Essay
The French take more than a few knocks here and there from Americans, but give them credit; they publish Voie Libre is both an English and a French edition. And I don't mean a bi-lingual edition - LR Presse publishes two separate editions (though the advertisements are generally not translated). I don't see Kalmbach doing that with Model Railroader.
When I suggest to friends a subscription to a foreign model railroading publication, the response I get is often: "I am not interested in foreign prototypes". Well, neither am I. What keeps me renewing my subscriptions to overseas publications of this sort are first, they cover the creativity employed - and necessitated - by modeling in small spaces, i.e. smaller layouts. That sort of creativity can be employed in those boring corners of our layouts that are just missing something. Plus, some of us just don't have the time or space or the resources for a large layout. If you were not convinced before, Voie Libre's pages show that small layouts are worthy of being featured in multi-page articles.
I am also entranced by prototypes scenes modeled in the pages of overseas modeling publications. Subjects such as WWI battlefield railroads, North African scenes, and South Pacific plantation railroads, for example, can really stir up the creative juices of readers who are fed a steady diet of models depicting steam locomotives traversing scenes of green-clocked mountains. Steak and lobster dinners can be wonderful but how often can you eat them without wanting a hot dog or a hamburger?
Final suggestion, reading about track gauge in centimeters and model track gauge in millimeters won't kill you.
Try a one-year subscription (LR Presse accepts credit cards). What do you have to lose? If you don't enjoy it, just don't renew.
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