Volume 48 Number 9 - June 2021

[Malcolm]

Mick.
Thank you for clarifying the situation with regard to the Craig and Mertonford.  If I may however correct your good self, the Society keeps three C&MR items safe in the Heritage Collection - England loco 'Angus', restored diesel 'Joan' and one of the Moko diecast goods wagons.

Actually I had clocked the error in the News and had intended dropping the Editor an email asking for a correction to be published but had duly forgotten to do so!!!  So thanks for the reminder to get the correction off to Stuart!  What surprises me is that the Chairman of the Edinburgh & Lothians MRC (Society member) has not been bending my ear about it!   

Malcolm

[MickT]

Thanks Malcolm, I had overlooked Joan.

In fact, I wasn't aware that she was in the Heritage Collection, I knew about Rod locating her in poor condition and restoring her, but didn't know he'd put her in the Collection until I saw a photo recently amongst the few items that have managed to be posted on the society website - with a rather unusual text attached, as if it is unknown who restored her!

Mick

[Stuart Taylor]

I can't quote everyone but the comments and feedback are all interesting. They are appreciated.

Moving the society bits and pieces to the inside front cover made sense. Due to the variety of the Branchlines content that Chris received he had to trade off column width and font size to fit it in and all at the last minute. We have more groups now so it made sense to enlarge the space but I have been in touch with the leaders to manage the word count so it requires less editing. I've also brought the deadline forward so it isn't such a rush.

Regarding the comment that the inside cover looks a little messy, I am inclined to agree and I am not completely happy with the layout of the page but a collection of messy bits is what it is. I intend to come back to that page and give it some attention when I have some time.

In the meantime I have the AGM issue to finish off which is, of course, text heavy...

[JulienW]

Apologies for the thread drift Stuart...

[puts on heritage officer hat and adjusts it to rakish angle]

Thanks Malcolm, I had overlooked Joan.

In fact, I wasn't aware that she was in the Heritage Collection, I knew about Rod locating her in poor condition and restoring her, but didn't know he'd put her in the Collection until I saw a photo recently amongst the few items that have managed to be posted on the society website - with a rather unusual text attached, as if it is unknown who restored her!

Mick

You know much more than me about Joan Mick, but that's not difficult under the circumstances!

When I received the collection in 2019 other than the list I had created whilst it was under my care prior to my handing it back in 2008/9 (when I ceased to be Secretary) and your own records (when you photographed the collection - 2009/10?) I had no documentation, so nothing covering a 10 year period with respect to what Rod had added too (or removed from) the collection, or what (if any) restoration / repair / rebuilding work may or may not have been carried out, either by himself or others.

Quite a black hole!

From my own research (essentially reading PDH's book) I discovered that Joan had been withdrawn from service and broken up, yet here she was back in one piece in the collection with no record of when she arrived or what condition she was in when she came into the collection. At the time I wrote the caption I was fairly certain that she had been restored (rather heavily as it turns out from subsequent e-mail correspondence with Malcolm) but had no idea if the work had been done before or after acquisition and who might have done this, and the caption I wrote for the photograph reflects what i knew at the time.

Thanks to Malcolm some of those gaps have now been filled in and I have a better idea who did what and when with respect to Joan (and Angus).  At some point I'll ask Andrew to update the text with a new caption but there are a list of other jobs (like redecorating my workshop / the spare bedroom to get rid of the water damage from a now repaired roof leak) to get through first.

If you'd like to discuss things further then I can be contacted via heritage@009society.com

[removes heritage officer hat as it keeps slipping over my eyes]

Again, apologies for the thread drift Stuart.

[MickT]

Thanks for the update Julien. Yes, from what you say there is indeed a black hole but I'm sure that can be resolved if we get together at some stage and compare what we mutually know and what documentation exists etc.

I'll be in touch via other means and we can give Stuart his thread back!

Mick

[Hobby]

Aw shucks! I was enjoying the discussion!!

Can I suggest that rather than go private (!) you just set up another thread? That way anyone else with info can also chip in!

[Alan Feldon]

For those of us receiving the digital version one column is by far and away best .

[Ian McAulay]

For those of us receiving the digital version one column is by far and away best .

I can understand Alan's point. I actually get the paper copy, but often read back-numbers from the archive on the Society website.

I agree that scrolling down one column then back up to read the next column is a nuisance. However for me as a dyslexic reader, keeping my eye on the line as I read across a long line of text is just as difficult on screen as it is on a printed page. I can make it easier by adjusting the page to put the line I'm reading near the top or bottom of the window, but then I have to scroll for almost every line of text.

2 or 3 columns is better for me. Also, as Mick suggested, unequal columns with the wider one for mixed pictures and text is quite a good compromise (and one I've used quite often myself for documents with a lot of embedded graphics).

