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

[Northmoor]

And what were the LNER thinking about Gay Crusader

 

It would now be called "Peter Tatchell".

[Clive Mortimore]

The British Library gets a copy of everything published in the UK. Five other libraries are entitled to request a copy of anything published in the UK - National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Cambridge University Library and the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The right of TCD to copyright deposit predates 1922 and, in return, the UK deposit libraries retain the right to Irish publications. The UK libraries, other than the British Library, do not request copies of everything they are entitled to.

 

So yes, as John says, The British Library should retain everything published.

Would that include the magazines my mum threw out and blamed my dad for bringing into the house when she found them hidden in the shed. So at long last I could go and read the articles about sports cars.

[jjb1970]

Earlier in my career I worked in heavy engineering and on RN warships with sailors and learned a whole new vocabulary, but I heard far worse in a consultancy business.  There was one individual working in a sales management role who would swear repeatedly in meetings; I came to the conclusion it wasn't just ignorance, they did it deliberately to indicate they were a passionate and driven person.  Most of my and his colleagues concluded that he was just a t****r.

I was also at sea, but MN. When I was an engineer at sea we had a saying that engine room language stayed in the engine room. I did enough time in ship yards during new construction and dry docks to write a whole chapter of Roger's Profanisaurus but I just don't like habitual swearing in public spaces and around others.

[APOLLO]

40 years in the gas industry, heard it all, said it all, invented a few !!!!

 

Back to topic. Indexing / dating collections of old photographs has been mentioned. indeed such work will get harder / impossible over time, but these collections need such work as far as possible.

 

Have a look at this interesting American flikr site, over 40 thousand photos of American Railroads, most pre WW2, black & white, & mostly steam. Very little is indexed (one or two even scanned back to front - corrected by flikr members with fading local knowledge) but it is a very important archive, especially for US Railroad modellers.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/albums

 

BEWARE - you can spend many, many hours on this site !!

 

Brit15

Edited January 28, 2018 by APOLLO

[Dunsignalling]

An even worse problem to my mind is the false impression of the historical railway scene created almost universally by the preservation movement. Not only is the balance of traffic wrong, most railways pre-Beeching were predominately freight rather than passenger movers, but they are hopelessly over-signalled - I understand why, of course, modern conceptions of what is necessary for "safety" tend to result in every possible move being signalled (and even the NER wasn't that generous with its signalling). 

 

Another "problem" that tends to get overlooked is that, prior to the near-universal cut back to a five-day working week c1960, most photographs of railways were actually taken on Saturday afternoons, when the traffic working was atypical. Even if the Saturday timetable looked very similar to the Monday-Friday one (so similar, in fact, that the public book timetable for many lines merely had pages headed "weekdays" with just a few trains marked "SX" and "SO"), stock and loco working was often very different.

The GWR is often cited as having (in some locations at least) provided signals for movements that nobody ever seems to have observed taking place and, whilst some "preserved" locations perpetuate the practice, most can't afford to place precious hardware other than where it will actually be useful.

 

Your point about weekend photographers is well made; one reason why the prefix "Rev'd" to the photographer's name always carries the hope of a true weekday scene.

 

John

[Dunsignalling]

OK but - so long as people are aware of the fallibility of human memory, surely a set of recollections is better than nothing?

The problem, in many instances, is not so much false memory as the amalgamation of separate remembered occurrences into something that seems more comprehensive. 

 

That and mixing up the order of multiple events.

 

What we lose with the passing of those who "were there" stems from them being the people most likely to have absorbed what happened (repeatedly) around them in such a way as to develop an instinct as to what is (or looks) right or wrong in writings, pictures or models presented by others.

 

John

Edited January 29, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[jonny777]

My problem is not that old peoples' accounts might not be completely correct; but that we have made no effort to ask them for their memories in the first place. 

[brianusa]

The biggest problem with swearing in any degree is the common usage in films and TV along with any other taboos, copulation and gender differences.  There are other words that could be used to describe these actions and these are heard quite frequently sadly, by adolescents and those even younger.  What one mutters under ones breath in certain circumstances is far less troubling than the common use of offensive swearing to some but evidently not to the swearer.

 

Brian.

