> You bring up an interesting point. For those of us weened on > guys like Morgan > and Ingles, there seemed to be a greater unification of > knowledge in the > railfan press. Actually, the difference was that it didn't > seem like the > railfan press, it seemed like good, solid press. > > What you elude to is really just laziness, and in this age of > empowered > railfan journalism, what you get all too often is one > shutterbug's view, > rather than a researched approach more in line with legit > media. Trains still > does it well, but evenn they do they "this is the blue engine > I saw on this > neat line" thing too often. [snip] > That's how things like Baby Trainmaster get watered down. Well, I agree in principle what Rob states, but I don't think it applies to the "Baby Trainmaster" argument. Remember, this is an "unofficial" classification for something. It's not quite the same as someone calling a GP7 an "SD7" - there is a known, authoritative definition for what a "GP7" is. There is NO formal definition of what a "Baby Trainmaster" is. The same argument partially applies to the railfan-applied term "Phase." I have a friend who works in the railroad locomotive industry who always laughs when I saw "U25B Phase III" or "GP35 Phase IIa" - he says it's all silly stuff made up by railfans, and they're not officially recognized by the railroads. Today's press, though, I will admit, is fairly pompous. There does seem to be a certain sense of "snobbery" amongst some of the magazines (one in particular), and I cannot imagine growing up as a child interested in trains with today's periodicals. The writings of Dave Morgan (the "emotional side") and Dave Ingles (the "logical side") were inspirational to this youngster growing up (not to mention I learned a helluva lot of new vocabulary words - how many other 10-year-olds would know what "requiem" meant? I went and looked that one up! - Paul ------------------------------------------------------------ Visit the erielack photopage at http://el-list.railfan.net ------------------------------
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