Scaleforum 2022 - in images

[martin goodall]

Having been responsible for 13 articles in the Bodmin series in MRC in the early 1980s (six on research and seven on signalling), I have to plead guilty to irritating all those readers of the magazine who didn't want to read repeatedly about some obscure GWR branchline in Cornwall.

I was in the habit of jokingly referring to the series (in private) as "Bodminbore" (but I didn't mean it). I still think the contents of those articles are a useful compilation explaining the practical application of various model-making techniques and methods, and I still consult Mike Sargent's articles in that series on point rodding, and Ray Hammond's account of scratch-building the signals (among others).

My 6-part article on Research that introduced the series is the one part of the saga that has not stood the test of time. Many of the archives and resources we used in researching the Bodmin Branch are no longer available or are now in different hands, and access to them may no longer be so readily available as it was back in the late 1970s. So if we ever reprint the series in book form (which we have occasionally thought about), the section on Research will either have to be omitted or completely re-written.

The real irony is that, despite the fact that Bodmin made its first exhibition appearance as a fully finished and fully operational layout at the MRC Easter show in 1980, and has been on the exhibition circuit ever since, it was not until 40 years later that an illustrated article on the layout as a whole appeared in the model press – in the April 2020 issue of BRM.

[Tim V]

A reprint of all the articles on Bodmin (and how about Heckmondwyke)?

What a cracking good idea, those Bodmin articles were useful, and would still be useful today. Maybe a society book?

As for if it's possible? Copyright might be vested in the MRC (defunct) if you were paid for the articles?

[Noel]

The magazine is defunct, but the publishers, Ian Allan, are not, so they will presumably still hold the copyright of the magazine. I don't think payment for the articles is relevant - the S4News, for example, states that articles remain the copyright of the Society [as publishers] and the individual writers, which is what I would expect. The only other likely possibility, I think, is that the conditions of the contract assigned copyright to Ian Allan only.

[Tim V]

Payment can be relevant for a commercial magazine, it isn't relevant for S4 News because no payment is made.

[bécasse]

The Intellectual Property Rights would have remained vested in the original authors, even with payment, the Ian Allan Group would only have acquired first reproduction rights (which they obviously took advantage of, hence the Model Railway Constructor series of articles).

[grovenor-2685]

A reprint of all the articles on Bodmin (and how about Heckmondwyke)?

What a cracking good idea, those Bodmin articles were useful, and would still be useful today. Maybe a society book?

As for if it's possible? Copyright might be vested in the MRC (defunct) if you were paid for the articles?

When Jim Summers was Society Publications Officer we considered this and I scanned and OCR'd it. All the text was prepared for proof and sent to Jim but the sticking point was publication quality illustrations. We were not able to find anyone with the originals and scans from the magazine are not so good. Anyone wants to progress it I still have copies of everything done. I see my files are all dated 2007.
This was intended as the cover.

Bodmin%20journal%20lo-1.pdf

[martin goodall]

I can assure you that the copyright in these and other articles in MRC is vested in the authors, not Ian Allan (or whatever they or their successors are called nowadays) . Copyright is never owned by the publisher unless it is expressly assigned to them (which it certainly was not in this case - trust me, I'm a lawyer!)

The position may well have been different in relation to books published by Ian Allan and Percival Marshall/MAP, where the publishing contract may indeed have included an express assignment of the copyright, or an exclusive licence to the publisher for the whole of the copyright period (life of the author + 70 years). As a published author I made sure that the copyright licence in respect of my books was kept to a much shorter period, but I am lucky to have had an excellent working relationship with my publisher right form the word 'go'.

[Philip Hall]

When Tim and I wanted to arrange for the republication of Walter Ward -Platt's 'Keeping on the Rails...' article from a 1965 Railway Modeller I simply got in touch with Steve Flint and asked. He and Peco were quite amenable and just requested the origins were noted in print.

These things are so old now that I really don't think it's of great concern, except for common courtesy of course. I have always regarded the copyright of my published photos as my own, although when photos have been commissioned by MRJ I always like to ask Paul Karau if he's happy for me to use them elsewhere. Which invariably he is. I don't have to do this but it's nice to do so. I appreciate this might well not be what is correct in copyright law but the arrangement sits well with me.

