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ABC Rail Guides

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stevetay3

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Hi. The 2019 edition of the ABC Rail Guide has been split into two volumes.
One covers main line systems, the second light rail and heritage railways. I received my heritage volume today, I was most disappointed, the info in the second volume had just been left out of the main volume. The only thing that had been expanded was the London Underground section with numbers added, the preservation section was just addresses and basic numbers, no details on all the preserved railways. Despite this it is a good little addition, but over priced at £12.95.
Total cost of both volumes is £35, last year this all priced at £22.50, a massive price hike for little extra. What do others make of this.
 
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trainmania100

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They're probably running out of money like most companies. Everyone can get their information online nowadays.
 

Andyh82

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They're probably running out of money like most companies. Everyone can get their information online nowadays.
I’m not sure that’s strictly true. Accurate comprehensive info like you get in these books and the Platform 5 books is hard to find on the internet
 

DarloRich

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If you are not happy dont buy the book again. Not really sure what the point of these kind of books actually is.

The info is out of date as soon as it is printed!
 

andyc20050

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Wordery currently selling the main line edition for 14.48 and the light rail edition for 8.88. Total 23.36.
 

433N

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Wordery currently selling the main line edition for 14.48 and the light rail edition for 8.88. Total 23.36.

On looking it up, it does say there is a code for 10% off your second book - I'm not sure if they'd let the 14.48 be the second book but should be able to get 88p off with code 10MAY19
 

Condor7

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I have always used the ABC guides. I know they start going out of date almost immediately but are often in areas that don’t affect me. Those that do are easily noted in the margins and adjusted next time.
What I like is physically being able to pick up a book and see at a glance which locos/units I haven’t seen rather than a list of those I have seen which in my experience is all I can find with online apps.
 

Wivenswold

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What you do get with these annual guides is a potted history of rolling stock. They make a good piece of reference work.

Personally always preferred the Platform 5 ones, better laid out and more concise.
 

Andyh82

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One thing they never update are the TOC maps, they publish the same 2013 ones year after year even when the operations have changed.

The Northern and TPE one’s don’t reflect the changes in the North West, they never bothered to create a GTR Map, just publish the Thameslink and Southern one’s next to each other.
 

theblackwatch

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Must admit I've not studied the ABC guide for a few years, but I remember looking at it a few years back and it had a good number of glaring errors in the rolling stock lists which I was able to spot within a few minutes. In my view, the Platform 5 books tend to be more accurate.
 

Andyh82

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Spliting it into two volumes last year was obviously unpopular, as the 2020 guide is out now, and it’s back as one single volume.

Not as many pages as the two from last year combined, but more pages than the 2018 version.

Spliting what was supposed to be a ‘one stop shop’ into two never quite made sense.
 

Andyh82

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Something has gone wrong with the liveries on many fleets as they are vastly wrong (I’m pretty sure most EMR trains aren’t in EMR livery, the 315s are certainly not in Crossrail livery)

Also many of the maps are still wrong, and many of the operator names are wrong.

He seems to insist on naming GWR, TPE & Hull Trains with a First prefix, and refers to TFL Rail as Elizabeth Line
 

hexagon789

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Something has gone wrong with the liveries on many fleets as they are vastly wrong (I’m pretty sure most EMR trains aren’t in EMR livery, the 315s are certainly not in Crossrail livery)

Also many of the maps are still wrong, and many of the operator names are wrong.

He seems to insist on naming GWR, TPE & Hull Trains with a First prefix, and refers to TFL Rail as Elizabeth Line

Many of the stock details are wrong in the ABC guides and never updated to correct them.
 

Andyh82

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The 2021 edition is now advertised as available from December 4, price £25.00 and with a new Editor.

That’s only about 8 months after the last one was released, and what with the year it’s been this year, surely it’ll be near identical!

So the 2021 rail guide will be the stock position as at about October 2020?!
 

Condor7

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This does come as a surprise. I have been buying this for years and it always was one of the last spotters books to appear in the spring. Also the previous author was Colin Marsden. It will be interesting to see what the “thoroughly revised and updated” changes look like.
 

