horizontal rails affixed to the posts, lay plastic strip stock vertically on the horizontal rails (perhaps 'distressed' with a wire brush to mimic wood grain, or by using thin strips of actual wood), trimming
660-459: A journalist, encouraged and helped Al put The Model Railroader together. Though they originally saw it as a sideline business to their commercial printing operations, soon they were devoting seven days a week to the venture. The magazine was well received by model railroaders, and the young publisher carried the entire first press run (272 copies) by streetcar to be mailed. By July 1934, paid circulation exceeded 1,000 copies. Growth continued, but
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#1733116031367720-487: A number of celebrities, including Michael Gross and Rod Stewart . Model Railroader also has several other "sister" magazines, also published by Kalmbach, including such titles as Trains magazine , Classic Trains, Garden Railways, and Classic Toy Trains . They are often advertised in Model Railroader , and on occasion, an article will refer to these other magazines. Scratch building Scratch building
780-721: A packaged commercial kit. Most hobbyists develop their skills by building kits, then progress to kitbashing , where various kits are combined to create a unique model before attempting to scratchbuild. Sometimes scratchbuilders utilize discarded parts of other models or toys, with or without modification, either in order to speed up the building process or to allow the process to continue in spite of certain parts being difficult to make. Some companies sell parts that are of little use to anyone but scratchbuilders. Building stock, in whichever material, can be plain sheets, strips, bars, tubes, rods, or even structural shapes such as L or T girders . Stock can also be embossed or textured to replicate
840-452: A page description as an inline image .) Images are typically filtered for compression purposes. Image filters supported in PDF include the following general-purpose filters: Normally all image content in a PDF is embedded in the file. But PDF allows image data to be stored in external files by the use of external streams or Alternate Images . Standardized subsets of PDF, including PDF/A and PDF/X , prohibit these features. Text in PDF
900-417: A paper for a project then code-named Camelot, in which he proposed the creation of a simplified version of PostScript called Interchange PostScript (IPS). Unlike traditional PostScript, which was tightly focused on rendering print jobs to output devices, IPS would be optimized for displaying pages to any screen and any platform. Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In
960-439: A printing device. PostScript was not intended for long-term storage and real-time interactive rendering of electronic documents to computer monitors , so there was no need to support anything other than consecutive rendering of pages. If there was an error in the final printed output, the user would correct it at the application level and send a new print job in the form of an entirely new PostScript file. Thus, any given page in
1020-469: A result, files that use a small amount of transparency might be viewed acceptably by older viewers, but files making extensive use of transparency could be viewed incorrectly by an older viewer. The transparency extensions are based on the key concepts of transparency groups , blending modes , shape , and alpha . The model is closely aligned with the features of Adobe Illustrator version 9. The blend modes were based on those used by Adobe Photoshop at
1080-469: A stream may be used instead of the ASCII cross-reference table and contains the offsets and other information in binary format. The format is flexible in that it allows for integer width specification (using the /W array), so that for example, a document not exceeding 64 KiB in size may dedicate only 2 bytes for object offsets. At the end of a PDF file is a footer containing If a cross-reference stream
1140-404: A suitable material, such as wood , plastic , plaster , clay , metal , polymer clay , or even paper , and then assembled. Some purists consider a model not to be truly scratchbuilt unless all of the parts were made from raw materials. However most modellers would consider a model including commercial detail parts as scratchbuilt. Scratchbuilding a new body onto an altered ready-to-run chassis
1200-580: Is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents , including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software , hardware , and operating systems . Based on the PostScript language, each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts , vector graphics , raster images and other information needed to display it. PDF has its roots in "The Camelot Project" initiated by Adobe co-founder John Warnock in 1991. PDF
1260-415: Is a subset of PostScript, simplified to remove such control flow features, while graphics commands remain. PostScript was originally designed for a drastically different use case : transmission of one-way linear print jobs in which the PostScript interpreter would collect a series of commands until it encountered the showpage command, then execute all the commands to render a page as a raster image to
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#17331160313671320-464: Is also a shading pattern , which draws continuously varying colors. There are seven types of shading patterns of which the simplest are the axial shading (Type 2) and radial shading (Type 3). Raster images in PDF (called Image XObjects ) are represented by dictionaries with an associated stream. The dictionary describes the properties of the image, and the stream contains the image data. (Less commonly, small raster images may be embedded directly in
