What will happen to historical/prototypical accuracy once everyone who lived in that era is gone?

[Clive Mortimore]

For me, the question goes to the heart of "what is a model?". I think it's a representation, not a miniature facsimile. And therefore inevitably impressionistic, to a greater or lesser degree.

 

Edited

 

Paul

Well said Paul.

[Coryton]

A couple of points arise.  The first is the hostility meted out to those who would photograph today's railway by some staff and so-called security personnel - knuckle-dragging goons, perhaps -  on stations.  The result is that some of what has happened in the last few years has gone unrecorded.  Those who come after us will not thank them.

 

 

Is that (still?) a significant problem.

 

Maybe I've been lucky so far, but I have never had trouble (in the UK) getting a camera out at a station.

 

And the last time I looked there were guidelines that made it clear that photography in general is permitted (though with a get-out clause that staff nevertheless have the discretion to order you to leave the station or - if waiting for a train - to wait for it where they tell you to).

[PatB]

In the greater scheme of things, how much does it matter? Certainly, those producing serious reference works and suchlike will need to place greater emphasis on the use of primary sources of information such as photographs, company documents etc. but, thanks to the already noted unreliability of memory, this should really already be the case. It certainly is for those producing works on eras that have already passed beyond living memory. It is somewhat sobering to think that it will not be long before there is noone who can reliably recall details of the pre-Nationalisation era.

 

But the majority of modellers are not aiming to produce an academic standard historical record. For most, as long as the modeller can produce a result that reflects the level of research they are able and willing to do, to a level of accuracy which satisfies them, surely that is what counts. If they are unable to determine with certainty particular aspects of their layout but are content to make an educated guess, then so be it. If better information presents itself, the model can be improved. If not, no harm is done as long as the model is not represented as a definitive reference source.

 

In reality, most model railways, even very good ones, are not 100% accurate historical records. Quite apart from the dimensional compression required to fit it all in, and the liberties taken with prototypical operation needed to make them interesting to operate or view, most historical models tend to be idealised portrayals. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's a hobby and supposed to be enjoyable so why not gloss over the less pleasant aspects of the era that one is modelling? But let's not kid ourselves that history scholars are going to be writing anything definitive based on our efforts.

[Junctionmad]

It seems one major problem in the future will be the lack of old photographs. Talk to older people about some local event and they may bring out some old photo album which shows some detail not previously noticed. Now that photographs are mostly stored on some sort of electronic device, when that dies the pictures disappear. In the future there will be a considerable lack of detail about early 21st century life.

I would say the exact opposite is in fact the case

 

Firstly there digitisation of many albums and their availability on the internet has allowed me and others to access imagery that in the past would have only appeared in books , or remained private amongst a small closed group and was expensive to duplicate , we are seeing museums place their collections online in high quality and many old films are now preserved from degradation by being copied to digital

 

Secondly , the prototype has never been more photographed since essentially " free" digital photography arrived in the 90s. I remember photography in the late 70s and 80s , the cost of film and development was a huge impediment. Nowadays I can survey the prototype and take 1000 pictures on a field trip without a thought

 

The future is far brighter then you think

[jpendle]

I would say the exact opposite is in fact the case

 

Firstly there digitisation of many albums and their availability on the internet has allowed me and others to access imagery that in the past would have only appeared in books , or remained private amongst a small closed group and was expensive to duplicate , we are seeing museums place their collections online in high quality and many old films are now preserved from degradation by being copied to digital

 

Secondly , the prototype has never been more photographed since essentially " free" digital photography arrived in the 90s. I remember photography in the late 70s and 80s , the cost of film and development was a huge impediment. Nowadays I can survey the prototype and take 1000 pictures on a field trip without a thought

 

The future is far brighter then you think

I would agree, just look at the historical  OS maps available on the Scottish National Library website. They cover all of the UK and are available free of charge. I was able to look at my home station (Westhoughton) to see where the goods yard was, and all the colliery connections close to the station. My latest layout is based on Wigan and I've been able to draw up an accurate plan using satellite images on Google Maps.

 

The internet is our friend.

