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When Mainstream Media Picks the Wrong Train Pic

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Posted by BaltACD on Friday, February 24, 2017 10:09 AM

Fintribune

We changed the picture 

Really sorry 

thanks :)

Thank You - the nit that was being picked was using a 'store bought' picture of North American railroading to illustrate an article on Iranian railroading.  The picture you now have with the article is more accurate.

Railfans will nit pick anything that is 'not right' - Movies, TV, Print - it doesn't matter.  Railroads are period and geographical in their operation.  Identify the wrong railroad in the wrong geographical setting in a story and the nit gets picked.  Set a story in the 1890's and have a scene with a diesel operating and the nit gets picked.  If the 'author' doesn't know and doesn't care; the railfans viewing his product do know and do care and then comment about it.

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Posted by samfp1943 on Friday, February 24, 2017 10:12 AM

Fintribune

We changed the picture 

Really sorry 

thanks :)

WelcomeThanks, to You!

In this day and time many attempt to 'trivialize' realities, and admittedly, this pictuer might be in that arena, BUT, CHANGING IT Amounts to a small step in the direction, back towards real credibility. 

                             Thanks, for paying attention! Bow

 

 

 

 


 

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, February 24, 2017 1:32 PM

The new picture does raise a question - is that tank car behind the locomotive cargo, or a fuel tender?

LarryWhistling
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Posted by M636C on Saturday, February 25, 2017 4:55 PM

Fintribune

We changed the picture 

Really sorry 

thanks :)

I'm impressed...

Not only did the new picture correct the "error" but to quote from an earlier post:

Makes one want to rush over to trackside in Iran! NOT!

I'd like to add a few photos from that location myself:

The Beyer Garratt catalog showed a similar arch viaduct (in a pre WWII photo), so they may be a feature of Iran's railways.

Desite concern about "trivialities", this thread managed to improve another website, and added an excellent photo to published photos of Iran's railways.

Peter

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Posted by rrnut282 on Sunday, February 26, 2017 4:53 PM

schlimm

Only on here would anyone get so worked up about trivialities.

 

I'm sorry, (not really) we're all not you.  What praytell, should people on a railroad themed web-site do when an obvious error is discovered?

Mike (2-8-2)
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Posted by schlimm on Sunday, February 26, 2017 5:01 PM

rrnut282

 

 
schlimm

Only on here would anyone get so worked up about trivialities.

 

 

 

I'm sorry, (not really) we're all not you.  What praytell, should people on a railroad themed web-site do when an obvious error is discovered?

 

If it were purporting to be a picture of a US or Canadian or Mexican train, maybe.  But one, I doubt if you give a hoot about Iran Rail and two, the magazine printing the picture is not seeking a railfan audience.  It is just another excuse to attack the media and obsess about trivialities. In the latter regard, some of you are worse than Euclid; hence the sobriquet, "foamers" came into use.

C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan

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Posted by M636C on Wednesday, March 1, 2017 2:27 AM

schlimm

 

If it were purporting to be a picture of a US or Canadian or Mexican train, maybe.  But one, I doubt if you give a hoot about Iran Rail and two, the magazine printing the picture is not seeking a railfan audience.  It is just another excuse to attack the media and obsess about trivialities. In the latter regard, some of you are worse than Euclid; hence the sobriquet, "foamers" came into use.

 

 

Surely the point is that the thread was successful in getting the photo changed.

What is really interesting is that an official Iranian publication found the Trains.com thread, read it, looked up a linked site with appropriate photos and used one. I assume that they must have googled their site name, found the thread and read it.

They even posted thanks after making the correction....

So the "mainstream media" is now correct thanks to THIS thread.

What's not to like?

Peter

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Posted by tree68 on Wednesday, March 1, 2017 12:11 PM

M636C
What is really interesting is that an official Iranian publication found the Trains.com thread,

I'm pretty sure many such sites have "bots" running that look for their name, so they can see what kind of coverage they are getting.

I don't know how many times I've gone looking for information on one thread or another and ended up with the thread itself being one of the results...

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Posted by wanswheel on Wednesday, March 1, 2017 1:56 PM
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Posted by Bruce Kelly on Wednesday, March 1, 2017 2:12 PM

By this point, I'm sure most folks recognize that my reason for sharing the poorly-chosen photo was to give a much-needed chuckle, something that's often in short supply at this forum. The fact that the publication opted to correct the picture proves it wasn't so trivial a matter after all, at least not to them.

