LNER Passenger Trains and Formations

[robertcwp]

11 minutes ago, RichardT said:

Thanks for relaying the news.  I’m increasingly feeling that the author(s?) may have taken some of the criticisms of the first volume far too much to heart and are now attempting the impossible task of not submitting a MS until they’ve 100% criticism-proofed it. Which they’ll never achieve - so we get paralysis by analysis.

 

Just publish what you’ve got. Publish it online if you’re worried about being able to make corrections.

I'm inclined to agree. I think one of the authors in particular is agonising over it all at such great length that it might never appear. Part of the problem is that said author has quite possibly burned so many bridges that others who might have sufficient knowledge to assist won't be keen to help by reviewing things.

 

At what point will Crécy simply pull the plug and direct the authors to another publisher or to self-publish?

[Pint of Adnams]

13 minutes ago, RichardT said:

Thanks for relaying the news.  I’m increasingly feeling that the author(s?) may have taken some of the criticisms of the first volume far too much to heart and are now attempting the impossible task of not submitting a MS until they’ve 100% criticism-proofed it. Which they’ll never achieve - so we get paralysis by analysis.

 

Just publish what you’ve got. Publish it online if you’re worried about being able to make corrections.

 

In the meantime, I’m off to Hive.Co.Uk to cancel my order & get a refund. I’ll buy the latest Tatlow book on LNER goods traffic working instead.

 

Richard

 

A colleague of mine in the LNER Society was helping out by fact-checking the image captions some time ago; he identified a substantial number of those caption corrections to the first volume posted on Steve Banks' website. Other offers of assistance have apparently been declined or ignored, and the author has previous for his continuous rewrites, revisions and additions to text.

[robertcwp]

3 hours ago, Pint of Adnams said:

 

A colleague of mine in the LNER Society was helping out by fact-checking the image captions some time ago; he identified a substantial number of those caption corrections to the first volume posted on Steve Banks' website. Other offers of assistance have apparently been declined or ignored, and the author has previous for his continuous rewrites, revisions and additions to text.

There are plenty more caption errors than the ones listed on his website, including some very basic ones such as on page 154: Upper photo caption: “…and the Tourist twin on the rear (BTO-TO)…”. There were no Tourist twin BTO-TO pairs.  The image appears to show two (non-articulated) Tourist BTO vehicles at the rear of the train.

[Willie Whizz]

Ignore please. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Willie Whizz
Duplication of comment

[Willie Whizz]

10 hours ago, RichardT said:

Thanks for relaying the news.  I’m increasingly feeling that the author(s?) may have taken some of the criticisms of the first volume far too much to heart and are now attempting the impossible task of not submitting a MS until they’ve 100% criticism-proofed it. Which they’ll never achieve - so we get paralysis by analysis.

 

Just publish what you’ve got. Publish it online if you’re worried about being able to make corrections.

 

In the meantime, I’m off to Hive.Co.Uk to cancel my order & get a refund. I’ll buy the latest Tatlow book on LNER goods traffic working instead.

 

Richard

 

 

That’s the conclusion I came to a couple of years back, sadly …

 

Banks and Carter should have taken the advice of the Duke of Wellington. 

[Willie Whizz]

9 hours ago, Pint of Adnams said:

… and the author has previous for his continuous rewrites, revisions and additions to text.

That is certainly true of one anyway. A few years ago I was assisting in a small way with an article he was writing, in the expectation it would be published in a well-known historical Railway magazine, with whom he’d explained he had a good relationship so was confident of acceptance. 
 

He was applying strict “version control”, and each significant alteration to the text had its own number. This is, in many respects, “good practice”, but when I got involved the numbers were already in the early teens; and by the time my participation and modest commentary input ended the “versions” were well into the thirties. By this point much of the text was so heavily rewritten it was virtually unrecognisable from the early writing; the focus had shifted quite some way; what remained had lost much of the freshness and spontaneity of the original. I suggested that enough was enough and that he was in effect taking longer and longer to add very little’; time (as Wellington said) to “publish and be damned”. He ceased sending me further “versions” for comment. I never did find out if the article was finally published (I don’t take that magazine and don’t always see it on the shelves) but I suspect not. 
 

Such a shame, really …

[Pint of Adnams]

10 hours ago, Willie Whizz said:

I never did find out if the article was finally published (I don’t take that magazine and don’t always see it on the shelves) but I suspect not. 

 

You might check on his website, where he lists 'all' of his published articles. I qualify 'all' because I've previously noted a couple of omissions.

 

Steve Banks web page leading to his lists of books (!) and articles

[Bucoops]

Turns out I've been waiting so long for it I had two on order. 

[RichardT]

I’ve done that before…. 🤭

[iak]

The 'Norse-like' saga continues on and on and on and... Etc!

[31A]

Just had an e-mail from Hive re my order for this book, saying that publication has now been pushed back to 30th September 2024.

 

[Willie Whizz]

Laugh?  Or cry?

 

I must admit, I laughed …

Edited January 16 by Willie Whizz

[MarkC]

23 minutes ago, 31A said:

Just had an e-mail from Hive re my order for this book, saying that publication has now been pushed back to 30th September 2024.

 

Moi aussi... 😎

 

Mark

[RichardT]

23 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

Laugh?  Or cry?

 

I must admit, I laughed …

Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

 

I’ve decided to regard this as some kind of not-very-good lottery. CBA cancelling the order now: just wait and see…

 

Richard

[robertcwp]

I cancelled my order. I am beginning to wonder if this book will ever be published. Sooner or later, the publishers will have to either publish it or cancel it completely.

[Pint of Adnams]

Crecy has updated its webpage to now read AUTUMN 2024. Yesterday I e-mailed the production assistant with whom I have previously had contact enquiring if the manuscript has been delivered to Crecy - if I get a response I will update here...

[Pint of Adnams]

Well, I've had a friendly response from my contact at Crecy, who confirms that the manuscript has not yet been received, so there is still not a concrete publication date and does not know where Hive got that information from. It looks unlikely at the moment that it will be published this year...

[RichardT]

I presume that Hive saw that Crecy had updated their expected date to Autumn 2024 and decided to update their page to the first month of autumn.

 

It's astonishing that an author can get themselves into such a tangle, especially after publishing the first volume OK.  Obviously we don't know the ins and outs but I'm betting it's paralysis by analysis.  Especially if it's now only being worked on by a lone author who is perhaps over-sensitive to criticism.

 

(I have written a book as a lone author: I know the issues and the tendency to self-sabotage if you don't take disinterested advice.)

 

Richard 

Edited January 19 by RichardT
Clarifying

[Pint of Adnams]

1 hour ago, RichardT said:

It's astonishing that an author can get themselves into such a tangle, especially after publishing the first volume OK.  Obviously we don't know the ins and outs but I'm betting it's paralysis by analysis.  Especially if it's now only being worked on by a lone author who is perhaps over-sensitive to criticism.

 

Of course we don't know the gestation period of the first volume, just that it was published.

[RichardT]

2 minutes ago, Pint of Adnams said:

Of course we don't know the gestation period of the first volume, just that it was published.

Very true!

 

RT

[Willie Whizz]

Whatever the cause of the endless delays may be, it is not preventing Mr Banks adding further material to his website (though the 'sidebar' mention of Volume 2 has remained unchanged for several years now, so don't believe it!)  As recently as December he posted material about ex-GNR Catering Carriages and took the opportunity to have a 'pop' at the fairly recent Longworth book for (he says) getting confused about them ...