87electric

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It is widely known in the hobby that Colin Marsden books contain factual errors of great magnitude. His denial of his errors is staggering so I welcome the new ABC that will be presented by Pip Dunn.
Typos is one thing but bad information is unforgivable, as the book is a record for future generations.
 

Andyh82

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I’m hoping they’ve updated the maps, instead of still using the same maps from edition 1 which includes the old much smaller Thameslink/Great Northern network calling at Kings Cross Thameslink
 

davetheguard

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It is widely known in the hobby that Colin Marsden books contain factual errors of great magnitude. His denial of his errors is staggering so I welcome the new ABC that will be presented by Pip Dunn.
Typos is one thing but bad information is unforgivable, as the book is a record for future generations.

Can you give an example of this "great magnitude"?
 

Ianigsy

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There was one particular Northern EMU which was missing for a few years - one of the 321s or 322s if I remember rightly.
 

Taunton

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There was one particular Northern EMU which was missing for a few years - one of the 321s or 322s if I remember rightly.
That's nothing. The old Ian Allan spotters books carried, every year right into the mid-1970s, the numbers of the several LMS-design Wirral electric cars that had been destroyed by bombing in 1941.
 

Andyh82

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Whereas people said the Colin Marsden editions were not perfect, I believe they’ve now ruined them with the new design.

The info seems to be presented in a really dull boring way, with boring tables of data, often presented side ways on as if they’ve just been copied in from excel, lots of lengthy text, lots of white space, hardly any photos and those photos that there are are plonked in at random (there will be fleet details of the 195s with a 158 illustrated at the side for example)

Light Rail and London Underground has been removed and in its place is pages of text explaining what Network Rail or HS2 is.

Seems to be half way between the old versions and the more functional Platform 5 spotters books, and as a result doesn’t adequately serve any market.
 

Peter C

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Whereas people said the Colin Marsden editions were not perfect, I believe they’ve now ruined them with the new design.

The info seems to be presented in a really dull boring way, with boring tables of data, often presented side ways on as if they’ve just been copied in from excel, lots of lengthy text, lots of white space, hardly any photos and those photos that there are are plonked in at random (there will be fleet details of the 195s with a 158 illustrated at the side for example)

Light Rail and London Underground has been removed and in its place is pages of text explaining what Network Rail or HS2 is.

Seems to be half way between the old versions and the more functional Platform 5 spotters books, and as a result doesn’t adequately serve any market.
I recently got the Rail Guide 2021 and we're of the same opinion - I much prefer the 2017 and 2018 versions I have (the most recent one I had before the 2021 one was the 2018 version) from a presentation standpoint and I think a lot of the things which made the book better than others on the market have been taken away (i.e. colourful pages, relevant pictures, nice descriptions in captions, etc.).
I've always been annoyed that the London Underground section is just a few pages at most and never has any of the detail like the rest of the book has, but the Light Rail and Trams section was always a nice addition. The removal of these pages has made way for pages which would have been perfect pre-internet (e.g. scrapyard locations and contact details, railtour operators, etc.) but nowadays are useless. The Departmental stock section has also been removed.

According to the bit at the start, they've gone back to their original format. I've not seen many of these books myself so I can't say how true to the original format this edition is, but it's a step in the wrong direction. I bought the Platform 5 books back in 2017 and found them very good for what they needed to do and so instead of buying them all separately again, I'm currently waiting for the combined volume for 2021 to come out and then to compare it with the ABC version. I'll then go with the one I find easier/better to use.

-Peter
 

Andyh82

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You’ll be double disapointed in regards to London Underground as in the 2019 and 2020 editions they started listing out the fleet in the same detail as they do light rail, so that has gone as well.

They’ve also removed southern Irish rail from the guide, with the author making a robust point in multiple places that they don’t cover any other European countries so why should they include Ireland. I’m not entirely sure that is a valid comparison and a few pages detailing Irish Rail and the Dublin Luas never really harmed anyone.
 
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