title: Joe Fugate
text: # Joe Fugate
  
  Joe D. Fugate, Sr. is a writer and game designer who has written on model railroading topics and has worked on role-playing games. Fugate is the founder and publisher of Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine (MRH).
  
  ## Career
  
  Editors Gary Thomas and Joe D. Fugate, Sr. founded Digest Group Publications (DGP) in 1986 as a business that they ran part-time while working at other $jobs.^{:203}$ Fugate's work in the company's digest-sized magazine The Traveller's Digest got the attention of Marc Miller at Game Designers' Workshop, who invited Fugate and Thomas to expand and revise the material for GDW; the result was Book 8: Robots (1986) for Traveller, which would be the start of a working relationship between the two companies that lasted several $years.^{:58,203}$ In 1993, Fugate announced in The MegaTraveller Journal #4 that DGP was leaving Traveller behind, saying that they had a "puppet on a string relationship" with $GDW.^{:205}$
  
  Roger Sanger, a fan of Traveller, came to Fugate's door one morning late in 1994, looking to buy books from Digest Group Publications; Sanger bought some of the remaining backstock at that time, as Fugate was still paying back creditors and holding onto the boxes of remaining DGP items that he $owned.^{:206}$ Over the next nine months Sanger came to an agreement whereby he paid Fugate a few thousand dollars for the remaining assets of DGP, including copyrights and trademarks; Fugate would keep the larger debts, but Sanger would take care of the smaller $debts.^{:206}$ Fugate agreed to this arrangement, and Sanger became owner of $DGP.^{:206}$
  
  Fugate later ran a model railroad site, and produced professional how-to videos for Model Railroader $magazine.^{:206}$ He produced these videos from 2005-2007.
  
  In July 2008, Joe D. Fugate, Sr. started Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine ISSN 2152-7423 and an associated website to go with the magazine. Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine (MRH) Issue 01 was published January 2009. Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine (MRH) is a digital publication in the same genre as * Model Railroader ISSN 0026-7341 and * Railroad Model Craftsman ISSN 0033-877X
  
  Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine started as a quarterly publication in 2009, went to bimonthly in 2010, and since 2011 has been a monthly publication running over 100 pages per issue. As of 2015, MRH reports that it has about 30,000 subscribers."Advertise with MRH".
  
  