There was an instance a long time ago where some of my photos were used without asking me first in another magazine so I made my views known but it never really got anywhere. To be honest it wasn't worth bothering about, they knew what I felt (and I hope, so did the people who had supplied the photos to the magazine) so that's where I left it.

Philip

[Highpeak]

I came across one or two issues of the Constructor at a used bookstore in Adelaide when I was on a long project down under, and I remember thinking that the modelling was of very high quality but also that much of it might be achieved by an average modeller who wanted to improve and was willing to try out some of the techniques illustrated. I think the articles I was able to read dealt with point rodding or some track-related topic. At any rate, what I read opened my eyes a bit and perhaps persuaded me that this Scalefour business was worth a closer look.

I like Tim's idea of publishing the work, I have referred to the St. Merryn book many times and Bodmin might be a good companion as a more historic portrait of building a layout.

[Terry Bendall]

The idea of re-printing the Bodmin aticles in book form is a good one if we can sort out any copywrite matters - which from Martin's comments we should be able to do, Those who look at the agenda for committee meetings will have seen that publications is due to come up at the meeting this week so I am sure that this idea can be discussed then.

Whilst the sources of the orginal research may no longer be easily available, the principles of research are the same so those articles will still have some relevance. There may even be a case for the provision of new material directinmg the reader to sources that are now available, Similarly articles on construction might include additional material outlinuing more moden methods of achieving the same results.

The only slight problem is that previous Society publications have tended to be very slow sellers. Whilst the productuon costs of these have been covered we still have a lot of the Alex Jackson book, the St Merrun book and the CD on bridge construction in stock

Terry Bendall

[Tim V]

When Jim Summers was Society Publications Officer we considered this and I scanned and OCR'd it. All the text was prepared for proof and sent to Jim but the sticking point was publication quality illustrations. We were not able to find anyone with the originals and scans from the magazine are not so good.

The way around that is to use new photographs to replace those in the original magazines. I remember the article on point rodding was useful, but I have photos that could mostly replace the originals for example.

[martin goodall]

Which photos did you have in mind?

New photos could be taken of the layout and details, etc.

Prototype photos can probably be retrieved from original sources. Check the attributions where shown.

[grovenor-2685]

Martin,
I'm pretty sure you were one of those I consulted back in 2007 when no-one could come up with any of the originals. I have all the scans so can list out what is needed to add to the text.
Well, now I have had a search I only seem to have scans for 8 of the 33 chapters! The rest have apparently gone missing. The ones I do have there are actually two versions, the second of which has quite reasonable quality so for those few chapters I could add the illustrations to the proof draft. For the rest I can't even make a list as I no longer have the magazines either.

[martin goodall]

Actually, I don't recall having been asked about this in 2007.

I do have all the original magazines, and Tony Wilkins probably also has some original material, including track plan, etc. I'll take a look at them, and remind myself of the photos and drawings that were used. You might also ask Mike Peascod if he still has original copies of the official GWR photos we used.

If I have a rummage, I may still have some of the original materials from my research for the layout, and copies of some of the scale drawings that were produced. I also have a note somewhere as to who did what in the construction of the layout.

Other members of the NLG, such as Les Williamson may also have some materials which were used to produce various aspects of the layout or the subsequent articles. I think Tony Sheffield may also have some material, used when he authored the BRM article a couple of years ago.

Between us, I am sure we could re-assemble quite a lot of the original research and design materials.

[Tim V]

How about the authors who are no longer with us? Did the late John Hayes (who wrote some of the Heckmondwyke articles) and Mike Sargent write any of the Bodmin articles? They can't give their permission.

[Tony Wilkins]

How about the authors who are no longer with us? Did the late John Hayes (who wrote some of the Heckmondwyke articles) and Mike Sargent write any of the Bodmin articles? They can't give their permission.

