How Does Kalmbach Make Any Money?

Last year I posted about the advice I got from David Popp on how I should cancel my subscription to Model Railroader Video Plus. Earlier this year, I got a notice to renew my subscription to print Model Railroader. I forget how much I'd paid the previous year, but the amount struck me as a heck of a lot more, right about when MR started running a print version of the Winston Salem Southbound series it had run on MRVP last year. So I started to ask why I was being asked to pay more for material I'd already paid for. I let my sub expire.

A friend e-mailed me that the current MR has an article on rebuilding Great Northern stock cars into emergency grain cars. I thought first that I'd glance at the current issue next time I go to the train store, since I no longer subscribe, and see if the article is worth $6.99. Then I thought I'd go to the MR website and see if there's an intro there that might give me an idea. Well, no, nothing there. Probably means it's a short article.

Then I remembered google is my friend. I googled "emergency grain car", and lo and behold, not far down the page was a link to a Cody's Workshop article on MRVP on -- wait for it -- emergency grain cars. Not only that, it's free, outside the paywall. It's dated April 2018, so I'm wondering how much of it is duplicated in the current MR print issue.

So here's a continuation of my gripes with Kalmbach:

1. MRVP gave away a feature that I'd have been paying for if I hadn't taken Popp's advice and canceled my sub.
2. The MR article on emergency grain cars appears to duplicate material I got for free outside the MRVP paywall that I'd have paid for -- twice -- if I hadn't also canceled my MR sub.

People in the end seem to know what things are worth. Kalmbach wants more and more for less and less.