Pages 64 - 65 is a 2-page spread of a double-headed South African Railways train, with the trailing locomotive identified as “articulated 4-8-2+2-8-4 No. 4122”. If that wheel arrangement isn’t enough of a clue, it takes only a glance at it to see that it’s no ‘ordinary’ articulated - it’s a Beyer-Garratt (“Garratt”), running backwards, no less.
Unfortunately, there are lots of English mistakes in Trains, also. I notice errors in grammar, usage and punctuation regularly. And it seems that at times editing results in confusing sentences, or articles with incomplete information.
I find the quality of writing and editing higher in Classic Trains than in Trains.
Back to “Zipper” in October 2017: Peoria Rocket at Bureau pictures is clearly Westbound from position of shadows and location of the station, not eastbound according to the caption. The caption editor probably thought eastbound because the westbound came through in the evening, but there was plenty of light early summer.
Ah, if Miss Rosemary Entringer had married and given birth to a daughter who had the same qualifications as her mother–and now had the same position as her mother had!
The Kalmbach staff must be having a good laugh about this considering even just the spelling that goes on in the Forums, let alone the rest of it. Glass houses, stones and black kettles come to mind.
Pardon the minor “correction” - I couldn’t resist.
Not to diss Kalmbach - their editing is usually second to none, but I suspect the upcoming generation of journalists is only marginally familiar with actually typing on a keyboard, and would be completely lost on a manual typewriter.
“Whadya mean it doesn’t automatically word wrap, spel czech, and I have to push that lever over to go to the next line?”
I correct my spelling errors when I see them. If Kalmbach has a chuckle over my typos, more power to them. When you are 88 your eyesight might not be up to avoiding typos yourself.
I was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, an unpaid position, where I did edit many professional papers. At that time my eyesight was a lot better.
But Kalmbach’s photo editor is paid to do his job, and I hope the criticism on this thread prompts him to check facts a better and explore mutliple honest sources of information better.
I do still miss my first ‘real’ typewriter, which was an Olivetti ET221 (it’s Darth Vader’s typewriter) precisely because it had a one-line display allowing you to correct typing mistakes, and automatically returned and started printing a justified (straight right margin) line in proportional space without needing any kind of hard carriage return or line feed action from me while I was continuing to type at speed with my fingers on the keys.
And I could read the display in the dark, too, as it was done with one of those green fluorescent plasma displays…
Of course any modern computer is infinitely preferable to a typewriter of nearly any sort – I am still impressed looking at the first one I used regularly, Word 4 for the Macintosh, and that is still a perfectly functional word-processing program for a great many needs, nearly 35 years later.
Wow Mod-man, you had the “Super-Deluxe” with all the bells, whistles, and warp drive capability.
My first (and only) typewriter circa 1971 was a plain old straight from Value House mechanical Remington. Nothing to plug in or burn out, mistakes were corrected by typing on eraseable onionskin paper with the appropriate eraser or a bottle of “White-Out.” Low tech indeed, but it worked for the next 25 years.
I remember a great Christmas at Lady Firestorm’s mothers house. Lady F’s nieces Stephanie and Janine, ages 11 and 7 respectively, found their aunts and uncles old manual typewriters while rummaging through the closets. It didn’t take them long to figure out how to use them, they were familiar with computer keyboards so it wasn’t too much of a leap.
“Be careful with those, kids,” I said, “They’re relics from the Plasticine Era, when dinosaurs like your aunts and uncles roamed the Earth!”
When I was at Tinker AFB, there was a manual typewriter that made the rounds on our floor, and probably through the entire barracks. After I left, I got a report that one could still hear it being used around the barracks.
It was tired, so it took a little more “umph” to make the impressions.
When the ex was taking secretarial courses at the local community college, we went all in and picked up a current (at the time) electric. It’s still around here someplace, but as I recall, the spacebar came loose. Probably an easy fix, if I wanted to.
If you want to find out just how bad of a ‘keyboardist’ you are - use a manual typewriter. No backspace key that eliminates the mistakes and gives you a ‘clean sheet’ from that point on.
In college in the early 70s, I made quite a bit of money typing papers for students. I charged 15¢ a page. I could do 5 - 6 pages an hour, depending on footnotes, etc.
Of course, the college bar charged 15¢ for a glass of draft beer. Funny how that worked out.
My first introduction to typewriters was a Hermes Rocket, which still had its case but not its little retractable carrying handle. That was a delightful little thing – and of course you could write with it anywhere, needs no power or batteries, made clear and legible typescript, and was made (and worked) like a Swiss watch.
My second real typewriter, a Christmas present when I first started having to write longer high-school reports and papers, was one of the Adler mechanicals with the large and extremely legible pica face. This was the tracker-action organ of typewriters: you really needed muscle action and coordination to press those keys down, rather than on my sister’s electric where there was servo typebar actuation, but it DID have your choice of black or red for emphasis, could be adjusted to cut a fairly amazing number of stencils, and produced very clear output for a fabric ribbon that ‘never ran out unexpectedly’. Gave me fingers and wrists of steel, that’s for sure.
Now, by being in the right time at the right place, I acquired (1) an IBM Executive typewriter (the one with variable space but using typebars, with the extended carriage) and (2) the entire Varityper setup, including something like 30 of the little font plates, that my high school used for newsletters. (It was the electric drive for the Varityper, in fact, that gave me the idea for spring Geneva-mechanism drive for high-speed steam locomotive valve gear). This was perfectly serviceable but, as noted, you had quite a bit of recourse to the eraser shield, the Wite-out bottle, and other things for correcting. And you wrote things in drafts, with extensive hand revision and careful measurement between them, and footnoting instead of end-noting was a misery. I do not now remember if the Executive had an erase ribbon in it, but with a little reflection I can almost remember how you used the little ‘finger’ to calculate t
By the way, anyone remember the old-school qualifications to be a good journalist? This is where I really wish DPM was still alive, he’d know right away!
A nose for news.
A good-quality typewriter.
An ability to write!
A good strong desk with a bottle of scotch (or bourbon) in one of the drawers.
Ah, the old days of journalism, now, as the late, lamented Lucius Beebe would have said, “Gone with the snows of yesteryear!”