 

Regards,

 

John P

[Reorte]

I would say the exact opposite is in fact the case

 

Firstly there digitisation of many albums and their availability on the internet has allowed me and others to access imagery that in the past would have only appeared in books , or remained private amongst a small closed group and was expensive to duplicate , we are seeing museums place their collections online in high quality and many old films are now preserved from degradation by being copied to digital

 

Secondly , the prototype has never been more photographed since essentially " free" digital photography arrived in the 90s. I remember photography in the late 70s and 80s , the cost of film and development was a huge impediment. Nowadays I can survey the prototype and take 1000 pictures on a field trip without a thought

 

The future is far brighter then you think

It's the argument about digital obsolesence and permanence. More pictures than ever, of higher quality, are being taken but how many of them will last just existing as a digital file? A digital archive requires maintenance as well as a physical one, even though the work required is different. For example any image or film that's compressed in a lossy format (e.g. JPEG) is only preserved against degredation as long as it isn't converted to a different lossy format. Over time formats are likely to change - there's some resistance due to practicality (technically speaking higher compression with less loss is available than JPEG achieves), so you end up with the situation where it either gets converted, with loss, or increasingly specialised software has to be maintained somewhere to serve up the data in formats people will be able to read.

 

While someone is looking after digital data it's reliable, but any system that requires additional hardware (i.e. I can just look at a print, or read a book) has its own risks. How many peoples' early digital photos still exist? I think it's still too early to tell what the situation will end up looking like.

[Fenman]

... and many old films are now preserved from degradation by being copied to digital

...

That’s not strictly true.

 

Ask the British Film Institute why they are not converting the National Film & TV Archive to digital. They’ll probably tell you about concepts like “bit loss”, point to technological obsolescence (can anyone in the UK now read the BBC’s mega-Domesday Book, stored on huge laser disks?), before telling you what a vast quantity of information is stored on every single piece of 35mm film.

 

The last time they estimated, it would cost around £6bn to digitise the national collection to a standard that would involve the least loss of data, and they would then be locked into a technological upgrade treadmill that would cost squillions over time.

 

Instead, they spent just £10m on a state-of-the-art storage facility in the middle of nowhere that costs thruppence a year to run (well, a bit more, but not much).

 

Books and films are pretty resilient and very low-cost media to store. Digital originals, despite their extraordinary advantages and cheapness to produce, not so much.

 

Paul

[rue_d_etropal]

The technology that seems to get forgotten about these days is microfilm. I know my local library has a lot of newspapers stored that way, and it is relatively easy to view.

 

What is required is a mixture.

Digital(even if stored at lower level of quality), is very useful for initial research. I always use images set, when searching with Google. Once you actually either find what you want, or near to it, then you can use more accurately recorded information. Ultimately that might lead you to a printed book, or photo. Quite often , that lower level quality image is enough. There is a far bigger problem caused by image rights and copyright. Information used to not be perceived as commercial, but over the past 70 years, its commercial value, is making it more difficult to access.

 

However old information and photos are stored, it costs time and money, not just to actually store them, but more importantly to make them available. Digitising collections, and making them available online, even if quality is not as good as original, then enabling people to download (not necessarily for free), would be a very valuable system.

[EddieB]

The essence of this question was one of the prime reasons the Historical Model Railway Society was established in 1950. It is also the reason why specific societies were established such as the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Society and DEMU.

My interests may differ, but I wholly endorse the aims and objectives of such societies.  I would go as far as to suggest that you cannot be a serious modeller without supporting those societies that research and document your chosen railway company, location and/or period, through at least the modest subscription requested (and often repaid through member benefits).  The other benefit of these societies is that they tend to research exhaustively - they cover both the popular and less popular aspects of their subject (not about the number of "likes" on social media.  Without them, the danger is that the only publications to see the light of days are those that have a widespread appeal and niche interests overlooked.  These societies also act as a repository for material that would otherwise be lost to the world.

 

There is much more information available nowadays.  As has been said, well-documented (and reviewed) records are more reliable than memories (good that they are).  However one side-effect of this information explosion is an increase in "noise" - slavish copying without checking sources and perpetuation of errors arising from it.  There are plenty of "pretty" publications where the text clearly hasn't even been proof-read (let alone reviewed) and contain wrongly-captioned photographs.  To borrow a modern idiom: "a bad book can be worse than no book".

