Erik Blasko wrote: ''If you don't like the article, write your own article! Show us how it should be done. That would be more constructive than criticizing the work of others.''
Fine and dandy, a fair a criticism as can be seen. For the record, I do write my own articles (if they can be called such) and I'm hoping to make them better. While I don't know why some articles appear as they do, I do have some ideas about what can be done to make them better. Pair an author and a photographer together. Great photographers aren't necessarily great writers, and many who can write can't take a Polaroid without having their thumb in front of the lens. Of course, editors who read this will no doubt pass out with the idea of how much this would cost. Not necessarily so. Historical societies and the ranks of veterans are filled with people who are more than happy to be paid in terms of seeing the subject treated properly. Pair a photographer with a veteran or historical society member. At the very least, the information that accompanies the photography will be better. Vets can tell you when so and so put Old No. 9 on the ground at the very same spot, historical society members can tell you there was first a siding here in 1909. Most lines have something printed about them. An interesting resource might not be info from Great Northern Pacific's Marias Pass Guide, but Malone and Roeder's Montana, A History of Two Centuries. Did you know the Northern Pacific once ran a vigilante train through eastern Montana and North Dakota, stopping at every little station along the way to lynch a few rustlers and highwaymen? Finally, it would be nice if we could all get together about what these Let's Go Railfannin' articles should include. My own historical society's publication has no set format for what a locomotive article should include--a GP9 article might tell you fuel capacity, weight, and cost, where a GP18 article might omit a few of those and add some others. It would be nice to see articles which are meant to get fans and their cameras into a given area include such basics as a road and rail map to better locations, line up and times for an average day, and frequencies. Why forget the Five W's at this point? For your consideration JP -- Tell Tale News | http://pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/telltale.html Northern Pacific | http://pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/np.html Historical Assoc. | http://www.employees.org/~davison/nprha/nprha.html --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects
