But it really shouldn't be this way.
This New York Central HS quarterly newsletter is a "tour de farce" in poor graphic design decisions that actively don't invite the reader into wanting to read the legitimately good information in each of these publications. Most of them have invaluable information trapped in badly kerned type and eye-bleeding color choices, hemmed in by tiny photos.
Here's what SHOULD be in a regular railroad historical society publication:
- Nice Cover with large color image + name of society + date
- Table of Contents (PDF w/ live links to proper pages) with preview images
- Society News + Letters to/from Editor
- New Scale Models & Book publications. Scale model section should include in bold whether model is ACCURATE for said railroad, or just painted up to look like it (known as a "foobie" in the modeling world.)
- Feature articles about real locations, real history
- Feature articles about various machines, rolling stock, structures, locomotives
- Feature articles about how to model versions of railroad infra/rolling stock in popular scales
- LARGE images. None of these are printed out in physical format anymore, so there should be NO SMALL IMAGES! Page count is irrelevant. Also, might be worth exploring "screen format" 16:9 aspect for pages instead of traditional A4 upright for ease of screen navigation.
- A generous, externally linked photo section showing off recent modeling efforts that capture the look/feel of the RR they're modeling.
- Links to Youtube videos of model railroads or historical footage should accompany each issue.
- Information on how to join with a very very easy, live linked and maybe even have a paypal button.
A positive and outstanding example of this is the Southern Pacific Trainline issues that are physical print media delivered to your door quarterly. https://sphts.org/product-category/trainline-back-issues/
Even so, I still strongly believe the digital media versions for other societies should be excellent quality, long lasting pieces of design, not something a housecat chasing a computer mouse might accidentally make by batting it around.