[EddieB]

At a tangent to that, but as an example of the OP's worries; can anyone give a date when the first 2x20s ran on a summer service to Skegness? I know there is a lot of info from the late 70s and 80s when enthusiasts discovered them, but when did they start?

Probably awaiting a trawl through Railway Magazine, Railway World or Railway Observer from the period?

 

(He says unhelpfully).

[Coryton]

It's the argument about digital obsolesence and permanence. More pictures than ever, of higher quality, are being taken but how many of them will last just existing as a digital file? A digital archive requires maintenance as well as a physical one, even though the work required is different. For example any image or film that's compressed in a lossy format (e.g. JPEG) is only preserved against degredation as long as it isn't converted to a different lossy format. Over time formats are likely to change - there's some resistance due to practicality (technically speaking higher compression with less loss is available than JPEG achieves), so you end up with the situation where it either gets converted, with loss, or increasingly specialised software has to be maintained somewhere to serve up the data in formats people will be able to read.

 

While someone is looking after digital data it's reliable, but any system that requires additional hardware (i.e. I can just look at a print, or read a book) has its own risks. How many peoples' early digital photos still exist? I think it's still too early to tell what the situation will end up looking like.

 

I agree to some extent - you can just look at a photo you find in an old drawer. On the other hand if you find an old disk, tape or memory stick, you have to find something that can read it, the files might have been corrupted, and they might be in a format you can't read.

 

But I don't think it's a serious problem and it's getting less so.

 

People still print photos. A very small percentage of what's taken these days is still a lot compared to the pre-digital days.

 

And I really don't see the physical format issue as a problem now. We don't have to worry about incompatible formats as it's easy enough now to copy things onto new storage media as what's available changes - it's not like having the Doomsday Book on laser discs which nothing can read. OK lots will disappear on the way because people don't bother to keep it but again it doesn't take much to still have a huge quantity.

 

As for data formats, there was a time when it mattered - there were lots of different niche formats around, and memory was tight enough that you wouldn't write a program to handle more than it had to.

 

But bloated programs are the norm now because there's no real reason not to (even on phones). You can easily pick up a free image reader which copes with a huge number of niche formats. Jpegs have been the standard for digital photos for quite a while. Why would an image reader in a hundred years or more not have the ability to read jpegs?

[wharf lane]

I would really be stuck if I had to rely on old photographs in my other hobby. I'm a medieval re-enactor! We do it the old fashioned way. Go to a Museum. Trawl through endless volumes of manuscripts. very limited use of the internet as most stuff is wrong on there. As artisans, we look in the background of period pictures for boxes, chairs and details of clothing. You have o bear in mind that the artist was, well, an artist so didn't necessarily know the finer details of his subject. The info is, and always has been around, you just have to go and look for it.

[Reorte]

But bloated programs are the norm now because there's no real reason not to (even on phones). You can easily pick up a free image reader which copes with a huge number of niche formats. Jpegs have been the standard for digital photos for quite a while. Why would an image reader in a hundred years or more not have the ability to read jpegs?

Despite the bloat support for old formats does drop away. JPEG is more established than most, but expecting it to be commonly included in 100 years time is rather optimistic (even ignoring the fact that even starting to guess what computers will look like in 100 years time is very optimistic). If only a few people rummaging through archive material are even interested in JPEGs then will they continue to bother including the software in what most people use? That said you may well have a system where whatever is required to read anything is easily available and you don't even need to have a clue about it long before then. But looking a bit less far into the future I wouldn't be too surprised if support for GIFs vanishes as routine in the near-ish future, for example (lousy format for photos anyway, not bad for diagrams).

[drduncan]

I’m afraid that oral history (interviewing people to get their memories) is a well known method of introducing errors into the historical record. Professional historians have a number of techniques to get round this that can be briefly described as ‘don’t believe everything you’re told’ and ‘get corroboation’ - preferably documentary...

