I recall MR taking heat from Jim Six because I edited down his submission on a detailing an HO NYC locomotive. Jim's work was excellent, as usual, but the extraneous verbiage he thought should have remained in the article was of no real use to the reader. And besides, Andy Sperandeo told me I had to make the feature fit into two pages IIRC, and the initial draft with artwork filled five!
Were N-Scale to move closer to this editorially, that would be one significant improvement.
I'm not an editor, just a modeler, but I did author a "serious" article that was published in N-Scale.
I suspect that back at the time you were editing, about a third of the page count was filled with ads. Articles likely had to be trimmed, and smaller photos used to leave room for ads.
I have been a continuously subscribed to N-Scale since the premier issue and have seen the magazine's page count shrink over the years. Currently it's a former shadow of itself. Lets face it, ads are mostly gone, so they have to fill the pages with lengthy articles that contain some "fluff". They also use large photos to fill the pages (which personally I really appreciate). I suspect they are running a deficit in available outside-sourced articles, and they likely have a very limited staff of writers. They have an "advisory board" but most of those modelers don't write any articles. In many issues they don't even publish letters to the editor, so I suspect they just don't receive very many reader's letters.
They latest circulation report (December) showed average yearly printed magazine circulation of 5010. The online circulation for some reason was not disclosed. IIRC correctly, back in the early 2000's it was over 15k. Most of the article authors likely come from the pool of subscribers, and I suspect that is magnitude smaller than Model Railroader Magazine (now, or back when you were editing it).
I'm not unhappy with the current N-Scale magazine. Could it be better or publish more craftsman-type articles? Sure. But I think they are doing the best they can with what they have. And I do think that Ferris-wheels, dinosaurs, and UFOs on a layout or a module belong in model railroading, if that is what the modeler likes. After all, he/she is spending money on model RR items too. If you want all serious modeling articles, there are other magazines for that.