A small thought on point size. I personally try to avoid sacrificing text size as far as possible. If I hit space problems, I often find that tweaking the inter-character and inter-line spacing a little, yields quite a lot of extra room when needed. (Conversely, it's also quite a good way of surreptitiously padding out text to fill a larger space.) Of course, if you overdo it, the text becomes totally unreadable by anyone!

All that said, I fully accept that I can't force the world to fit my particular preferences!

Ian

[Mac Strong]

Another vote for two columns. 

Mac

[Stuart Taylor]

A small thought on point size. I personally try to avoid sacrificing text size as far as possible. If I hit space problems, I often find that tweaking the inter-character and inter-line spacing a little, yields quite a lot of extra room when needed. (Conversely, it's also quite a good way of surreptitiously padding out text to fill a larger space.) Of course, if you overdo it, the text becomes totally unreadable by anyone!

I already fiddle the inter paragraph spacing to help with fitting. I haven't yet experimented with inter character spacing. My preference is not to do that I struggle with the letters too close together as well.

[Stuart Taylor]

Some more questions.

One of the aspects of the current layout that niggles is the way that words get split and hyphenated at the end of a line. I finally worked out to turn that off last night but it's too late to change the whole issue which has to be finished this weekend and still has a blank 1.5 pages. Do others find the hyphenation annoying?

Lastly, when scanning through Railway Modeller I saw that on their 2 and 3 column formats they use left justification which gives a ragged right hand side to the column. Personally, I'm not sure I like it but I wondered if those who struggle with pages of text find it any easier to read. I'm one of those people who like symmetry. Cars are meant to have two fog lamps and two reversing lamps  ;D

[Graeme Dunbar]

I think there must be some 'compositors rule' on when to use right justification, or it could just be house style. I think where the right justification can be made up of relatively subtle word spacings it looks fine, but in newspapers which have very narrow columns it looks odd when they pad out with large spacing between letters of a word. I imagine space between columns has an effect too. I guess the narrower the gap the more important right justification becomes.

I think hyphenating of words is acceptable when it happens occasionally and at a sensible break between syllables in a word but in some documents it looks as if any excuse has been used to insert them.

[Peter Boulter]

I'm another person who likes symmetry and believes that cars should have two reversing lights and two fog lights.
I also prefer fully justified text and no hyphenation, I tend to read hyphenated words as two separate words which I find can be confusing especially if the hyphenation produces something that looks like two actual words resulting in a sentence that doesn't make sense.

An example: If the word "reversing" gets hyphenated it could come out as "rever" and "sing" which I'd probably read as "river sing"

[Tom Haythornthwaite]

Columns:  I prefer two, but there should always be one written by the chairman...
Pictures:  as big as possible provided they come with enough pixels.  A recent editor tolerated visible pixilation.
Justification:  left, left, and only ever left.  (I think this is the style feature most subject to fashion, but not all fashion is good.)
If in doubt, don't week or pout, never hesitate - just hyphenate.

[MickT]

Hi Stuart,

In response to your latest couple of questions:

I don't like the over-use of full justification as very often that results in individual words  s  t  r  e  t  c  h  e  d   out within the line in order to keep the overall paragraph "neat" on both sides. By coincidence I have just received my latest copy of NG World which is directly to hand so can act as a comparator if you like. Andrew Charman consistently uses a 3 column layout (which has already been discussed and I think most are in favour as 2 columns for the News as a usual default) and, relevant to this question, consistent use of left justification with a resultant "ragged" right margin. I think this looks absolutely fine and as someone with ageing eyesight as well as mild dyslexia, I have no problem at all in reading the small size of the text in this format. So, for me I vote very strongly for left justification only.

As to end of line hyphenating words, then I have speed-read through the whole NGW issue and could not find a single one, so maybe this is something that can be totally avoided if you have the time and need to do this, with left justification. If the formatting decides to split a word in this way, using left justification then it can easily be changed by doing a carriage return (ie pressing "enter" for those who can't remember "proper" typing!) and putting the offending word on the next line. Accepted that this may make the typesetting a longer task, but it does give a neater result. I personally have no objection to hyphenating a long word if it is appropriate to do so, ie it might leave a very long space at the end of a line if the last word on the line turns out to be a very long one, as long as the body text is not littered with hyphens at the end of every 2 or 3 lines!

Finally - in response to Tom Haythornthwaite's comment regarding "a recent editer tolerated visible pixelation". I have had difficulty identifying anything "recent" in this context. 20 years ago, when 1st generation digital photography was just finding its feet this was indeed quite common and many of my own submitted photos were published heavily pixellated because that was the best that could be achieved with a heavily compressed jpg image that was only 640 x 480 at the best of times. I don't regard 15 to 20 years ago as "recent" however so can you please be more specific as I can't find anything at present that has been published by Chris, Tom & Stephen or Mark Howe that "tolerates visible pixelation" and I'm curious to find the evidence, particularly if it is (probably is...) one of my own "roving reporter" submissions.

Mick