Thoughts?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405482648838158.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

The linked story is excellent, it is great that the children of military veterans are carrying their stories and history forward. It is also very demonstrative of the need to seek out and interview the people who lived the history while there is the opportunity to do so. Once they have passed, you are always working with second hand accounts, even if you contact their next of kin. In our little corner of history, the time has already about run out for talking with the steam designers and the pioneers of the first generation of diesel motive power on the US railroads, but there are plenty of other topics deserving of attention. What it requires is good investigative journalism and making the necessary effort.

One of the issues in railroad history is that there are many very interesting topics that have never gotten much "press" or been told adequately because researching them would require first hand interviews, and that could involve considerable work. Meanwhile other more accessible topics are continually regurgitated and beaten to death, often with stale details borrowed from earlier accounts written by others. It is sad that this kind of "me too" approach to journalism has become so common in railfan writing because it distorts the coverage and tends to overstate the importance of the easily done subjects.

PC