Railroad Forums 

  • How long have you been on railroad.net

  • General discussion about the RAILROAD.NET site, forums, or content ONLY. Please do not post your general railroading questions, please choose an appropriate forum. For help using the site, please post in the Help Using RAILROAD.NET Forum.
General discussion about the RAILROAD.NET site, forums, or content ONLY. Please do not post your general railroading questions, please choose an appropriate forum. For help using the site, please post in the Help Using RAILROAD.NET Forum.

Moderator: Jeff Smith

 #979948  by Otto Vondrak
 
MEC407 wrote:It was in March of 2004 when the web site switched over to phpBB for its forum software. Existing members had to create new accounts.
Ah yes, that was a glorious time... Back when men fought on BBS and IRC like men...
 #981169  by Tommy Meehan
 
Patrick Boylan wrote:I used to be gardendance, but I thought it probably wasn't a good idea to use my real name, so I picked my current unassuming alias to try to maintain internet anonyminity.
I edit the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society's New York Chapter newsletter. At some point I'd like to write an article for the newsletter about Internet railfanning. There's sure enough stuff to write about. :)

One thing I've always wondered about....Mr.Boylan you're not alone in believing it's maybe not a good idea to use your real name on the Internet. Can you say specifically why or is it just a gut feeling?

I have been using my real name -- which really is tommy meehan -- for many years and I haven't seemed to have suffered any consequences.

Quite a few groups I belong to now require you to use your name when you send messages. Or at least what you claim as your real name.

Oh by the way, I joined the old RR.Net (except you didn't have to join, right? Just start posting) in about 1999 or 2000.
 #981179  by Patrick Boylan
 
Tommy Meehan wrote: One thing I've always wondered about....Mr.Boylan you're not alone in believing it's maybe not a good idea to use your real name on the Internet. Can you say specifically why or is it just a gut feeling?
I was trying to make a small joke, gardendance was my old username, I changed it to Patrick Boylan, which is my real name. The major reason was that I noticed my brother posting to this site with his real name.

So I don't actually think we need to keep our true identities secret. I don't feel I've posted anything so horrendous that I can't withstand the consequences.
 #981373  by Tommy Meehan
 
Patrick Boylan wrote: I was trying to make a small joke...
I actually got the joke after I posted the message. I was going to go back and edit it -- ask, if gardendance was your real name, were you Native American maybe? (something clever like that :) ) -- but I didn't have time.

BTW, I was IN the old Railroad.Net the night it went down.

I had gotten off a train at GCT, heading for Third Avenue, and for the second night in a row the same woman bumped into me! Both nights she was coming off the escalators from the MetLife Building, both nights with her nose in the air, acting very imperial like, 'How dare this man cross in front of me?'

The same woman! Two nights in a row! What are the odds of that? In Grand Central?

Anyway I stopped at the Kinkos at Third Avenue near E.39th to check my email and decided to post my little story in the RR.Net Metro-North Forum. I wrote the message, previewed it and then, when I clicked 'SUBMIT,' lo and behold I was redirected to the home page for Disney World.

I tried the usual steps to get back to Railroad.Net but slowly it dawned on me, "Hey man, Railroad.Net is gone!"
 #981491  by Robert Paniagua
 
Anyway I stopped at the Kinkos at Third Avenue near E.39th to check my email and decided to post my little story in the RR.Net Metro-North Forum. I wrote the message, previewed it and then, when I clicked 'SUBMIT,' lo and behold I was redirected to the home page for Disney World.