When you've worked in and around the magazine/publishing/printing business as long as I have (35 years and counting), it can almost keep you up at night knowing how many things can go wrong in the process of getting a story and/or photos out there for people to see...accurately...correctly. Much more so when the presentation is in print, where there's no going back once you've mailed and distributed to store shelves tens of thousands of magazines that botch the identification and placement of critical elements on a map...or flub the names or dates of subjects central to the topic...or simply contain sentences where an editor or two (or more) opted to alter or remove a couple of words, and in the process induced un-noticed errors to what was otherwise a flawless and factually-correct piece of writing.

In the case of the Iranian publicaton, it probably boiled down to an editor or art director, or possibly an author located out-of-house, being asked to dig up a photo, any photo, to illustrate a story on that country's rail commerce. We all know how the general public and the general media don't quite grasp the varied minutiae of railroading. A train is a train, to most people. Rail magazines themselves occasionally run the wrong caption with the right photo, or vice versa, and frequently demonstrate a lack of understanding for the operations, geography, or history of railroads in a part of the country or continent that is distant from their home offices. Just the nature of the beast.

It didn't surprise me that the photo they chose to swap in came from Jean-Marc Frybourg. I've long admired his exquisite images from far-flung places. Last year, while on-screen proofing the page files for an Iranian-American magazine we print, I took the time to email our CSR who handles that account and share with her a link to some of the pictures that Frybourg and others had taken in Iran. She forwarded it to our customer, and he responded with words of great joy and thanks for our taking notice of his home country, and to the railfan community for proving that, despite the social and political differences, some of us can appreciate the scenic beauty and railroad ops of a country that we tend to hear nothing good about.

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Posted by erikem on Thursday, March 2, 2017 12:19 AM

Bruce,

I took your original posting as having a light-hearted tone, brought a smile to my face when seeing the picture.

I'm under the impression that many in the publishing world aren't being as careful with fact checking as was the case in the past. An example in science oriented magazines is the location of Palomar Observatory, with the correct answer being Palomar Mountain, not Mt. Palomar. In years past, Scientific American got it right, but they've been lapsing the last couple of decades. Science News consistently got it right until a few years ago. Getting it wrong is not the end of the world, but does indicate that the publication has lost interest in getting the facts right.

OTOH, the railfan community is loaded wih pedants, and woe to any publisher who gets the wrong number of rivets one some long gone steam locomotive tender. Wink

 - Erik

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Posted by BaltACD on Friday, March 3, 2017 4:07 PM

Just watched a old episode of CHIPS from 1983 - story involved a motocross race at Long Beach.  Needless to say the close action shots of the 'stars' were obviously done in the studio.  The 'medium' action shots were done in a city enviornment (maybe Long Beach, maybe not).  The genuine action shots were from Daytona International Speedway with most of the shots being of competitors going through the Bus Stop Chicane on the back straight at Daytona (the course configuration that is used for motorcycles and cars in the Rolex 24 Hours).

Undoubtedly the logic being that the audience isn't smart enough or worldly enough to notice and care about differences.

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, March 3, 2017 5:43 PM

BaltACD
Just watched a old episode of CHIPS from 1983...

If you binge watch episodes of series like "CHIPs", "Adam 12", or "Emergency", you'll start to pick up on the "stock shots."  Having done so with Emergency, I've seen Squad 51 pass the same VW, on the same street, a number of times.

It might not register if you're watching one episode a week, but it certainly does when you see it several times in a row.

Trivia, for "Emergency" fans:  Roy DeSoto always drove, because when they filmed the stock shots, he was always driving...  Again, something you might not pick up on a weekly basis...

And Dixie McCall and Dr. Early were married in real life.  Julie London was known as a singer, and Bobby Troup actually wrote the song "Route 66."  There's your earworm for the day...

At least one episode of "Emergency" involved trains, as well.  "Chet" was known to operate heavy machinery at times, but I don't recall if he got into a locomotive.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, March 3, 2017 9:03 PM

schlimm

 

 
rrnut282

 

 
schlimm

Only on here would anyone get so worked up about trivialities.

 

 

 

I'm sorry, (not really) we're all not you.  What praytell, should people on a railroad themed web-site do when an obvious error is discovered?

 

 

 

If it were purporting to be a picture of a US or Canadian or Mexican train, maybe.  But one, I doubt if you give a hoot about Iran Rail and two, the magazine printing the picture is not seeking a railfan audience.  It is just another excuse to attack the media and obsess about trivialities. In the latter regard, some of you are worse than Euclid; hence the sobriquet, "foamers" came into use.

 

Where do you draw the line? Would it have been acceptable if  they had pictured a Conestoga wagon and labeled it a locomotive? 

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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