1380-428: Is also acceptable. The reasons hobbyists scratchbuild may vary. Often a desired model is unavailable in kit form in the desired scale, or entirely non-existent. Sometimes the hobbyist may be dissatisfied with the accuracy or detail of kits that are available. Other times a hobbyist will opt to scratchbuild simply for the challenge. A hobbyist may also scratchbuild out of economy, as often the raw materials cost less than
1440-465: Is called an embedded font while the former is called an unembedded font . The font files that may be embedded are based on widely used standard digital font formats: Type 1 (and its compressed variant CFF), TrueType , and (beginning with PDF 1.6) OpenType . Additionally PDF supports the Type 3 variant in which the components of the font are described by PDF graphic operators. Fourteen typefaces, known as
1500-421: Is manifest in its editorial features of layout design and operation, in which the model is viewed as a three-dimensional and temporal compression of the real world, so that, for example, the motive power, freight, trackage and scenery of a real-world railroad are formed into a layout which captures the spirit of not only the equipment and region of the railroad but also its purpose and how it operates. The magazine
1560-418: Is not being used, the footer is preceded by the trailer keyword followed by a dictionary containing information that would otherwise be contained in the cross-reference stream object's dictionary: Within each page, there are one or multiple content streams that describe the text, vector and images being drawn on the page. The content stream is stack-based , similar to PostScript. There are two layouts to
1620-541: Is not required in situations where a PDF file is intended only for print. Since the feature is optional, and since the rules for tagged PDF were relatively vague in ISO 32000-1, support for tagged PDF among consuming devices, including assistive technology (AT), is uneven as of 2021. ISO 32000-2, however, includes an improved discussion of tagged PDF which is anticipated to facilitate further adoption. An ISO-standardized subset of PDF specifically targeted at accessibility, PDF/UA ,
1680-434: Is organized using ASCII characters, except for certain elements that may have binary content. The file starts with a header containing a magic number (as a readable string) and the version of the format, for example %PDF-1.7 . The format is a subset of a COS ("Carousel" Object Structure) format. A COS tree file consists primarily of objects , of which there are nine types: Comments using 8-bit characters prefixed with
1740-523: Is published under ISSN 0026-7341 . Individual issues use the UPC 074820085486. The Model Railroader began publication in the summer of 1933, with a cover date of January 1934. A press release announcing the magazine appeared in August 1933, but did not receive much interest. The bank refused to loan Kalmbach any money, many felt sorry for him, and a few told him he was crazy. His first wife, Bernice, herself
1800-402: Is represented by text elements in page content streams. A text element specifies that characters should be drawn at certain positions. The characters are specified using the encoding of a selected font resource . A font object in PDF is a description of a digital typeface . It may either describe the characteristics of a typeface, or it may include an embedded font file . The latter case
1860-437: Is the process of building a scale model "from scratch", i.e. from raw materials, rather than building it from a commercial kit, kitbashing or buying it pre-assembled. Scratch building is easiest if original plans of the subject exist; however, many models have been built from photographs by measuring a known object in the photograph and extrapolating the rest of the dimensions. The necessary parts are then fashioned out of
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1920-439: Is used as the basis for generating PostScript-like PDF code (see, e.g., Adobe Distiller ). This is done by applying standard compiler techniques like loop unrolling , inlining and removing unused branches, resulting in code that is purely declarative and static. The end result is then packaged into a container format , together with all necessary dependencies for correct rendering (external files, graphics, or fonts to which
1980-447: Is very similar to that of PostScript, except for the use of transparency, which was added in PDF 1.4. PDF graphics use a device-independent Cartesian coordinate system to describe the surface of a page. A PDF page description can use a matrix to scale , rotate , or skew graphical elements. A key concept in PDF is that of the graphics state , which is a collection of graphical parameters that may be changed, saved, and restored by
2040-903: The Milwaukee, Racine and Troy (AKA the "Myrt"), was located on the second floor of the former offices and just celebrated its 45th anniversary since being built (the original was located on the 3rd floor of the old offices at 1027 N. 7th Street which was in operation from 1975 to 1989). Sadly, the second version of the "Myrt" was demolished when Kalmbach sold their building at 21027 Crossroads Circle and moved to Brookfield, Wisconsin, with everyone being employed by Firecrown media. In May 2024, longtime publisher Kalmbach Media divested of Model Railroader and other railroad interest magazines to publisher Firecrown Media. Typical feature articles in each month's issue include: Regular monthly columns and departments include: Model Railroader publishes two annual special issues: Other special issues on various aspects of
2100-533: The Windows and Macintosh operating systems, fonts using these encodings work equally well on any platform.) PDF can specify a predefined encoding to use, the font's built-in encoding or provide a lookup table of differences to a predefined or built-in encoding (not recommended with TrueType fonts). The encoding mechanisms in PDF were designed for Type 1 fonts, and the rules for applying them to TrueType fonts are complex. For large fonts or fonts with non-standard glyphs,