 

Without getting into what peer reviewed actually means to a historian (its really very dull, believe me) and the differences between primary and secondary sources (even duller) and their use in railway histories, if you want to ascertain the veracity of an author’s research you need to look at the footnotes/endnotes and the bibliography. In our hobby and much of the historical support we rely on the former is almost completely unknown and the latter a rarity. This may be the more significant problem we face in years to come - being unable to verify where information came from originally and therefore if it can be trusted or is just all made up/opinion....

 

Drduncan

Edited January 23, 2018 by drduncan

[Dunsignalling]

I’m not always convinced that first hand recollections, especially those from 50 or 60 years ago are always actually that accurate anyway.

Taken in isolation, probably not, but all part of the jigsaw and, if it's all there is, one has to take such material more-or-less at face value whilst discounting anything too far-fetched. The trick is identifying the grains of truth. The more the comparative sources one can access, the easier that becomes.

 

Even photo captions in the books of well-respected publishers and authors can't always be trusted. I've found quite a few that seem great but the date turns out to be a year adrift.

 

Worse still are the ones with no date at all. They don't need to be spot-on to the day - even "season-19xx" would help a lot from a modelling viewpoint.

 

Captions written contemporaneously to the taking of the photo are scarily uncommon and ones added decades afterwards, by someone other than the photographer, must be treated with caution. 

 

John

Edited January 23, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[pH]

The other is that mistakes are made in print and if not corrected are perpetuated by being taken as gospel.  Let's just say that not all the letters I send to magazine editors are printed.

 

I have a list of 5 well-known authors of railway books and articles who I will not believe on any subject without independent support (i.e. not quoting, and not quoted by, these authors). And this situation is even more common in digital material. I admire you for your attempts to get the printed record corrected, Chris, but how can you deal with the online world?

[Craigw]

But how do you know how accurate they are without the first hand experience of people who were there?

There are many instances of modellers building layouts of differing periods who thought they had got it right by using available references, only to find out at exhibitions from people who lived in the area or who worked for the companies involved that they were in error in some large or small way.

Jamie's Lancaster Green Ayre springs to mind, he found a lot of gaps of knowledge filled when the layout was actually exhibited in Lancaster.

The internet and available books and photographs aren't the be all and end all of research, that's why I model the period I was actively involved in, and my own memories, notes and photo's fill in the blanks.

 

Mike.

 

Being there is not any guarantee of accuracy either.

 

Look at the WW2 records for the number of Tigers that the Allies knocked out. Considerably more than the number built.

 

Looking at historical records and photographs and proper research is just as important and people who were there tended to record the unusual rather than the mundane.

 

How far you wish to go in the accuracy stakes is really a personal thing, but I get a lot of pleasure from research so I try to push myself a bit.

 

Regards,

 

Craig W

[Bernard Lamb]

 

 

However old information and photos are stored, it costs time and money, not just to actually store them, but more importantly to make them available. Digitising collections, and making them available online, even if quality is not as good as original, then enabling people to download (not necessarily for free), would be a very valuable system.

 

This is where the problem lies.

The last time I was in contact with the Imperial War Museum we were talking about a collection of photographs numbering, in their words, tens of thousands, that were in need of cataloguing. They had no labour then and going by the cutbacks at the museum itself and in general I imagine it must by worse at present. The same goes for county archive collections. These range from excellent to terrible in respect of access. Thank goodness for TNA Kew who are not only very helpful in respect of the material that they hold but are in many cases better at providing information on other collections than the places that hold them.

Bernard

[Bernard Lamb]

Being there is not any guarantee of accuracy either.

 

Look at the WW2 records for the number of Tigers that the Allies knocked out. Considerably more than the number built.

 

Looking at historical records and photographs and proper research is just as important and people who were there tended to record the unusual rather than the mundane.

 

How far you wish to go in the accuracy stakes is really a personal thing, but I get a lot of pleasure from research so I try to push myself a bit.

 

Regards,

 

Craig W

 

Very much agree.

When I started on military research I was told never to trust a book and even to be cautious about official documents.

You will soon find that even official documents contradict each other was the warning.

Very much the case with the war in the Pacific. In that case with so much material only released in 2011 and much still held under lock and key it is only too true.