I remember that also!! When I tried to enter stuff in the MBTA and Amtrak Forums, and hit the Post button, I also got redirected to that Disney World Page. It turned out that someone hacked into the site and eventually ruined it causing everything to get lost from the John Stewart Era.
 #982376  by N4J
 
Tommy Meehan wrote:
Patrick Boylan wrote:I used to be gardendance, but I thought it probably wasn't a good idea to use my real name, so I picked my current unassuming alias to try to maintain internet anonyminity.
I edit the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society's New York Chapter newsletter. At some point I'd like to write an article for the newsletter about Internet railfanning. There's sure enough stuff to write about. :)

One thing I've always wondered about....Mr.Boylan you're not alone in believing it's maybe not a good idea to use your real name on the Internet. Can you say specifically why or is it just a gut feeling?

I have been using my real name -- which really is tommy meehan -- for many years and I haven't seemed to have suffered any consequences.

Quite a few groups I belong to now require you to use your name when you send messages. Or at least what you claim as your real name.

Oh by the way, I joined the old RR.Net (except you didn't have to join, right? Just start posting) in about 1999 or 2000.
I really wouldn't use your real name , it can be dangerous and you leave a trail of crumbs for someone to possible stalk you or do damage to your reputation..... Ive been using forum sites since I was 13 , which is 2003 if your wondering and ive never used my real name. However I do sign with my real name or my first name on blogging sites.....
 #982587  by b&m 1566
 
I've been a member since 2003, however my screen name was different on the old site li2002il. I changed it to b&m 1566 after looking at a picture I have of a Boston & Maine GP7, (numbered 1566) just before I signed back up.
 #982864  by Tommy Meehan
 
Not all the old postings were lost from RR.Net I either. Not at first, anyway.

They were archived in a site called Wayback Machine. (That might actually be the site's keyword search terms.) I copied a couple (and still have them) that contained info I wanted to keep. The old threads don't seem to be available anymore though. :(

In fact, IIRC someone on RR.Net II (when it got up and running again) asked Otto would it be okay to copy-and-paste a thread from the original site? I think Otto said okay but I can't remember if the person actually did it.
 #983030  by Gilbert B Norman
 
I have been at Railroad Net since June 1999, with the first major event to occur after I went on-line was "John-John" showing the world what a hot shot pilot he was. I discovered Railroad Net during an AOL trial, which was a freebie with the purchase of any major brand computer. Some of my early material is still at Archives Org

I served two (2yr) terms as Moderator of the Amtrak Forum (until Mike and Otto resurrected the site during 2002, it was not moderated) 2002-2004 and 2005-06.

I have always been registered here with my given legal name, and like Mr. Meehan, I have never had any adverse consequences from so being, although had I still been with the railroad industry as I was 1970-81, i might have thought twice. From 1981 to 2003, i was in private practice as a CPA with my own firm - and far removed from industry affairs (a trucking client did do container transfer work).
 #983368  by Otto Vondrak
 
Tommy Meehan wrote:
BTW, I was IN the old Railroad.Net the night it went down.

Anyway I stopped at the Kinkos at Third Avenue near E.39th to check my email and decided to post my little story in the RR.Net Metro-North Forum. I wrote the message, previewed it and then, when I clicked 'SUBMIT,' lo and behold I was redirected to the home page for Disney World.

I tried the usual steps to get back to Railroad.Net but slowly it dawned on me, "Hey man, Railroad.Net is gone!"

That may not be entirely correct. The original RAILROAD.NET administered by John Stewart had a feature called the "Disney bounce." Stewart could block your IP and redirect you to Disney if you had violated policy or otherwise annoyed him. Remember the old site had no moderators except for the owner.

-otto, a past victim of the disney bounce
 #983780  by Tommy Meehan
 
I never had a problem on the old RR.Net. Or any message board really (with the exception of one forum).

Later on the night I got the Disney bounce someone emailed me (or emailed a Yahoo Group I belonged to) that RR.Net was down. Nobody had been able to load it. I think the following day or two I started getting the dreaded, page not found message when I tried to open the site via My Favorites.

It was when I did a Google search sometime later (and for an unrelated purpose) that I uncovered the server owner's message that the site had been taken down for exceeding it's allotted band width and failing to heed warnings to scale down.