[Chamby]

Words change their meaning:-

 

Ask Nigel Farrage about ######

 

African Brown became a colour even though in other languages it is black

 

And what were the LNER thinking about Gay Crusader

 

As per the Perishers ‘the mind boggles’

 

Words do indeed change their meaning.  Gay Crusader was built in 1923 and scrapped in 1963.  At that time, gay used to mean happy and carefree, having an uninhibited lifestyle... it was nothing to do with sexual orientation.  That is what the LNER were thinking of... or more accurately, the owners of the racehorse that the LNER named their locomotive after.   The theme tune to the Flintstones cartoons in the sixties even promised "...we'll have a gay old time!"

 

It wasn't until homosexuality between consenting adults was legalised in 1967 (After the A3's were scrapped) that the word gay was widely taken up by the early LGBT community as an alternative to the plethora of derogatory words previously used in wider society.

 

Its funny how things continue to change though.  My kids came home from school one day using the phrase "well that's just gay..." implying that something was pathetic.  So the meaning of the word had almost come full circle!  Context is everything, it seems.

[Fenman]

Words do indeed change their meaning. Gay Crusader was built in 1923 and scrapped in 1963. At that time, gay used to mean happy and carefree, having an uninhibited lifestyle... it was nothing to do with sexual orientation. That is what the LNER were thinking of... or more accurately, the owners of the racehorse that the LNER named their locomotive after. The theme tune to the Flintstones cartoons in the sixties even promised "...we'll have a gay old time!"

 

It wasn't until homosexuality between consenting adults was legalised in 1967 (After the A3's were scrapped) that the word gay was widely taken up by the early LGBT community as an alternative to the plethora of derogatory words previously used in wider society.

 

Its funny how things continue to change though. My kids came home from school one day using the phrase "well that's just gay..." implying that something was pathetic. So the meaning of the word had almost come full circle! Context is everything, it seems.

For much of its life “gay” was also a euphemistic description of a seedier life, usually associated with ladies of the night. It has never been only an “innocent” expression.

 

Your kids are now using gay as a homophobic term of abuse.

 

These things are often cyclical: when I was at school, ugly terms of abuse included many related to mental health or disability. Authorities responded by changing the official name of the state from words like retarded to words like differently abled or children with special needs. But the term “special” is now a frequent term of abuse in the playground.

 

Paul

[Coryton]

For much of its life “gay” was also a euphemistic description of a seedier life, usually associated with ladies of the night. It has never been only an “innocent” expression.

 

Your kids are now using gay as a homophobic term of abuse.

 

These things are often cyclical: when I was at school, ugly terms of abuse included many related to mental health or disability. Authorities responded by changing the official name of the state from words like retarded to words like differently abled or children with special needs. But the term “special” is now a frequent term of abuse in the playground.

 

Paul

 

In Wales, "Special Educational Needs" has now become "Additional Learning Needs".

 

Don't know about the rest of the UK.

[beast66606]

Can we stick to the point and stop wandering off into avenues where we shouldn't visit on a RAILWAY forum

[corneliuslundie]

Several pages back it was mentioned that railway societies have a role.

The HMRS was recently given a large collection of digital photos by a member, all carefully documented. Very valuable and welcomed by the Society. I am sure that most railway societies would find it easier to store digital images than large libraries. Yes, technology may change and files may have to be transferred to new formats, but at least they can be conserved.

Do not trust the "net". I recently read something about David Davies (contractor, Barry Railways etc) and was not sure it was correct so I used Google. Six versions of the story, five different versions, two of them completely wrong. Even the two Welsh government supported websites did not agree completely.

An area i worry about is county archives. Libraries are not statutory activities for local authorities so as the money disappears it may well be that archives get closed. I heard just today of someone who is fighting a proposal for his local authorities to sell material from its museum.

And private archives are not safe either. I was for some time a trustee of a construction industry archive which collected a great deal of unique material. It was always short of money but we managed. Then I had to resign as a trustee as I went to live abroad. Within a few years the main individual who looked after the archive and did most of the collecting, conserving and cataloguing, became ill. The whole project collapsed, the charity was deregistered and I am afraid that I have not dared to ask what happened to the collections.

