Quarterly magazine review

Well, its that time of the quarter again when both local magazines arrive within a couple of days of each other (maybe if they were staggered it would be better, but who would blink first?)

First up on my doorstep (or rather the book shop display) is the Railfan. This months features are;

-The variations on the Kiwirail colour scheme. Lots of pictures of modern era trains. Not my thing, but still very well done (and Drew gets a picture on the back cover).

-Dq's banking out of Picton and over the Dashwood pass. Another Andrew Gorrie photo essay. I'm still not sure about these but they are oddly compelling, and do tell a good story.

-An update on the Auckland suburban area upgrades. I'm starting to think that This would make avery good layout idea. The track layout at Newmarket is very modelable, and the trains look interesting. Plus I think they still have freight movements through there as well.

-Noted historical photographer J.A.T Terry presents an album of his favorite photos. These include the Wd and R that ran on the Timaru harbour board line that I believe that my grandfather may have drove (we still have his steam tickets somewhere).

-Pt 2 of the NZR bogie carriages. This series is a great idea, and now that we have vans out of the way..

Then we look at the Journal;

-A large article on Glenn Anthonys Gn15 gold mining layout (plus both covers).

-An article from Les Downey on building a UG horsebox from the old Branchlines G etch (plus an article on the prototype). I have a vague memory of a similar article in the journal in the early 1990's?

-Peter Ross ongoing saga of how to make smooth running steam engines. I should really pay more attention to this but Iain Rice sums it up very nicely in his book on locomotive chassis construction, and I think a bit more concisely to.

-Plan and potted history of Auckland D class cars. These were locally built.
-Inagahua Junction from 1914 to 1940 (with a second part to come).

-A first part of an article on the history of NZ120. The 'to be continued' part means that the remainder of the article will be published at a later date. If I had known it was going to be spit into 2-3 parts I would have written it completely differently. the photos don't seem to have come out as well as they looked on the computer (maybe its time for Mr Bond to complete his magnus opus on photographing models so that we can get better at it) I also note that there has been no mention yet of the re-availability of the Trackgang kits.

-Area group reports (grrrrr)

As an interesting aside it was pointed out to me yesterday that the most modern item that appears in the journal is my pair of Dc's from the mid 1980's. For the modern image modeler there is a bit of a drought of material.

So, for this reviewer, the Railfan has some bits of interest(lots if you are a modern image fiend), but once again the Journal seems to miss the mark for me. The last 5 issues have had large layout spreads (~8 pages) of layouts that while very well made and detailed, tend to have limited appeal to most New Zealand modelers. I'm not saying that they should not be there, just that maybe not quite so much of them should be there.

I have heard rumors that some alterations to the Guilds information communication and publishing strategy will be rolled out/discussed at the Convention this weekend. it will be interesting to see what happens.