As a youth Lovecraft read every issue of Railroad Men’s Magazine (1906-). I had no end-date for the title, and had thus idly assumed it was a defunct title by the time he wistfully recalled it. But no. Rolling around the tracks on Archive.org comes a new scan of Railroad Man’s Magazine, still puffing along in August 1930. Perhaps a revival of the old title, though, under a slightly different name?

It’s then amusing to think that this could have been a market Lovecraft might have entered, and that (in an alt. timeline) all we might now have from him would be a series of railroad ghost stories c. 1910-1925 set on the fog-bound coastlines of New England. Or perhaps fantastical Lost Race tales of railroads being pioneered through the Arctic wastes, across unexplored mountains, or deep under the earth.