2160-419: The standard 14 fonts , have a special significance in PDF documents: These fonts are sometimes called the base fourteen fonts . These fonts, or suitable substitute fonts with the same metrics, should be available in most PDF readers, but they are not guaranteed to be available in the reader, and may only display correctly if the system has them installed. Fonts may be substituted if they are not embedded in
2220-429: The PDF files: non-linearized (not "optimized") and linearized ("optimized"). Non-linearized PDF files can be smaller than their linear counterparts, though they are slower to access because portions of the data required to assemble pages of the document are scattered throughout the PDF file. Linearized PDF files (also called "optimized" or "web optimized" PDF files) are constructed in a manner that enables them to be read in
2280-486: The arrival of household computer printers and copiers), and uses these patterns to cut, trim and affix the stock together to form the model. Finishing work (such as sanding and polishing, painting, weathering, distressing by forming dents and rust, dust, etc.) is done to complete the model and (hopefully) bring it to a lifelike state. Portable Document Format This is an accepted version of this page Portable Document Format ( PDF ), standardized as ISO 32000 ,
2340-508: The contents. PDF 2.0 defines 256-bit AES encryption as the standard for PDF 2.0 files. The PDF Reference also defines ways that third parties can define their own encryption systems for PDF. PDF files may be digitally signed, to provide secure authentication; complete details on implementing digital signatures in PDF are provided in ISO 32000-2. PDF files may also contain embedded DRM restrictions that provide further controls that limit copying, editing, or printing. These restrictions depend on
2400-411: The document refers), and compressed . Modern applications write to printer drivers that directly generate PDF rather than going through PostScript first. As a document format, PDF has several advantages over PostScript: Its disadvantages are: PDF since v1.6 supports embedding of interactive 3D documents: 3D drawings can be embedded using U3D or PRC and various other data formats. A PDF file
2460-411: The document root. This dictionary contains an array of Optional Content Groups (OCGs), each describing a set of information and each of which may be individually displayed or suppressed, plus a set of Optional Content Configuration Dictionaries, which give the status (Displayed or Suppressed) of the given OCGs. A PDF file may be encrypted , for security, in which case a password is needed to view or edit
Model Railroader - Misplaced Pages Continue
2520-527: The early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows, and competed with several other formats, including DjVu , Envoy , Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format. PDF was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe until it was released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008, at which time control of
2580-406: The full implementation of the ISO 32000-1 specification. These proprietary technologies are not standardized, and their specification is published only on Adobe's website. Many of them are not supported by popular third-party implementations of PDF. ISO published version 2.0 of PDF, ISO 32000-2 in 2017, available for purchase, replacing the free specification provided by Adobe. In December 2020,
2640-402: The graphics state, including patterns . PDF supports several types of patterns. The simplest is the tiling pattern in which a piece of artwork is specified to be drawn repeatedly. This may be a colored tiling pattern , with the colors specified in the pattern object, or an uncolored tiling pattern , which defers color specification to the time the pattern is drawn. Beginning with PDF 1.3 there
2700-472: The hobby are released on an irregular basis. Titles have included 102 Track Plans for Model Railroaders, How to Build Realistic Layouts, and How to Build More Layout in Less Space. A bi-monthly web video show, Modeler's Spotlight Video - Inside Cody's Office, is available to magazine subscribers via MR's website. The show introduces new products, offers modeling tips, and a viewer mail segment (along with
2760-494: The imaging model. A tagged PDF (see clause 14.8 in ISO 32000) includes document structure and semantics information to enable reliable text extraction and accessibility . Technically speaking, tagged PDF is a stylized use of the format that builds on the logical structure framework introduced in PDF 1.3. Tagged PDF defines a set of standard structure types and attributes that allow page content (text, graphics, and images) to be extracted and reused for other purposes. Tagged PDF
2820-507: The magazine was not an immediate success. The magazine became profitable after three years. It took Kalmbach seven years to pay off the loans used to launch the magazine. World War II introduced paper rationing, which dampened the growth of the Kalmbach Publishing Company. At the end of the war, MR's circulation was 18,000. 1949, MR's circulation had grown to 82,000. 1950, MR's circulation had grown to 104,000, thanks in part to
2880-680: The magazine's website and available through their digital archive. Model Railroader staff members participated in the production of the Dream-Plan-Build video series, which was offered by subscription. The DVDs focused on prototype railroading information, layout visits, and modeling techniques. Model Railroader also produced Model Railroader Video Plus (MRVP) which does layout tours, tips and tricks, and shows like: Cody's Workshop with Cody Grivno, Drew's Trackside Adventures with Drew Halverson, Off The Rails with Gerry Leone, Ask MRVP with David Popp (now called Ask Trains ), Let's Make