Bernard

[Tony Wright]

I have a list of 5 well-known authors of railway books and articles who I will not believe on any subject without independent support (i.e. not quoting, and not quoted by, these authors). And this situation is even more common in digital material. I admire you for your attempts to get the printed record corrected, Chris, but how can you deal with the online world?

You are quite right to be suspicious of some authors' work. I hope I'm not on your list. 

 

The problem I find with my own published works (including those containing my own photographs and the pictures of others) is that every time I see a printed (and final) copy, a neon arrow pulses alongside a glaring mistake I've made. Yet, it was missed at the proofing stage, and not just by me. 

 

In my latest Booklaw book describing ex-LNER locos, I've got one date totally wrong - two years out! Despite my own maxim of NEVER automatically believing what's written on a print, transparency or digital image, I just copied what Keith Pirt had written by way of a date on a picture of an A3. An A3 with German blinkers, in 1959!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Though I'm no great example, I do strive for accuracy in my captions. It's easier in my describing my own pictures but the human memory (especially mine) isn't infallible. 

 

All I can offer by way of advice is always treat printed information with suspicion, and only believe it when it's compared with substantial corroborative evidence. 

[Nearholmer]

My gut feeling is that those who want to model photo-dimensionally-accurately now have it easier than they ever have, and that, bar a descent of civilisation, that won’t change, and is likely to improve.

 

And, it seems to me that pre-groupers are among the greatest exacto-philes, although whether that survives the arrival in their eras of r-t-r remains to be seen. They are living proof that distance in time is no bar to the pursuit of accuracy.

 

I’d say the weakest spot is operations, which have been historically even less recorded than static things. Few people study the necessary, if dull, bits of railway ‘software’ such as WTTs, rule books, sectional appendices, goods receipt books etc etc, and few people distill them into books or magazine articles. Magazines like ‘Backtrack’ and Society Journals do carry “ops” material, but ours is still a ‘hardware’ focused hobby.

 

And, on ‘what is written in books vs reality’. That is a seriously tough topic, because even all that railway software won’t tell you for certain what really went on. I’ve written a fair bit of that sort of thing in my working life, and I never kidded myself that it was more than 80% adhered to!

[beast66606]

Is that (still?) a significant problem.

 

 

Occasionally, yes - unfortunately.

 

 

 

Regarding memories there is a well known phenonemon whereby people use knowledge to build a memory into something it isn't (subconsciously, it's not deliberate) so for example someone may remember seeing steam locos passing their house as a child and years later they discover that 8F 48151 worked to their area, their brain ties the two together and they have a generated memory of 48151 passing their house.

[pH]

You are quite right to be suspicious of some authors' work. I hope I'm not on your list. 

 

Rest assured, you're not. Obviously, I'm not going to put the list on here!

[jonny777]

Probably awaiting a trawl through Railway Magazine, Railway World or Railway Observer from the period?

 

(He says unhelpfully).

 

 

Well yes, this is the problem for the future as I see it. 

 

Are individuals who need certain information going to have to skim through every copy of contemporary periodicals each time? 

 

Digitising some of these magazines has taken place, which makes a word search much simpler, but until the entire list of relevant publications are completed who will know if they have missed vital information?

 

It is the same with books. It is quite easy to look through the indexes of books one may have; but what about those which are long out of print and are not in a person's collection? The point I made about class 20s to Skegness can be repeated as a question for any class of locomotive to any UK railway station since the railway appeared there, and the number of published railway books is huge. Will all of them be digitised in the future, and available online? 

[Talltim]

Despite the bloat support for old formats does drop away. JPEG is more established than most, but expecting it to be commonly included in 100 years time is rather optimistic (even ignoring the fact that even starting to guess what computers will look like in 100 years time is very optimistic). If only a few people rummaging through archive material are even interested in JPEGs then will they continue to bother including the software in what most people use? That said you may well have a system where whatever is required to read anything is easily available and you don't even need to have a clue about it long before then. But looking a bit less far into the future I wouldn't be too surprised if support for GIFs vanishes as routine in the near-ish future, for example (lousy format for photos anyway, not bad for diagrams).

GIFs have made comeback, in animated form.

Edited January 24, 2018 by Talltim