LNER Passenger Trains Vol. 2

[teaky]

It looks like volume 2 is on the way at the end of September.

http://www.crecy.co.uk/lner-passenger-t ... ions-vol-2

[JASd17]

I am looking forward to the new volume. It is a much neglected area of research.

I have had some lively discussion with one of the authors about the original volume.

John

[Woodcock29]

Great news indeed
Andrew

[Atlantic 3279]

I have had some lively discussion with one of the authors about the original volume.

John

Easily imagined.

[robertcwp]

I think the secondary services are an even more important topic to cover than the principal ones, but the topic is so vast, even just for the LNER, that I wonder whether one book can do it justice. It will be a start, if nothing else. Hopefully it will have fewer caption errors and a better balance of coverage than the first volume too.

[JASd17]

Agreed Robert.

The subject area is vast. The North British and GNSR, along with lesser GC-section services are particularly neglected. But, let us see what areas the authors do cover.

It would be impossible to do everything.

John

[williewhizz]

Indeed it would be "impossible to do everything"; certainly not in one volume or even two; and still hope that it would be considered of sufficient merit and viability by a publisher to produce at a relatively affordable cover price.

Messrs Carter and Banks were quite clear in their introduction to Volume 1 what their constraints had been, and I imagine many of those will still apply in the sequel. Even so, it may not have been 'perfect', but if there's a better published book out there on the subject of the Expresses I have yet to find it. For one, I'm looking forward to the long-awaited Volume 2 at last.

As regards 'caption errors', I remember many years ago a talk at a railway society by a young man called Robert Robotham, who had produced an interesting and picture-heavy volume on the Great Central's London Extension. He had been heavily taken to task in the railway and model railway press (no Internet back then) about a significant number of errors in the text and the picture captions; and when the subject came up he told us - literally with tears in his eyes - that 90% of them (a) weren't his fault and (b) had been picked-up and corrected at the proof-reading stage - only for the Publisher to ignore the corrections and print the incorrect text anyway. Robotham went on to wite a couple more books, but his reputation never recovered alas. There are always two sides to every story ...

[JASd17]

If the book has your name on it, there is no blaming someone else. I have been there too.

John

[52D]

Robotham wrote Branches & Byways Southern Scotland and the Border counties and has made numerous errors in it i have discussed areas im not too familiar with other people and they state the same. I think in his case it was output before full research was complete.

[williewhizz]

If the book has your name on it, there is no blaming someone else. I have been there too.

Then I admire your stoicism. If my personal reputation as an author had been trashed by such incompetence by a supposedly reputable publisher, I'd want somebody's hide!

[teaky]

Now 31st October 2019 (allegedly) !!

[robertcwp]

If the book has your name on it, there is no blaming someone else. I have been there too.

Then I admire your stoicism. If my personal reputation as an author had been trashed by such incompetence by a supposedly reputable publisher, I'd want somebody's hide!

One problem, often overlooked, is that the author of the book may not have written the photo captions. There is one particularly notable book that falls into that category, where the captions were a complete mess. Whether the author had time to check them before publication, I don't know.

Ian Allan were somewhat notorious as a publisher for not giving authors much, if any, time to check proofs or ask someone else to review them. I had volunteered to do this for free for an author who had asked for my help. Then they gave him almost no time. Hence, the book went out with errors regarding the coaching stock. Not that they were alone in having nonsense captions. That is something that is alive and well today with several other publishers who put out books with very good and interesting images but where you might as well be writing your own captions.

From my recent experience of doing a bookazine, writing captions takes ages. At least I had the opportunity to check them, including the ones the publisher wrote on additional photos they had sourced. This headed off some errors that would otherwise have been attributed to me.

In the case of Banks and Carter, on the one hand there was a statement that "analysis of photographs was key" then there were quite a few errors in identification of stock in photos. This rather undermines confidence in the work given it was about trains and their formations.

[robertcwp]

Now 31st October 2019 (allegedly) !!

Which will come first? This book or the opening of Crossrail (or maybe HS2)?

[1949bob]

Now 30 Apr 2020!!

[JASd17]

Now 30 Apr 2020!!

I suspect there is still a lot to do, so no surprise at the later date.

John