Comment time

I've been following a thread on the NZ railchat group that has developed in the last couple of days from an initial bomb throwing thread by a man unhappy that the journal arrives irregularly, and that you seem to have to know people to get things done (oh, and on 4 1/2 hrs sleep a night and 14 hour work days. I'd be seriously considering changing careers at that point). It slowly developed to the suggestion that people should write a potted history of their railway modeling so that beginners can see how 'master' modelers of today got started. while I applaud their ideas, keenness and drive, I fear that they will run hard up against the brick wall which is print media. Just what am I talking about? lets say I was to write today and article on my modeling history and assemble some scanned pictures of old models, and posted it off to the features editor tomorrow. The process would then go; pictures not hi res enough and need to be rescanned making the size about a gazillion megabytes. The article would come back with editors 'alterations' to bring the article more in line with the rest of the content and losing all its individuality. (As an aside here, I've just re-read one of my series on NZ120 history articles that was modified and that at the time I couldn't be bothered arguing with alterations to. there are several bits that, if I had written them in my PhD thesis, would have been liberally doused in the markers red ink).

OK, assuming that your article is accepted for publication next week, it might surface in the September addition of the Journal, if you are lucky. That's nearly 6 months time lag. meanwhile everyone has forgotten this and moved onto the next big idea.

I think that the Guild missed a golden opportunity with its new website to add a forum area for people to talk about their modeling. The current website is more of a version 1.2 rather than a version 2.0 that it could have been given a bit more thought. Why they didn't take that extra step, given that a subset of NZR modelers managed to, is completely beyond me.