Publications

Publications Related to Rail Activity in New Zealand

This page and and those linking from it will be dedicated to publications relating to rail activity in New Zealand. Publications fall in to a number of groups but we commonly refer to two of them as, Books and Magazines (or Periodicals). The difference between these are, books generally have a single issue (though a few subsequent editions is not uncommon), while Periodicals come out at regular intervals, daily (like a newspaper), weekly, monthly, quarterly etc.

BOOKS

Each Book gets its own wiki Page with the ability to store its cover image. These pages are also where the book's general contents will be listed and book reviews can be stored etc. Where the reason for including a book on its own page is perhaps rather vague based on the Title, sufficient comment should be added to the the free text area to make it clear what section of the book adds to New Zealand railway knowledge. My own library includes over 700 titles and most of these have now been entered. Each library-book's data gets stored on a Template with the data in the Book Template shown below.

EXAMPLE BOOK TEMPLATE DATA

Full Book Title: North Island Main Trunk: An illustrated History

Edition: 1

Book Series name:

Series Number:

Author(s): Pierre W.A.

Publisher Name: Reed Books

Publication Type: Book

Binding type: Hard-cover

Date Prefix:

Publication Date: 1981

ISBN: 0-589-01316-5

Width (mm): 192

Height: 248

Orientation: Portrait

Number of Pages: 300

Cover Image: North_Island_Main_Trunk.png

LIBRARIES

All books or magazines registered in this wiki will belong to a Library and Libraries are numbered sequentially as they are added. The only library at present is Library 001 As Libraries hold copies of books, I have replicated that principle here, however, these copies do not get their own pages, their data is stored in Templates on the Library page the copy belongs to. To try and avoid very large wiki pages, the pages that hold the copy templates are split int 2 at this stage, one for Books and one for Magazines. So Library 001 has physical pages named Library 001B and Library001M each holding its own collection of copy templates. The template data is managed using spreadsheets outside of the wiki, however, the Template data for a book-copy is as shown below.

Unique name for this record: North Island Main Trunk - Copy001B

Book page name: Book - North Island Main Trunk

Title: North Island Main Trunk

Library Accession No: 701

Shelf ID: M701

Book Condition: Very Good

Book Value $NZ: 35

Limited Edition: No

Signed_Copy: No

Dust Jacket: Clean

Adding your own library

If anyone reading this has a collection of New Zealand railway/tramway books or magazines they wish to list on this wiki you can get in touch by emailing me at robert@raileng.nz Adding your library here is purely voluntary, but would be an aid for researchers who may not be in a position to acquire their own copy of books or magazines, or find what they need in a Public Library. Any arrangement to access books from listed private libraries would be a strictly personal arrangement with the Library Owner. The only 'Owner' details it is intended to be held are Location (Town or City) and an Email address. The only other condition of course is that the 'Owner' must be registered to use the wiki.

Different Editions of a Publication

Where a second edition of a book is produced, it becomes another entry in the Book table with the same name as the original edition but followed by " 2nd Ed" Unless there is a special reason, 1st Edition books do not have " 1st Ed" added to the page name, it is implied. Different Editions of a book should each have their own page as some of the content will be different, however, different printings of a book are ignored, as their content should not have changed. Occasionally a second printing will have a different cover (e.g. "Down at the Station") and this can be mentioned in the free text. There will also be possible cases of called a second edition when if fact it is only a second printing (e.g. When Steam was King)

In order to be able to cater for all options, the data tables that hold all the information are divided into sections to avoid having to enter repeated data for things like Author, Publisher, etc. This has resulted in every Book being logged into the Wiki in two parts, the first as a Book where the major details are stored (like Full Title, Author, Publisher, pages etc) and the second as a Book Copy, where the individual copy's details are stored (like whose Library it belongs to, Condition etc). Periodicals are slightly more complex in that there is a record for the Periodical where you can describe the over-all magazines properties (like Publisher, year it started/ended frequency etc) then there is a table of issues with one record for each issue, holding data like issue number, date, cover image etc and then you can also have a table to hold issue copies to record who holds particular copies their condition etc. All Publications require a unique "short title" but the Books table will also hold its full or extended title as well. Should a situation arise with a Periodical where some of its major details change, a new Periodical record will need to be created to match that. In such cases the new record should have the same name as the old with ".1" added after it. Subsequent changes would create .2, .3 etc. A note should be added to both old and new pages explaining what has been done.

Holding data on multiple pages may seem wasteful but allows a straightforward way of managing Editions, Issues and Copies in a consistent way. The 'Publication' page for a periodical will include a list from which individual issues can be selected. Likewise, Author pages will include a list of all Books and Articles a given Author has produced.

Magazine numbering

For a magazine (referred to in the wiki as a periodical), issues are numbered sequentially from the first one issued. Using Railfan as an example, Railfan1 equates to the first issue (December 1994) and I believe the last issue was in March 2020 so Railfan102. 

It is the intention to create pages for the following Periodicals in this wiki:- Rails, New Zealand Railfan, The New Zealand Railway Observer, the 3 NZR publications (Railway Magazine, Staff Bulletin and Railway Bulletin), Yarn, NZ Model Railway Journal and the recently started Linesider. The Page for each issue will include a list of the main articles that are New Zealand railway related with potential to add a summary of the articles, as well as a summary of each item of New Zealand News. In this way considerable detail of magazine content can become searchable text within the wiki.

Every Publication Edition can have an accompanying image file representing the cover. The image file should preferably be in .png format (optimal for web use) but .jpg or .tiff are also valid. Image resolution need not be particularly high, 50 - 150 dpi is more than adequate. Image file names ideally match the wiki page name (short-name)

Because I have elected to use consecutive numbers for issues of periodicals, I need a way to reference issues where the periodical itself does not use issue numbers. For this I will create a chart on the Publication page for that periodical showing Years as columns, and Months as rows, with the relevant issue number in the appropriate cell. I have included a portion of the Rails Magazine table as an example below, the Issue-numbers are of course hyperlinks which can take you straight to the page for that issue. As Some editors had problems keeping track of issue numbers (or even month and year), determining issue numbers if one does not have the complete set is nigh impossible. Changes in frequency of publication can also cause problems, and for those reasons, I will have to leave the Model Railway Journal till last, as there are many problems with the issue numbers and I do not hold a complete set.

Rails
	Vol
Month	1	2	3	4	5	6
Year	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975	1976
Jan		6	18	30	42	54
Feb		7	19	31	43	55
Mar		8	20	32	44	56
Apr		9	21	33	45	57
May		10	22	34	46	58
Jun		11	23	35	47	59
Jul		12	24	36	48	60
Aug	1	13	25	37	49	61
Sep	2	14	26	38	50	62
Oct	3	15	27	39	51	63
Nov	4	16	28	40	52	64
Dec	5	17	27	41	53	65