St. Simon at BRM
Entry posted by Phil Parker
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In August, as part of putting the RMWeb issue of BRM together, guest editors Stubby47 and St. Simon joined the team for the monthly planning meeting. We asked them both to write up the day to give everyone a behind the scenes view of how BRM is planned and put together. Last week we enjoyed Stubby47's view of events, now as the magazine arrives in the shops, it's over to St. Simon:
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I was invited to visit the BRM offices in Bourne, Lincolnshire, to view the process that makes the magazine, as part of the RMweb Special October Issue. I met with Stubby47, my fellow guest and RMwebber, Ben Jones, Andy Y, Howard Smith and Phil Parker, who are a great bunch of people, who are real modellers and are passionate about their work.
For the morning, Stu and I were show how each issue of the magazine is put together. I’ve always thought that it was just bung a load of articles in as and when they come in, but no, some quite intricate planning goes on to get a balanced issue so all the articles work together and are not too long or too short. Plus it was quite clear that they listen to the readership and try and sort out problems and take in suggestions.
There’s an incredible amount of work that goes into each issue, by a relatively small team of dedicated people, but it gets done in a very effective manner. With this, we took a look at the design process, which is handled by one person. Stu and I looked on (and gave the odd suggestion) as Ben, Andy and Phil made changes to articles to ensure the right ‘look’ for the magazine. It is not until you view this process that you realise it’s actually quite a hard job to get the pictures balanced with the text and working together on the page.
We moved onto the Cover design, this is where I was out-voted, a steam loco it was to be (but it was a lovely photograph!), despite my preferences to Modern Image. But this is where Ben told me, what I thought, was slightly discouraging, Diesels on the Front Cover don’t sell.
This made me think, unless we the readership change this attitude, I don’t feel that younger people will want to enter the hobby as much, as the fact is that more and more are diesels ‘in fashion’ for Young modellers. I’ve been to countless exhibitions where young people have asked to get models of the trains they travelled to the exhibition on, but there is still a significant proportion of the hobby (which is shrinking slowly) that still thinks ‘nobody like that modern rubbish’.
Having decided on the front cover design, we had lunch and watched the Vulcan and Lancaster’s on Flight Radar, as well as being able to see Stu’s lovely (?!) toilet diorama, which, in the best compliments is really filthy!
Next we got to sit in on a planning meeting, for issues three or four months ahead! I thought that the next issue was only dealt with once the previous issue was put to the public, but now I’ve seen the amount of work that has to go into each issue, it’s obvious that some prior planning is needed! It was fascinating to see how the team work out which bits fit together well or where which articles need to be placed, as well as working around problems like having no words to photographs for certain things, as Ben said, “it’s a 3D jigsaw puzzle”, much like the real railway, I thought.
We stopped for cream tea and scones provided by Cornish and escorted to Lincolnshire by Stubby47 with great pride. Although I didn’t partake, the rest of the team were pleased as punch!
That was really it for the day, I found the whole day extremely interesting and the BRM team friendly and great to talk to, when reading the magazine, you have to remember that these guys are railway modellers as well, so they want to produce a great magazine for people to enjoy, and they do.
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