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Accessing Trainorders.com

In order to use the discussion forums and other premium features you will need to register and choose a login name and password. Effective August 2003 there is now an annual fee to offset the cost of operating this web site. Before you get scared off read about our operation to understand what we offer.

You may ask why should you pay to access a web site when you already pay $20-$50 a month to access the internet. The money you pay to your service provider does not come back to this web site. The infrastructure to keep Trainorders operating totals around $150,000. The monthly bill to keep the site connected to the internet is approximately $1700.

Why so much? Most railroad hobby sites may see a few dozen visitors a day. Trainorders typically receives 13,000-14,000 visitors daily. All this traffic requires huge amounts of infrastructure and bandwidth. On a typical day the Trainorders.com server will dish out over 160,000 web pages and nearly 30 gigabytes of data. On some recent busy days we have served out over 50 gigabytes of data. On average our web server serves out 7 computer files every second. In 2004 we served out over 50 million web pages to railroad enthusiasts around the world.

This all costs money. When Trainorders was launched in 1997 it ran off of a single Pentium 133mhz server with 2 gigabytes of disk space. Today the site is on it's sixth server running with dual processors, over two gigabytes of RAM and 292 gigabytes of high speed disk space. We currently operate with three dedicated web servers housed in a major network facility in Downtown Los Angeles. We also operate a backup data site in Toronto, Canada.

We utilize premium bandwidth to ensure that our web site runs speedy for all visitors throughout the internet. You will find that Trainorders.com is the fastest railroad site on the internet.

Membership Features

• Use of our discussion forums for the purpose of posting messages.
• Our web site has an inventory of over 100,000 images and close to one million message postings.
• You will have the ability to choose to have messages displayed in your own time zone, ability to view all images posted, and many more options.
• As a member, our system will keep track of what you have read and mark discussion subjects that you have not viewed as "new".
• 50mb of space space to build your own personal web site utilizing ftp.
• Your personal web site listing in our public directory. Plus, if you use your Trainorders.com web space, your site address and brief description will be rotated through the home page on a regular basis.
• Unique usernames and password protection to prevent others from stealing your identity.
• No annoying ads. While other web sites support themselves through banner and pop ads, Trainorders.com does not derive any revenue from ads. Your time is valuable and we respect that.
• View 1000's of exciting Quicktime videos with sound from our Sand Patch, Tehachapi and Dunsmuir railroad video cameras. These incredible cameras capture high quality video clips of nearly every train to pass during the day. We retain two months of archives on the web site.
• Video library complete with over 200 high quality railroad video clips spanning the 1960's to current day.
• Ability to post up to four classified ads on our ad system at one time. These ads will appear for a period of time on our home page which is viewed more than 8,000 times a day. This is a nice alternative to Ebay.
• We have a video sharing area that allows visitors to share media clips with other site visitors. Currently this area contains over 400 video clips. This unique feature allows for the submission of videos up to 20mb in size for each clip.
• Reliable operation. Trainorders.com's network is very reliable and we are rarely down. Since coming online in 1997, Trainorders.com's uptime has been 99.999% of the time. We are rarely offline.
• Our dedicated support staff will help you with any web site related issues you may have. Nearly all support questions are answered within 12 hours of submission. However, most are answered within a few hours.
• Our operating team consists 4 web programmers, a support person, 4 webcam hosts, and a general web site manager.
• Partnership offers allow our members to receive discounts on other railfan publications and services. Currently, Trainorders.com members receive $10 off a one year subscription to Railfan & Railroad Magazine if they do not already subscribe.
• Additional features in the planning stages to be rolled out in the future. We are always looking to roll out new features to expand the online railroad hobby experience. During the past year we have spent more than $25,000 on upgrades and new features.

Subscription Rates:
3 months $11
6 months $18
12 months $32

Railfan & Railroad Magazine subscribers receive 12 months for $24. Our system will verify your subscription status during the registration process and indicate the discount at payment time.

If you are ready to join the club click here to access our secure registration system. We accept Visa, Mastercard, check or money order. When you choose to pay by credit card your account will be actived instantly. If you are already a member and wish to renew then log into your account choose the membership option. If you are a heritage user then click on this link for more information about your membership options.

We make every effort to serve users with both dialup and broadband connections. However, the video library requires a broadband connection.
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