We Are Celebrating Our First Anniversary!

It’s been more than a year since the new publication of the former SNCFR has started its way. It was a difficult beginning from the confidence point of view. For some time, the voices of the distrustful, omniscient persons, the custodians of the secret of the future failure of the Railway Journal, were heard at corners. A pretty small number of enthusiastic persons believed constantly, even if they had certain doubts, normal otherwise, in the need of issuing such publication. And the reality eventually proved that they were right and for lack of space we will give only one argument, extremely persuasive, that supports the modernity and necessity of our publication: during the last month over 1,000 persons visited our web site! Out of them, almost 50% are from abroad (we have readers from USA, most of the European countries, Canada and…Japan).
The dimension of the modernity of the Railway Journal in comparison with the former endeavors was overwhelming: from the newspaper oozing with lead, written unenthusiastically to a polychrome, computer-based magazine containing, mainly, information about the management and the marketing of the railway companies. But our change, as fast as the one of the railway system that is being reorganized, has overcame the change of the mentality of the ones (happily a smaller and smaller number) who deep inside them were not able to become the railway persons of the end of the millennium. This is the reason why we have tried to be moderate and not to be modern at any price, to be no “smarter” than necessary and not to trespass the limit of the common sense over the limit of the acceptable.
Our environment has changed a lot since August 1998. The SNCFR does no longer exist, the new railway companies are operating successfully, new specialized institutions have appeared in the various branches of the railway transport, various upgrading programs are being initialized, the mentality of the railway persons has begun to change…This is the new reality that we have tried to put into light and to illustrate. This way, the past year, the Railway Journal became a magazine that created a quality image for the entire railway system and especially for the National Railway Company CFR SA. Little by little we have modified the initial style of the magazine: big pictures and less text but containing extremely concentrated information, management and marketing oriented topics, etc.
However, our evolution will not end here. We are highly convinced and decided to continue the road of the modernization of railway publications that we have started. We owe it to ourselves as well as to our readers who believe in us. Therefore, in the next period we will make certain important changes in the life of the Railway Journal: we will increase the number of printed magazines (probably will be doubled), we will modify the graphics of the pages, we will enrich its informational level and we will try to bring to the readers the freshest railway news. Also, we will publish a weekly supplement of the journal that will deal exclusively with the activity of the National Railway Company CFR SA. The supplement is meant to have a purely informational character and will be distributed to all the sub-units of the Company as an essential element for the communication and for the configuration of the modern organizational mentality.
However, till then, we will need at lot of work and inspiration and the constant support of you, our readers to whom we wish now “Happy anniversary!”

We Are Introducing Ourselves!

Because many of you are curious about the way that an editorial office of a railway magazine looks like and of course you believe that we are experienced railway people, we would like to take the opportunity offered by this anniversary and to introduce ourselves.
We would like to thank to the ones that trusted us, starting with Mr. President Viorel Simut and continuing with the most devoted readers of our magazine. We don’t want to make promises, but we believe that we proved that we are doing our job passionately, that we are proud to bring a bit of joy in railway people’s hearts.
We would also like to thank to the ones that congratulated us with this occasion.

From left to right: Aurelia Nicolae, chief editor; Florin Cocos, driver; Oana Bran, editor; Dany Branzan, techno-editor; Viorel Simut, president, general director of CN CFR SA; Dragos Mirea, chief of the techno-editing department; Imola Claudia Handra, reporter; Alin Matei, techno-editor; Angelica Ion, secretary; Silvia Mitulescu, editor.

Dan Pantea