Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

Here's the story on the future of the site.

With all that's gone on the last week or two, and knowing that the domain was expiring on April 29, I was going to pull the plug on the site. I had plenty of other stuff to do. My family is keeping me busy with tons of home improvement projects that I have to help on, because no one else can do them. I had other hobbies to fall back on to keep me busy during the time I was not working on the house.

While nearly everyone (who still posts) was sad to see it go, I didn't care. 12 years was enough for me.

However TrainmanKight would not let it die. I wanted to let it go, he didn't, so he came up with the idea for donations to save the site. Essentially, you have TrainmanKight to thank for the site going on.

Yes, the site will continue another year. However this last experience has left me bitter, and battered. Even though the site has been paid, I still don't want to do it, but since people made an effort to save the site, I guess I can put some effort into it, although I don't really want to. A few new rules have been implemented, with some minor tweaking and further explanations still to come. For this next year, my heart is not going to be with the site. I have lost the passion for it, since I've only made one railfanning trip since 2008 to Today. With gas prices very high right now, and still expected to climb, I won't be making any railfanning trips at all. Gas prices would have to fall to $2.00 or less per gallon for me to start traveling again.

After the April 29 update, the site will go into a 2 week hiatus with submissions reopening again on May 13, 2011 so that I can get my home improvement projects done, and since my previous help has turned traitor on me, I'm the only person left to work on submissions, and with increasing temperatures and workload on me to get home improvements done, I will have little to no time for the site for the next 2 weeks, and beyond.

I may end up having to update monthly due to how little time I have. I'll have to determine that when the time comes.

To those who donated, thank you for keeping the site alive. I just hope it won't be in vain.

I just want to see it up.

I have 2 crossings left to submit (one from Southern AZ, the other from Illinois.) I am going back to Illinois from Late May until early August, so you wont hear from me during that time, but I should have tons of new stuff when i get back.

I should be able to take a little bit after the housework is done.

Mike,

You gotta do what you gotta do. There are more important things in life than updating the website all the time, and I'm sure everyone understands that. If you are only able to update the site monthly, no biggie. As long as it is still there.

You've put a lot of effort into what's out there, and it would be a shame to see all that go. Like me back in 2003, I'm sure there are new people that happen upon your site and probably do one of these:

Those are the people that this site needs to stay up for, even if it isn't updated that frequently. They will be able to spend weeks looking at the 45,000 pictures and 3800 crossings out there.

Monthly updates are fine. That's a lot more often than a lot of sites are updated as it is.

Maybe then I'll actually have time to submit my Milwaukee pictures. There's usually too much going on in any given week for me to get hold of Mike before the due date.