Does anybody know what happened to this excellent photographic archive? It has been missing for almost 2 weeks.
Lou N
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
That SUCKS, just tried and it's not there. Loved that site.
Here's the answer from George Elwood:
The Railroad Fallen Flags web (RRFF) site was first installed on the internet in November 1994. Using a small amount of available space on my internet provider's server, small images files were made available. Running out of space, I was offered space on the Bluemoon server in Buffalo. The site was stood up there in Oct 1997.
In 2002 the site was listed as one of the top ten RR related web sites by "Model Railroader."" The next year it was named the best site by the magazine. That year the site received over 65000 hits in one month, the high point. The site has been cited in other magazines over the years. The site has provided support for various model projects, articles and books.
The RRFF has been a true labor of love for me. I don't have a clue as to the number of hours I have spent. Since I retired at the end of last year, I have been putting in even more hours. I start between 0730 and 1000 and end between 2200 and 2300 every day. Of course I take time to eat, walk and complete tasks around the house although this list is growing longer.
When I started the image size was kept to around 35k in order to get the most online. This image size has now moved to around 100K.
Some of the operator manuals are much larger. I prevent WebCrawler's from gathering information on the site material. With the number of files, this would impact the overall operation of the site. It does keep me off the various search engines, which result in low visibility across the railfan community and a low access rate.
As of shutdown the RRFF has 358,698 files with a total size of 28.7GB.
Images run from the 1800's to last week. I don't have an exact count but over 1000 railroads and private car/loco owners are present on the system.
Looking at the basic numbers for May, the site supported over 770000 successful requests for 56GB of data transfer.
In 2002 the RRFF requested donations to support the site. The response was great and this continued over the years providing yearly funding of the site.
The donation drive for July 2013-Jun 2014 provided barely enough for the year by using some of the left over funds from the previous year. As a result, I decided to see how many people cared about the site and I removed the easy link to PayPal and the snail mail address. In the previous 12 months only 13 people requested information on how to send a donation. A few foreign visitors found my PayPal account and sent a donation. The end result is that there are not enough funds to cover another year. On 30 Jun 2014 I removed the RRFF from the Bluemoon system and my account was terminated.
I would like to thank those of you who have supported the site over the years either through donations or submitting material to post. All have been great appreciated.
That being said, I have another location for the RRFF. Using the limited donations from the past year and the rest from my mad money, the new site is paid for the next year. The RRFF will return within 1-3 weeks at the same URL (http://www.rr-fallenflags.org) if everything goes right. I will be going through the current material on the site and removing duplicate and poor quality images before standing it up. I have also noted some misplaced files which will be placed in the correct location . If you have been submitting material to the site, continue to do so as I will continue to process the files and will start with a large number of images.
Hey George ,
why not charge $5-$10 a year for access to the website .
Very inexpensive for the amount of reference photo's
Bernie
George, I agree with Scratchbuilder.....If you want to charge $5, $10 or so I would be more than willing to ante up.
Why don't you put your feelers out for this?
Originally Posted by Scratchbuilder1-48:
Hey George ,
why not charge $5-$10 a year for access to the website .
Very inexpensive for the amount of reference photo's
Bernie
I agree! Well worth it!
Hoppy
I would be up for a reasonable yearly fee.
I agree with everyone's comments, Fallen Flags website is a great resource for history and modeling information..
George, how about putting something on this forum, when you get " Fallen Flags" up and running again, and like the others said, I don't mind at all giving you $10- $15 per year to use the site. What the He**, it's one of a kind. Just looking at the "Head Count" numbers tells something.
What a resource for railroad history buffs like me! It's one-of-a-kind for me and
it would be a cryin' shame to lose it. All your favorite railroads in one place!
Hoppy
I didn't even know he was looking for donations or there was a link to his paypal account. I'd pay for a yearly access.
Would like a snail-mail address to send a personal check.
Hoppy
It would be criminal to this great site and resource. I would pay for access to it.
