OOPS! APOLOGY

Iron-Men Album Staff

(The following is a letter from an English gentle man read on,
you’ll see).

‘I have just received from you the March-April edition of
your wonderful journal, which as I have said before we have nothing
like it on this side of the ‘pond’. Long may you continue.
Its contents I could write about at length, but what pleases me
most of all is that you capture the atmosphere we all felt who
worked in the country throughout the year with threshing,
ploughing, tree hauling and sawing with our engines. Its all very
wonderful! Except perhaps that awful violet colour on your cover.
It should be the green of the fields, the woods, meadows and clover
leys. (Green is on May-June Sir).

I was tickled pink to find you had printed a picture of my model
threshing set I sent you last year, but puzzled by the legend under
it making no mention that it came from England, actually Bloxham
Steam Rally 1970. Worse still is the fact you stated Courtesy of
Virgil Jansen of Illinois. For the copyright of that picture is
mine, I hold the negative and I am at a loss how the above
gentleman came to have a copy of that picture as I have had no
correspondence with him, and you are the person I sent the picture
to last year with all the details. I hope it is all just one of
those errors which occur from time to time in the best of organized
printing houses, (IT IS) because infringement of copyright is a
serious offense over here. However, perhaps you could put the name
right in a future issue, or offer some explanation, because I am
really puzzled.

I pass on your journal to many of my old steam driver pals, who
although a little puzzled at first by the different names you have
for the same machinery as we used, soon get the hang of it and
eagerly await the next issue. I am sure Mr. R. L. Johnson wherever
he may be will never know how much my many old friends unable to
afford to buy your magazine out of their meager pension, appreciate
what his gift subscription means, not only to me, but many others
besides.

To show the lack of communication which exists over here because
we have nothing like Iron-Men, in a previous issue was a
fascinating account of Roth-well Fair, near Kettering, England sent
in by a certain Stanley White of Kettering. You may hardly believe
it but for eight years I lived at Banbury which is only twenty
miles from Kettering. I never knew of the quaint customs and
procedures of ushering in Rothwell Fair. It had to come via your
journal over a thousand miles away. Thus your fame spreads
afar.