I started a thread a few years ago, titled British pre-amalgamations rail atlases -- "upsides and downsides" , on the "Railway History & Nostalgia" sub-forum: page 69 thereof. I mentioned then that having lost seemingly for good, the copy of the Fifth Edition of the Ian Allan Pre-Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer which had served me well for a good many years; I had acquired a copy of the work's "revised and enlarged" Sixth Edition, first published 2015. Subsequently, my Fifth Edition proved not to be lost after all. In that post, I offered the opinion that the Sixth Edition (indeed considerably re-vamped from the Fifth) was in some ways an improvement on its predecessor; but in others, was the reverse -- on balance, not justifying the slightly bragging tone of its claims about its "revised" status.
Recently -- an embarrassingly long while after the above-recounted events -- I became aware for the first time of an in my opinion sizeable, and glaring, patch of errors in the Sixth Edition. (Just conceivably, part of that which I mention here might be conscious and deliberate attempted simplification -- if so, IMO very ill-advised -- on the part of those who produced the Sixth Edition; even if that were so, there would still be elements which are, plainly, flat-out mistaken and incorrect.)
This features chiefly on the atlas's Sheet 10, and involves variously Metropolitan / Great Central / Great Western trackage in Buckinghamshire, and eastward of that county's south-eastern extremity. The fault here, is failure to distinguish either in line-on-map configuration, or in the printed word, between lines of the Metropolitan / Metropolitan & Great Central Joint, and Great Western & Great Central Joint, systems. The PGA&G 's Fifth Edition accomplishes this correctly: it uses different and distinct variants on the dashed-or-pecked/dotted line theme, coloured orange, for the M. & G.C. Joint and G.W. & G.C. Joint, respectively; and wherever it labels them with printed initials / words, it does so accurately and correctly.
The Sixth Edition, on the other hand, shows all routes of both Joint concerns by orange simple dashed / pecked lines, making no visual distinction between the two undertakings; and the G.W. & G.C. Joint's main line "en route" is labelled wrongly twice, as "Met. & G.C. JT." -- identical to the (correct) labelling of its part-Metropolitan counterpart running through Wendover and Amersham. Nowhere "en route" does the G.W. & G.C. Joint bear its correct initials. In the region of Aylesbury, the Sixth Edition follows the Fifth, in showing a label reading "MET. & G.C. Jt. & G.C. Jt. COMMS." [="Committees"?]; except that the Sixth changes the "Jt." of the Fifth, in both places, to "Jc." [mistakenly thinking of "Junction"??].
All the above, refers to the atlas's Sheet 10. On the Sheet 39 part of the "Greater London" large-scale detailed map: the Sixth Edition, while continuing to show the "G.W. and..." by an orange dashed / pecked line identical to that representing the "Met. and...", does label the former correctly as "G.W. & G.C. Jt". Finally (back to Sheet 10), the Quainton Road to Brill branch -- by my understanding, purely Metropolitan as at 1922 -- has its one-of-a-kind-oddity status acknowledged by the Fifth Edition: in its route being shown, though in the standard orange for this cluster of railways, by a special and unique broken-line variation. In the Sixth Edition, though, its designation is the same dashed / pecked orange line as used for everything else in the "cluster". Both Fifth and Sixth Editions label the Brill line as "O. & A. Tramroad".
The degree of inaccuracy and imprecision described here strikes me as, when indubitably wrong, lamentable slackness and poor performance. If, as speculated above, some of it might be a deliberate attempt to make things simpler (nothing with this appearance has come to my notice in the Sixth Edition, anywhere else in Great Britain); that would be -- in my opinion -- as reprehensible as the outright errors, for a publication which claims to give an authoritative and detailed representation of railway ownership and administration nationwide at a particular date. Have been entertaining thoughts of writing to Ian Allan, presenting them with criticisms of the features of their Sixth Edition, as written of in my post here. However, it would seem certain that between 2015 and now, very numerous purchasers of the work will already have done that very thing; and it would be at least to hope for, that should there be a Seventh Edition, these matters might be remedied there.
Recently -- an embarrassingly long while after the above-recounted events -- I became aware for the first time of an in my opinion sizeable, and glaring, patch of errors in the Sixth Edition. (Just conceivably, part of that which I mention here might be conscious and deliberate attempted simplification -- if so, IMO very ill-advised -- on the part of those who produced the Sixth Edition; even if that were so, there would still be elements which are, plainly, flat-out mistaken and incorrect.)
This features chiefly on the atlas's Sheet 10, and involves variously Metropolitan / Great Central / Great Western trackage in Buckinghamshire, and eastward of that county's south-eastern extremity. The fault here, is failure to distinguish either in line-on-map configuration, or in the printed word, between lines of the Metropolitan / Metropolitan & Great Central Joint, and Great Western & Great Central Joint, systems. The PGA&G 's Fifth Edition accomplishes this correctly: it uses different and distinct variants on the dashed-or-pecked/dotted line theme, coloured orange, for the M. & G.C. Joint and G.W. & G.C. Joint, respectively; and wherever it labels them with printed initials / words, it does so accurately and correctly.
The Sixth Edition, on the other hand, shows all routes of both Joint concerns by orange simple dashed / pecked lines, making no visual distinction between the two undertakings; and the G.W. & G.C. Joint's main line "en route" is labelled wrongly twice, as "Met. & G.C. JT." -- identical to the (correct) labelling of its part-Metropolitan counterpart running through Wendover and Amersham. Nowhere "en route" does the G.W. & G.C. Joint bear its correct initials. In the region of Aylesbury, the Sixth Edition follows the Fifth, in showing a label reading "MET. & G.C. Jt. & G.C. Jt. COMMS." [="Committees"?]; except that the Sixth changes the "Jt." of the Fifth, in both places, to "Jc." [mistakenly thinking of "Junction"??].
All the above, refers to the atlas's Sheet 10. On the Sheet 39 part of the "Greater London" large-scale detailed map: the Sixth Edition, while continuing to show the "G.W. and..." by an orange dashed / pecked line identical to that representing the "Met. and...", does label the former correctly as "G.W. & G.C. Jt". Finally (back to Sheet 10), the Quainton Road to Brill branch -- by my understanding, purely Metropolitan as at 1922 -- has its one-of-a-kind-oddity status acknowledged by the Fifth Edition: in its route being shown, though in the standard orange for this cluster of railways, by a special and unique broken-line variation. In the Sixth Edition, though, its designation is the same dashed / pecked orange line as used for everything else in the "cluster". Both Fifth and Sixth Editions label the Brill line as "O. & A. Tramroad".
The degree of inaccuracy and imprecision described here strikes me as, when indubitably wrong, lamentable slackness and poor performance. If, as speculated above, some of it might be a deliberate attempt to make things simpler (nothing with this appearance has come to my notice in the Sixth Edition, anywhere else in Great Britain); that would be -- in my opinion -- as reprehensible as the outright errors, for a publication which claims to give an authoritative and detailed representation of railway ownership and administration nationwide at a particular date. Have been entertaining thoughts of writing to Ian Allan, presenting them with criticisms of the features of their Sixth Edition, as written of in my post here. However, it would seem certain that between 2015 and now, very numerous purchasers of the work will already have done that very thing; and it would be at least to hope for, that should there be a Seventh Edition, these matters might be remedied there.
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