Trains Magazine, the world’s leading publication on railroading and trains, has launched TrainsPRO as a new website under the Trains.com family of brands.
TrainsPRO features articles on railroad industry news and analysis, covering areas such as freight rail, passenger rail, mechanical, maintenance of way and regulatory updates. These coverage areas are nothing new for Trains – we have reported on these very subjects for many years under the Trains News Wire branding. Now, News Wire has been folded into TrainsPRO.
The new TrainsPRO site features the same level of reporting, expertise and industry insights — and the same authors — as News Wire, but improved categorization will make the industry content easier to find.
In the coming weeks, look for continuing coverage of railroad industry happenings, from merger analysis to operational management to details on the technology and innovation that will improve safety and efficiency for railroads in the years to come. The Trains staff has always gone beyond the press release to report not just on the “what” but on the “why.” We remain committed to helping readers understand the increasingly rapid evolution of the rail industry, and believe TrainsPRO will present that coverage in a way that is easier to find and follow.
Meanwhile, heritage rail, preservation, and rail travel content that has been part of Trains News Wire will continue — again, with the same authors — as part of Trains.com. Readers will also find new categories for those topics.
Trains.com members, Trains All Access members, and Trains subscribers will still have access to all industry news under TrainsPRO, just as they have had access to News Wire.
Folks, I am sorry for the problems everyone is experiencing. I want to emphasize there are no new fees, charges, or paywalls for the content as a result of this change. You should still be able to read everything you could read before. If that’s not the case, it reflects issues that are, to my understanding, resulting from the changes to the website which we are still working to address. (I will note here that I am not an IT person and asking me to explain or correct them is like asking a newspaper reporter to fix a printing press.) Also, during the course of this process, some of the older News Wire content may be hard to find while it is retagged to fit the new system; that, unfortunately, is a slow, manual process.
I understand that we have changed the way the news is presented, but it will all still be there at no additional charge. I apologize both for the problems and the fact that the changes were not communicated better in advance, and believe me, I am in many ways as frustrated as you are. But I will ask that you please be patient while we work through these issues; we’ll do it as soon as we can. And I will be communicating everyone’s concerns to the appropriate higher-ups.
In the meantime — and once again, I am not an IT person — I will suggest that you might try a “clear cache” on your web browser. That has solved some problems relating to website changes in the past. If I learn anything else, I will pass it on here.
Again, I apologize for the issues you are experiencing.
David Lassen
Senior editor, Trains Magazine
Look forward to the trains newswire every Saturday over coffee. The rest of the website is to confusing with banner ads and video ad’s popping up. Wonder who and what task force is in charge of these types of “upgrades.”
I cannot access any of the articles on the Trains newswire. It looks like you have to subscribe at either $4.99 per month or $6.99 for complete. Previously any Trains subscriber had access to the Newswire. I have seen a subscriber for 53 years.
The response here is overwhelmingly negative but it’s not at all clear whether anyone important looks at these comments. But you can send a direct email which I’d bet someone relevant WILL see:
Send your website questions and comments to our digital editor at questions@trains.com
BRING NEWSWIRE BACK. Or at least place TrainPro in the top line of the initial page. Most of Treins.com is bad design – this just makes it worse.
Who designs and builds Trains.com anyway???
Maybe, given time I’ll like these changes. But I doubt I will.
This may be what the “modern railroad professional” wants, but the average railroad enthusiast (who I would guess are the majority of subscribers) want one stop shopping for their railroad news.
Even for a professional, Amtrak employees may primarily be interested in “passenger” but certainly would be interested in “freight” articles that may impact freight roads they run on. Now they need to look in two different parts of the website.
😂
To help some of us sift through this new mass of illogical confusion more easily, would you kindly restore the “wallet sized” photograph (icon ?) adjacent to each title to save us the additional effort expended in trying to locate a previous article to read when time becomes available (bookmark function ?) ? (The larger photographs interspersed among article paragraphs remain excellent ! ) And while I have Firecrown’s attention, I still wish they would give more credit to individual authors instead of the generic term “Trains staff.” If multiple authors, the abbreviation “et al” after the primary author’s name would be sufficient. WALTER FRITZ…OBER, INDIANA…574-772-4766
This is a very bad redesign, and I can’t find anything anymore…
Immediate reaction is that this is much worse, not an improvement. I liked being able to skim through all railroad news in one place. My interests don’t necessarily fit into neat silos of “passenger” or “freight”. And now I have to open multiple more links and pages to access the same content that used to be a simple grid of stories on one page.
It drives me crazy when outlets feel the need to redesign without actually asking users whether it’s needed.
This is the problem, I agree 100%
It would have been so much simpler to just introduce some form of tags, so that people who wanted to read one category only could click/bookmark that tag, while leaving the site’s basic functionality alone for the rest of us.
I also preferred having everything in one place.
The layout of Newswire was MUCH better. Everything in one open window. Can’t figure out “improvements” when it isn’t needed. Go back to the previous layout and call it what you will. Navigating a bunch of different choices isn’t an improvement.
I don’t know if this is an improvement. With Newswire you opened it, saw a list of news items, which I quickly looked at and picked what looked interesting to me and ignored the rest. It now looks like I will be having to open additional windows to see if there is anything I would want to read.
Where in Trains.com is preservation/tourist railway news? There is no longer any link under the TrainsPro rebulid of the Newswire. I find no other link to such news under either Trains/com or the Classic Trains section.