News items should:
Articles may cover any railway-related subject, including:
Relevant photographs, illustrations and captions are always encouraged. Articles covering recent railway operations are particularly welcome.
High quality railway photography is a key feature in the success of the Railway Observer and in bringing this to you we need the support not only of photographers who regularly support the RO currently, but also those perhaps younger photographers who have yet to stick their JPGs in the selection pot! Similarly we also are always in need of articles, short or long, to enhance the magazine.
This page is designed to help both new and experienced photo submitters to understand the RO’s imaging process, so as to enhance your opportunities for getting your images in print, as well as enable the RO team to get your monthly RO out on time, with the highest possible quality of railway photography we have on offer.
Given the volunteer resource available, and the challenging timespan in which every issue of the RO must be compiled and published, the RO team is often at capacity in terms of what can be handled, but with the help and co-operation of submitting photographers and authors, the workload can be effectively managed by adhering to a few simple rules.
We receive around 150+ emailed images each month, all of which require initial extraction of both image and associated caption to our system. They then need collation, selection and technical preparation before possible publication, which with the space available in the RO, rarely exceeds more than 70 images per month. Your help in observing the rules will maximise the chance of your images being amongst those selected for publication.
We are just a group of volunteers doing our best to produce a monthly magazine displaying your photographs and articles at their best. From feedback received from both members and others who come into contact with it, including other railway societies, we know that the standard of RO reproduction is highly regarded. Thanks to our regular photographers our reputation is already excellent and by adopting our submission principles all member photographers can potentially contribute!
Digital Images To be suitable for inclusion in the RO, unless previously agreed with established photographic submitters, all images forwarded to the RO for possible use should be ex-camera images, in other words with no intervening digital manipulation between removal from the camera and despatch of the image. Please avoid any thought of ‘improving’ the image before submission as even simple cropping, re-sizing or sharpening can seriously affect our ability to generate an optimum publishable image.
JPG and TIF files should be saved at medium or high quality, usually levels 9 or 10 in Photoshop, and RAW files should be converted and saved at the same levels before submission. Please avoid the use of the file type JPEG. The image editors are very experienced at determining if a photograph has been manipulated. They are also skilled at removing distracting objects in the images, so please leave it to the RO team!
Image File Names. The format of the image file name is vital and we ask that it is adhered to exactly as set out below. This is essential to minimise the errors caused by mis-crediting the photographer and attaching the incorrect caption. We try hard to get these correct but regrettably errors still occur. File names need to contain the following information:
Photographer’s name – Start your file name text with your surname in full followed by a space and your given name initial only.
Unique image number – this can be from the camera or whatever you normally use, numeric digits only excluding rambling prefixes such as some cameras generate (e.g.3Y8A or 0R6A), IMG however can be left in place. Also, in any batch of images you send please ensure that no image number is duplicated with any other –e.g. – only one ‘IMG 1’ in a submitted batch irrespective of the other field data included
TOC Name (abbreviation if known).
Unit/loco number
Location
Date
To ensure consideration for use please ensure each field group is separated by a space and that each element item of the file name, i.e. the six items detailed above, are present in the format described!
Ideal File Name Examples
Partlow K – 9157 GBRF 66745 Brundall 27 July 2023.jpg
Martin D – 160326 DBS 66004 Mortimer 16 March 2026.jpg
File names should be limited to a maximum of 60 characters, as excess characters will not be visible and can cause problems with certain software. The file name should not contain the text describing the photo: such text is for the caption and not the file name. Also, the use of full stops, commas, forward and back slashes, and @ signs within a filename should be avoided as again this approach causes software problems.
Captions
Each caption must start by including the full image file name then include the description to accompany the image in the RO.Unless supporting a feature article between one and four lines should suffice.
Ideal Caption Example:
Partlow K – 9157 GBRf 66745 Brundall 27 July 2023 – GBRf Class 66/7 No.66745 at Brundall on 27 July working the first 6P52 12.13 Whitemoor Yard-Lowestoft Reception. The train comprised of 20 empty IOA box wagons and returns as 6H52 19.30 to Whitemoor loaded with imported ballast from Norway.
This example provides a full description of the image as well as at the beginning the complete filename, thus enabling a complete link between the image and the intended caption. Even with a typo in the filename they can still be readily correlated. Dates should be written as an ordinary number, e.g. 14 September 2023, without the year. The time of the train in the format with a dot separating the hours and minutes e.g. 10.47.
IMAGE SUBMISSION
Current Topical Railway Scenes. A maximum of 10 images may be submitted per month, and should be emailed to roimages@rcts.org.uk as email attachments. Dependent on size the number of images attached to each mail may be limited by the capacity of your e-mail system., in which case you may need to use multiple separate emails.
Please note that roimages@rcts.org.uk is purely a divert “Inbox” and no response other than an auto reply will be received as a result of your submission. Questions or comments with regard to your submission should be directed to our image collator Julian Bogajski at bogajski@gmail.com.
If your email system has an annoyingly small attachment capacity free applications such as Wetransfer or Dropbox can be used as an alternative. However, under no circumstances should Cloud services ever be used.
All issues of the RO contain substantial feature items. Much of the material for these originate from source images and written articles provided by the membership which are then prepared for publication by the Editorial team. However, unlike the current submissions described above, these items are not time sensitive and as such are handled in a quite different way from ‘topical images. We are keen to welcome as much usable feature material as members can provide which in contrast to ‘Topical Images’ cam be derived from any period of railway operations or activity that the submitter considers members may be interested in.
Examples:
Such articles, assume both text and images are in digital form, should be forwarded by email to our special features address at rophotofeatures@rcts.org.uk. However, because of their likely historic nature, we do not want to ‘lose’ interesting material based purely on hard copy images from original none-digital sources. Whilst home scanning of photographs and trannies is now commonplace, we recognise that many members may not have such facilities and will need to submit the hard copy, whether – prints, slides or negatives, by snail-mail leaving the editorial team to do the necessary scanning / transcription.
Please forward all such hard copy image-based articles, including both text and images for conversion, to:
RO Managing Editor, 4 Doonview Gardens, Doonfoot, Ayr KA7 4HZ .
(Negatives and transparencies should be placed in film envelopes, and individually labelled and all prints should contain full caption details on the back. Film material, (ie: negs and slide) will be returned, but prints will not be returned unless specifically requested with return postage in stamps included).
Two points to note. When submitting images for articles you must be the copyright holder or have the permission of the holder to use the images. If you do not have images to illustrate your article it may be that there are some in the RCTS photo archive. If you go to the archive shop you can search for images without having to buy them. If you find suitable pictures then when submitting your article you still need to include captions but can advise that image XXX from the RCTS photo archive should be used.
A final point. Although these submission principles are designed for material destined for the RO, the RCTS is also a renowned publisher of books and although the destination of material for book publication may require submission to quite different email addresses, the basic submission protocols outlined above will also apply to such material.
To facilitate maximum enjoyment and visibility of members photographic collections, we welcome your submissions however proficient you feel you are as a railway photographer. At the RO we aim to publish the most illustrative, interesting and in some cases, topical images that hit our desks and whilst we may not always publish your first attempts at submission, we do seriously look at and consider every image received on the basis of interest, relevance and quality. Whilst the work of some photographers appears frequently in the RO, this is not because they are part of a secret RO photo clique which in no sense exists but simply that in learning from past experience, they regularly generate the type of interesting and relevant images we in the editorial team believe our readership wants.
So for those of you who have never thought of submitting, give it a try. Each year there are invariably one or two new photo contributors who become long term photographic supporters of the RO. Perhaps this year, as people say ‘It could be you!’.
