The engineer operates the engine and the train. The conductor is in charge of the train and generally keeps the paperwork (train lists, work orders, etc.) for the train. He also is the one to get on the ground to switch cars in or out of the train as needed.
I’m sure we have all seen news items regarding the conductor operating the engine, such as the reporting of a grade crossing incident. Usually when I see something like that, it doesn’t bother me. Most reporters aren’t railroad employees or even railfans. They don’t know any better and probably don’t care about such technicalities.
So why should a caption to a photograph in a magazine get my goat? Because you would think the magazine in question would know better. Of course I’m talking about the caption on page 37 of the October 2015 Trains Magazine.
Maybe Mr. Arnold is a set-back engineer, but he clearly looks to be performing, and dressed for, the work of a conductor or brakeman. (Or their yard equivalents.) He certainly isn’t an engineer on this day.
Since we’re on the subject of captions. One other one in the same issue on page 46, the one of the brakeman walking on top of the narrow gauge box cars. I think the correct term for what he is carrying is a brake club. A long piece of hardwood used to help set the old time hand brakes.
Picking of nits, to be sure. Still someone is going to eventually say, “I saw it in Trains, THE magazine of railroading so it must be true.”
Jeff
PS. It really didn’t get my goat that much. I just thought it ironic how we pummel the general media over such things and then Trains kind of does the same thing.
I can answer your question in a single word. NOPE!
There was a day when reporters studied their subject a bit before writing. That doesn’t happen any more. They wing it and are frequently wrong. You should see what they do to aviation. Ninety percent of the “experts” they interview on TV are clueless.
Ninety percent? Where do I go to check that statement for accuracy? Wait, I read it on the Internet,so it must be true. Trains Magazine has to answer to somebody (us) for it’s inaccuracies. Those who post on this site (us), do not.
No way, our social media and news media protocalls forbid, in writing, any T&E employee from speaking to any media representative for any reason.
Only the prescribed spokesman for my carrier can talk to a reporter.
RR Peons don’t talk to the media - Those authorized to talk to the media don’t do it very well as they are barely more railroad literate than the media.
And this is necessary, and good business, and satisfies the insurance carriers in particular … but
Media ‘jackals’ are likely to distrust anything said by a railroad-company mouthpiece. (Often with fairly good reason, even though the jackals don’t know much about the actual facts…)
Where, then, would you go to find someone knowledgeable? In the past perhaps you’d go to someone like Frimbo at the New Yorker. But now people who actually like trains are foamers. So find a government spokesman … oh wait, everything is politicized now. So…
I know! Academia is always safe; let’s find somebody with some incomprehensible credentials who can give us the eddicated perspective. But … where do we find someone with top railroad credentials? Why, let’s find us a railroad UNIVERSITY.
Hey, here’s this thing called Modoc. They teach train people. Who better than their president or dean or whatever to tell us the railroading straight dope…
It might not have been straight, but they got the other part.
And since the PR people are apparently not very well informed, why complain every time when the media gets it wrong, when they have no reliable, accurate sources and the T&E folks are either censored by the company or themselves?
And, the official spokesman for the company may be like the new brass hat who noticed, in a yard, many short sections of rail with bent ends that were never touched by a wheel when any movement went over them, and suggested that they be taken up, straightened, and laid where they were of use–and he was corrected by an old head who explained to him the value of the guard rails at various locations.
Years ago, newspapers had enought reporters on hand to allow some degree of specialization, which let them develop some basic knowledge about the subjects they covered. Today, the reporter lucky enought have a job - even in a major market - might cover a grade collision today, a tech company’s IPO tomorrow morning, and a city council meeting tomorrow night.
If you’ve follow Don Phillip’s writing over the past 30 years, you can clearly see what 's happened to reporting over this period.
It has long seemed to me that like The New Yorker, Trains magazine goes out of its way to edit and proof what they publish. In fact, considering all the picayune details that railfans are notorious for pointing out, I think Trains has done an exemplary job over the decades. Of course, newspapers, especially local papers, can’t do the same editing & proofing that a magazine with editors and proofreaders can; the budget just doesn’t allow it.
Since my book on our town’s main railroad was published a few years ago, and the older, more authoritative men who really knew about these matters have died, I find that now I am the guy the reporters at the local newspsaper call when they want to know what’s going on as far as some railroad issue and our community is concerned, or how to accurately describe something like a derailment. Let me say that is a huge self-imposed responsibility: to be the accurate in what I tell the paper to say, as it were.
Try not to be so hard on young newspaper reporters trying to get out a story for which they have little or no background help. Tomorrow they will have to write a story about local school issues, or sewers, or airport expansion, or the county fair, or corruption at the courthouse; they can’t be experts at everything. Remember, local newspapers today are like steam locomotives in 1951: Who knows how long they are going to last?
After all, these reporters write for low-budget local or regional newspapers. They’re not writing for Trains magazine.
I once offered to discuss a subject (firearms) in which I was knowledgeable and they were not, compounded by misinformation. The responce was interesting: “No. we don’i have time and the details aren’t important to anyone.”
It’s not just reporters or even current educational fads. There are plenty of the over-50 crowd on here who cannot spell and misuse words over and over. Eg., dinner or dinning car for diner or dining car.
Respondents on a forum — any forum — are simply writing as interested amateurs. I moderate my expectations. For reporters, it’s THEIR JOB to know their way around the English language.
Spelling, grammar, punctuation, agreement, usage, context, etc. are all parts of that job, as well as accuracy in reporting. Properly done, it’s not an easy job. However, they did take the job and the paycheck, so it shouldn’t be too much to expect a certain degree of competence.
Carelessness with the language is a red flag to me. It indicates that the writer is likely to be careless with the facts, too.
That’s one thing that made Rosie Entringer great. Ask Angie.