2940-440: The objects in the file, and also allows for small changes to be made without rewriting the entire file ( incremental update ). Before PDF version 1.5, the table would always be in a special ASCII format, be marked with the xref keyword, and follow the main body composed of indirect objects. Version 1.5 introduced optional cross-reference streams , which have the form of a standard stream object, possibly with filters applied. Such
3000-469: The occasional blooper at the end). Many of the blueprints, layout plans, articles on operation and signaling, and methods of construction of bridges, structures and scenery are also collected in books published by Kalmbach Books. These are useful to modelers in general, railroad historians, and are valuable references on the steam and diesel eras. Past MR articles are also collected in PDF form and distributed via
3060-552: The percent sign ( % ) may be inserted. Objects may be either direct (embedded in another object) or indirect . Indirect objects are numbered with an object number and a generation number and defined between the obj and endobj keywords if residing in the document root. Beginning with PDF version 1.5, indirect objects (except other streams) may also be located in special streams known as object streams (marked /Type /ObjStm ). This technique enables non-stream objects to have standard stream filters applied to them, reduces
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#17331160313673120-495: The second edition of PDF 2.0, ISO 32000-2:2020, was published, with clarifications, corrections, and critical updates to normative references (ISO 32000-2 does not include any proprietary technologies as normative references). In April 2023 the PDF Association made ISO 32000-2 available for download free of charge. A PDF file is often a combination of vector graphics , text, and bitmap graphics . The basic types of content in
3180-423: The size of files that have large numbers of small indirect objects and is especially useful for Tagged PDF . Object streams do not support specifying an object's generation number (other than 0). An index table, also called the cross-reference table, is located near the end of the file and gives the byte offset of each indirect object from the start of the file. This design allows for efficient random access to
3240-432: The special encodings Identity-H (for horizontal writing) and Identity-V (for vertical) are used. With such fonts, it is necessary to provide a ToUnicode table if semantic information about the characters is to be preserved. A text document which is scanned to PDF without the text being recognised by optical character recognition (OCR) is an image, with no fonts or text properties. The original imaging model of PDF
3300-577: The specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe necessary to make, use, sell, and distribute PDF-compliant implementations. PDF 1.7, the sixth edition of the PDF specification that became ISO 32000-1, includes some proprietary technologies defined only by Adobe, such as Adobe XML Forms Architecture (XFA) and JavaScript extension for Acrobat, which are referenced by ISO 32000-1 as normative and indispensable for
3360-448: The time. When the PDF 1.4 specification was published, the formulas for calculating blend modes were kept secret by Adobe. They have since been published. The concept of a transparency group in PDF specification is independent of existing notions of "group" or "layer" in applications such as Adobe Illustrator. Those groupings reflect logical relationships among objects that are meaningful when editing those objects, but they are not part of
3420-444: The top and bottoms of the strips to be even, adding details like nail holes (using a small pin), and then finishing and weathering (making a model look like it has been used via dust, dirt, stains, and wear). There are as many ways of scratch-building models as there are modelers, but generally the modeler obtains plans of a prototype, or designs their own, transfers these plans to paper or other material as patterns (much easier since
3480-481: Was opaque, similar to PostScript, where each object drawn on the page completely replaced anything previously marked in the same location. In PDF 1.4 the imaging model was extended to allow transparency. When transparency is used, new objects interact with previously marked objects to produce blending effects. The addition of transparency to PDF was done by means of new extensions that were designed to be ignored in products written to PDF 1.3 and earlier specifications. As
3540-511: Was first published in 2012. With the introduction of PDF version 1.5 (2003) came the concept of Layers. Layers, more formally known as Optional Content Groups (OCGs), refer to sections of content in a PDF document that can be selectively viewed or hidden by document authors or viewers. This capability is useful in CAD drawings, layered artwork, maps, multi-language documents, etc. Basically, it consists of an Optional Content Properties Dictionary added to
3600-686: Was standardized as ISO 32000 in 2008. The last edition as ISO 32000-2:2020 was published in December 2020. PDF files may contain a variety of content besides flat text and graphics including logical structuring elements, interactive elements such as annotations and form-fields, layers, rich media (including video content), three-dimensional objects using U3D or PRC , and various other data formats . The PDF specification also provides for encryption and digital signatures , file attachments, and metadata to enable workflows requiring these features. The development of PDF began in 1991 when John Warnock wrote
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