Publications

Publications Related to Rail Activity in New Zealand

This page will be dedicated to publications relating to rail activity in New Zealand. Publications can fall in to a number of groups but we commonly refer to two of them, 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. 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 or Periodical being logged into the Wiki in two parts, the first as a Book or Periodical, where the major details are stored, and the second as a Book Edition or Periodical Issue, where the Edition or Issue details are stored. All Publications require a unique "short title" but the Publication table will be able to 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.

There are several wiki Categories associated with Publications:- Publications, Publication_Editions, Authors, Publishers, Articles, Publication_Copy and Library. Each Category holds Pages for items in that Category, so effectively you end up with two pages for most Publications, one for the main Publication, and one for each Edition. By Edition we also mean Issue in the case of a Periodical. This may seem wasteful but allows a straightforward way of managing Editions and Issues in the same 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.

Books in general

As a Book is registered, this creates a wiki Page for the entry with the ability to store a cover image as well. Different Editions of a book can each have their own page if desired, and can have their own cover image. Where the reason for including a book is perhaps rather vague based on the Title, you should add some comment in 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 these will progressively all be entered.

There is the ability to record in which "Libraries" books might be able to be found by recording a 'copy' as belonging to an individual's Library. This would be on a purely voluntary basis, but would be an aid for researchers who may not be in a position to acquire their own copy or find it 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 hold are Location (Town or City, and maybe Suburb) and an Email address.

Different Issues of a Publication

Pages in the category "Publication Edition" have their PageName made up from the publication's 'short name" plus the edition number e.g. 'Footplate1' refers to the first edition of the book 'Footplate' by Gordon Troup. I am not aware there has ever been a 2nd edition of this publication. 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. Using this technique one system can cater for both books and Periodicals. As discussed briefly later, we are also able to record multiple copies of an Edition or Issue. This is achieved by adding a decimal value after the end of the Edition/Issue number. However, using this effectively in practice still needs to be experimented with.

It is the intention to create pages for the following Periodicals in this wiki:- Rails, Railfan, The NZ 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 plus edition)

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 have 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