Photographs have never been reliable - look how many "official" photos have had the background blanked out. What else has been changed in the darkroom that we cannot detect? About 40 years ago, a colleague wanted to publish a photo of a gathering of past Presidents of the institution we both worked for. One prominent past president had not been able to attend so my colleague cut him out of another photo and added it to the print. Once the photo was printed it was impossible to tell.

Any finally, back to the reliability of historical documents. One problem is that even official documents do not always tell the whole story or tell the story as those writing it wanted it to be told (just as history tends to be written by the winners). I frequently come across situations where it is impossible to tell from original documents, be they text or drawing, what actually happened, how the vehicle was actually built etc.

Jonathan

[brianusa]

 Off topic is sadly a common phenomenon on forums, is easy to get inadvertently sucked into and usually doesn't last long or until the moderator removes offending posts and all is back to normal.

                                  

                               Brian.

[Dunsignalling]

In Wales, "Special Educational Needs" has now become "Additional Learning Needs".

 

Don't know about the rest of the UK.

It's an ever-moving target, though; and I doubt that will ever change.

 

Today's medical / educational / administrative / politically-correct definition is tomorrow's term of abuse, and whatever new one replaces it will become corrupted in turn.

 

Eventually, the earliest term of abuse will sometimes be adopted as a badge of pride, by the persecuted individuals. 

 

John

Edited January 29, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[PatB]

And yet, had the country decided to celebrate the millennium with some kind of national encyclopaedia of 20th century life, as told by as many folk as could be interviewed; maybe one (or more) of the signalmen on that line would have been able to give that information themselves without any problem?

 

(Forgive my persistence, but it is a bugbear of mine that each year hundreds of thousands of folk pass away in the UK and the vast majority take with them all manner of facts and recollections. Who knows how useful these snippets might have been for future generations?). 

 

I don't disagree that the loss of unrecorded  first-hand knowledge of all sorts of things is deeply saddening. I'd love to see some practical means of recording all of it, and not just those bits relating to railways. Modern technology and (my impression only) an increased awareness and interest in the past is bringing this closer though.

 

However, 'twas ever thus and the world continues to turn. Historians still seem to manage and much information remains for those prepared to dig for it. I don't think the net effect on the world of model railways will prove any more negative now and in the future than it did when the last person to clearly remember the pre-WW1 era died.

 

Incidentally, it just occurred to me this morning (though I'm sure the point has been made by others previously) that railway modelling as a historical  pursuit only really became mainstream post-WW2. Prior to that, the majority of layouts (that were recorded anyway ) depicted the contemporary scene. Indeed, although the late 1940s saw the rise of the GWR branch terminus, the majority of r-t-r, such as it was, still depicted motive power and rolling stock in then-current liveries. It seems to have only been after the end of steam in 1968 that the modelling clock finally stopped for a while.

[FPH 603]

I don't disagree that the loss of unrecorded  first-hand knowledge of all sorts of things is deeply saddening. I'd love to see some practical means of recording all of it, and not just those bits relating to railways. Modern technology and (my impression only) an increased awareness and interest in the past is bringing this closer though.

 

However, 'twas ever thus and the world continues to turn. Historians still seem to manage and much information remains for those prepared to dig for it. I don't think the net effect on the world of model railways will prove any more negative now and in the future than it did when the last person to clearly remember the pre-WW1 era died.

 

Incidentally, it just occurred to me this morning (though I'm sure the point has been made by others previously) that railway modelling as a historical  pursuit only really became mainstream post-WW2. Prior to that, the majority of layouts (that were recorded anyway ) depicted the contemporary scene. Indeed, although the late 1940s saw the rise of the GWR branch terminus, the majority of r-t-r, such as it was, still depicted motive power and rolling stock in then-current liveries. It seems to have only been after the end of steam in 1968 that the modelling clock finally stopped for a while.