John Hayes did most of the buildings for both layouts, Mike Sargent did all the electrics and not forgetting Ray Hammond who did the signals. However we would probably be covered as one of the things that was done when the idea of publishing the articles as a book was first mooted was to circulate copies to each contributor for amendments the authors felt they would like to make and I have most of these updates. So in a sense they have already given permission.
I also have a copy of the scanned files and will check to see how many of the articles they cover.
The pictures are the biggest problem. We are missing many of those used to illustrate the original articles and I don't know if they were all returned to us. Some of what was returned was in a poor state having been cut up for the cut and paste methods then used. Some of the pictures used on the display board were damaged when the garage where the layout was stored got flooded. I scanned many of the remaining pictures and used several of them to illustrate Bodmin on a rolling display on a digital picture frame. The track pictures were from the Ian Allen library and were mostly of Flat Bottomed track, which was totally inappropriate to the article. The track construction templates were hand drawn from data obtained from BR Plymouth, but I don't think I have any of that now, so it will be one big headache to recreate the missing pieces of the jigsaw.
As Martin has already commented, the research section is now totally out of date. I have found the same during my research into Brimsdown as some of the sources I used are no longer available and new ones appear.
Regards
Tony.

[Tim V]

Thanks Tony, this gives food for thought.

[grovenor-2685]

as one of the things that was done when the idea of publishing the articles as a book was first mooted was to circulate copies to each contributor for amendments the authors felt they would like to make and I have most of these updates.

Seems like you were doing this before or after my efforts as the text I scanned and OCRd is strictly that from the magazines. There is the beginnings of a postscript aimed at updating the source references but really only got as far as identifying what was needed, and another 15 years have gone by since so it would likely be out of date now had it been finished.

[Tony Wilkins]

as one of the things that was done when the idea of publishing the articles as a book was first mooted was to circulate copies to each contributor for amendments the authors felt they would like to make and I have most of these updates.

Seems like you were doing this before or after my efforts as the text I scanned and OCRd is strictly that from the magazines. There is the beginnings of a postscript aimed at updating the source references but really only got as far as identifying what was needed, and another 15 years have gone by since so it would likely be out of date now had it been finished.

Hi Keith.
The copies I had and circulated were literally that. John Hayes worked in the print industry and used the facilities to photocopy the articles plus a few spares. It was one of those spare paper copies that was sent back to the authors for comments / corrections etc.
As far as I know I do still have the original Bodmin articles as published.
Tony.

[martin goodall]

I remember receiving copies of the articles from Tony, but had no time to do anything about it at the time. However, I don't think we were contacted by or on behalf of the Society. (Perhaps we should have been.)

My recent email, which I asked should be forwarded to Tony Wilkins and others, set out in some detail what resources I still have and some idea of sourcing other copies.

I confess to being somewhat amused by the amateur lawyers worrying on about copyright in the text of the articles. It really is not a problem.

I have suggested (in the email) how the question of photos might be tackled, although we probably have enough material to substitute in place of any old photos that would be difficult or too expensive to replace. Drawings are not a problem.

I have had a quick glance at the early draft proof circulated by Keith Norgrove, from which it is obvious that the limitations of OCR will make it necessary to do some careful proof reading, not to mention the desire of some of the original authors to amend or correct the original text.

I think the surviving authors may like to select a suitable editor, rather than leaving this project to the tender mercies of the Society, at least until we get somewhat nearer the production stage. I have a name in mind (a member of the NLG), but I won't mention the person in question until they have been consulted.

[Ian@Exton]

While it would be good to see the Bodmin story again (and I'm not sure I saw all the articles first time round) it is not just the research which might be outdated but also some of the techniques and components used.

Why not republish electronically, rather than in physical book form? It could be released as a series of modules, rather than having to wait until the whole book is ready.

Ian

[Re6/6]

Excellent idea Ian!

[davebradwell]

I've been thinking along these lines, too. A book tends to be, or should be, authoritative and it would be inappropriate for these old articles to be considered a set of instructions today. They're a very useful reference source and a part of history. Mix with that the uncertain sales and cost and amount of work involved then downloads of the original articles would be a safer bet and it's clear exactly what they are. Perhaps a postscript might be added for any new information.

DaveB

[Tony Wilkins]

I remember receiving copies of the articles from Tony, but had no time to do anything about it at the time. However, I don't think we were contacted by or on behalf of the Society.

As far as I recall, the Bodmin book idea originated from within the NLG.
Tony.

[petermeyer]

Low volume publications these days are printed digitally. You could make a digital book available that could also be printed on demand.

“Print on demand is a printing technology and business process in which book copies are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. Wikipedia”