Milwaukee, Racine & Troy Special Issue

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Hello All,

I recently received the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy Special Issue.

What a great chronology of the past and present layouts. A thoroughly enjoyable read worth the price.

As I was perusing the photos I noticed a strange thing.

On pg. 30 the photo of Art Curren’s amazing work had been “mirror-imaged” or flipped.

This is a common practice in advertising where the image doesn’t “play to the fold”- -doesn’t draw the eye into the next page of the publication.

When an advertising image is flipped you might not notice the buttons on the male model’s shirt are backward or the steering wheel on the car in the background is reversed from the previous image.

The copy; words placed over the image, is not mirror-imaged and helps distract the viewers’ eye away from the inconsistencies in the photo.

However, the photo on pg. 30, has the letters of the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy loco front and center along with all the billboards of the “Artz Lumber Company” all mirrored.

I am not trying to detract from the entirety of the special issue.

However, for us that revel in details- -especially in photographing great modeling work- -this is a glaring error or an editorial misstep.

The layout of the pages could have been reversed and the top horizontal image on the facing page 31 could have lead the article.

I hope in future editions of this wonderful chronicle of the MR&T this amazing image is given the respect Art Curren’s work deserves and this will become a collectors edition.

Hope this helps.

2

Well I am sure someone is kicking themselves … but this happens. Perhaps they were working off a slide that was scanned wrong side out, which I have done a few times. And while the day of true “slide shows” at railfan or model railroading events is dwindling, it was almost inevitable that a slide would be upside down, or reversed, or horizontal when it should be verticle, etc. I remember attending one slide presentation where, it seems almost impossible to believe the guy was unaware, an entire series of the photos were in fact double exposures - the risk of doing your slide review on a light table and putting them in the carousel without then actually projecting the images and viewing them that way too

What I have noticed from time to time lately in the pages of MR – they will print a photo as an example of some small detail or other and probably when they were looking at the image on a nice big screen computer or laptop it was quite visible but not when reduced to a small size on a printed page.

Dave Nelson

3

In 1968 or 1969 there was a cover where the image was flipped. I think they did this because the Model Railroader blue rectangle was on the left at that time, and the image fit better flipped.

There was no writing in the image, it was of car ends. All the brake wheels and ladders were on the wrong side.

-Kevin

4

Probably the most infamous, and valuable, inversion mistake of all time - - the Jenny Biplane Stamp.

Rich

Jenny-Biplane.jpg