See that's the thing. We get all the info we can while we can, to benefit future generations and also to help us now. A lot of these things nowadays can be found just by looking on the internet, but at the same time there are things that only people with first hand experience working on the railways know. Even then you get can find a lot of railway books written by people with that experience, and that's where I find a lot of my information. If what I'm looking for isn't in there, I turn to RMweb, and I ask a lot of questions on here and a lot of the time I get people replying that actually HAVE first hand experience, then there's others who's family members had had that experience, and then there's those like me who have NO experience what so ever, and are simply finding their way around things they may run into. There's also the layouts too. Some layouts were actually made to depict what was happening around the owner at what was then the modern era 50 years ago. I can't remember back that far because I wasn't born in that era, and where I live the railway itself hasn't changed that much since when I was younger. In fact it was really the colour scheming of the trains that changed, and back then there was more older style infrastructure, whereas now the railway has only just started making a few changes, such as the withdrawal of old stock and the rebuilding and upgrading of station infrastructure. And I don't even model the railway near where I live! 

[Mark Saunders]

On a whole Railways have done Evolution rather than Revolution and has been continually changing!

 

Mark Saunders 

[Junctionmad]

I see no cause for concern, as we were increasingly encompass the digital age , virtually everyone's whole life is being recorded, so the 21th century is likely to be recorded to a detail never seen before.

 

Future modellers will have access to a treasure of images , sound , and text like never before

[corneliuslundie]

Here in mid Wales, Brian Poole been doing a lot to record oral history by interviewing people and taking down their responses. a notable result was pubication of the book on "Caersws, a railway village". Brian has over time interviewed many of those who worked there, especially in the bridge department which was based there, their families etc. Some of the results have gone into the local history society journal but most of railway interest has gone into that book or Brian's articles in Welsh Railways archive.

Jonathan

[Coryton]

I see no cause for concern, as we were increasingly encompass the digital age , virtually everyone's whole life is being recorded, so the 21th century is likely to be recorded to a detail never seen before.

 

Future modellers will have access to a treasure of images , sound , and text like never before

 

Absolutely.

 

Just think how much information there is on contemporary workings on RMweb. And photographs.

[coachmann]

I never knew the station I am modelling even though I was in my twenties when it closed, so I am in the same position as anyone who wasn't born in the BR steam-era. I have had to copy what is useful from today's heritage station and then do further research in order to back-engineer everything to how it looked in the mid 1950's. As a small example: Today's Down waiting shelter is one row of bricks lower than the original building! Research and the purchase of relevant books is often more absorbing than building a layout because we learn things about the wider area and get a feel for the location and life as it was at the time.

Edited January 29, 2018 by coachmann

[PatB]

I never knew the station I am modelling even though I was in my twenties when it closed, so I am in the same position as anyone who wasn't born in the BR steam-era. I have had to copy what is useful from today's heritage station and then do further research in order to back-engineer everything to how it looked in the mid 1950's. As a small example: Today's Down waiting shelter is one row of bricks lower than the original building! Research and the purchase of relevant books is often more absorbing than building a layout because we learn things about the wider area and get a feel for the location and life as it was at the time.

 

The down waiting shelter case is an interesting one, which, I think, illustrates a couple of points. Firstly, the preservation society didn't (for whatever reason) get the building quite right, assuming their intent was to create a replica of course. Should have consulted a photograph . Second, that sort of accurate architectural detail is best found from primary sources (photos, maybe the railway's original drawings) which will exist regardless of whether anyone remembers the building or not.

 

I don't deny that oral history is important, but there is much which can still be done (and often done better) by other means.

[kevinlms]

I see no cause for concern, as we were increasingly encompass the digital age , virtually everyone's whole life is being recorded, so the 21th century is likely to be recorded to a detail never seen before.

 

Future modellers will have access to a treasure of images , sound , and text like never before

But will the copyright issue be solved? A lot of content is protected by copyright and not all publishers are happy to put out for free. An example has already been posted, where the entire collection of Railway Magazine is available digitally, but only accessible to current subscribers.

[Dunsignalling]

But will the copyright issue be solved? A lot of content is protected by copyright and not all publishers are happy to put out for free. An example has already been posted, where the entire collection of Railway Magazine is available digitally, but only accessible to current subscribers.

Why should they?

 

Publishers are businesses and, as such, have a responsibility to their shareholders to make whatever commercial gain they can from their assets.

 

In any event, digitising well over a century's worth of Railway Magazine back issues will have incurred significant costs which someone has to pay for.

 

John

Edited January 29, 2018 by Dunsignalling