As a fairly new (about 6 months) member I have now attended around a dozen branch meetings and have received the appropriate number of copies of RO.
I would like to offer a couple of observations and a few suggestions.
Firstly, a few of the branch meetings have been on railway infrastructure - eg the redevelopment of London Bridge Station; from a civil engineering perspective - these have been the most popular meetings (judged by the number attending and listening to the comments of others) and have also helped remind everyone that we are a "railway" society and not just a "loco" society.
Secondly, RO is mainly full of "train spotting" information interspersed with snippets about other things. Whilst RO is well produced and generally interesting I would like to see a wider content and thus be of interest to a wider audience.
Suggestions for content are:
Recommended photo locations - gleaned from members. Knowing good locations would be valuable to those wanting to just photo trains/locos.
Heritage railways - aim to feature one per issue - I assume the various societies would happily contribute as it should give them better coverage.
Station plans/development - feature one per issue - not the grand stations but ones of general interest (and specially for the railway modeller). There are many railway modellers who have researched stations for their own models. From my experience of branch meetings members have a wealth of knowledge about what changed and when.
Feature the history/development of specific branch lines, including perhaps some of the "disappeared". Could include any known plans to restore, etc.
Infrastructure articles - could be as grand as Crossrail or as mundane as watering facilities, turntables or buffer stops.
Some of these could potentially create some interesting and publishable comments from RO readers.
There may be readers of this who think I've joined the wrong society! - but I believe that RCTS can use RO to inform an extend membership by going beyond what it seems to have done historically.
