Western Railroad Discussion > What’s Happening at Train Orders?

While strictly anecdotal, it seems the number postings on Train Orders seems to be decreasing.. Western forum weekend posts seemed to be the hardest hit.  We used to see 25 to 30 posts each day, now four or five are the norm and not the exception.  Nostalgia seems to be holding its own but if it were not for Valmont, Roadjob, Marty Barnard & rfarkas, it would be bleak as well.

Fewer fans, free Face Book forum, an over critical bunch who jump on every error or are we tired of the know it alls?

In a cave under a glacier yelling “where is everybody?

yY

Facebook, Flickr and others took over, I would presume.

For the purposes of "heads up" types of threads, FB is much better at targeting specific groups of people who might be interested to know that Engine XYZ is leading Train ABC.  

For sharing non-newsworthy photos, I go straight to Flickr, as I figure to not clog this page up with "Hey, I shot an AC44!" -type posts.

- Jeff Carlson

I've noticed a lot fewer posts in the western forum in the last year or so... very few people reporting on the Trona Railway, the Arizona and California etc these days.

I've noticed the same thing, the Narrow Gauge site (NGDF) seems to be doing OK but in all cases,
as mentioned, the bulk of posts are from the same people. I'm wondering how many people are out
fanning these days, my old crowd is pretty thinned out. Gez, third edit, and a big percentage of the
posted news, say on the TRAINS Newsline, concerns some form of transit.

Out



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/18 14:07 by callum_out.

Problem with FB is you start getting overwhelmed with what  I would call trivia.  Once you join more than a few groups there is an overload. 
Flickr, lot of raves but again after a while, not for me.  I like to see stuff from all over, not just my backyard.

Bob

Switched jobs; accordingly fewer opportunities to travel out trackside to see things that are "new and different".

working too much, getting train pics is similar to work

I think discussion is mostly dead.

Folks flip through the pictures and move on.

I think there are twice as many if not more active railfans on FB then Trainorders! FB provides a lot more real time info than what I call, after the fact Trainorders. There also, seems to be a much younger following on FB as well. It’s very rare on TO to find any real time info on train movements, unless your in the know. 

There has become too much negativity on TO now. If you don’t work for or had prior Railroad experience your nothing but a, don’t know anything “Foamer”. If it wasn’t for the Foamers from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s we wouldn’t have any photos to look back on today. Heck, if you work for a Railroad now leave your camera home not allowed to be used on the train. 

Valleyman

The true 'know it alls' are to be found in the many Facebook pages that cater to specific railroads....the 'know it alls' here have to PAY to appear on these hallowed pages, so we get a nicer lot of them.

On train orders your friends and likes are not being logged and sold all over the internet.

From my observation I don't think this is unique to TO. I've noticed the activity on other forums (railroad and non-railroad) has decreased lately. Same with social media. I've read comments from others stating the same in non-railroad venues. Seems to happen after every election. People are burned out on all the nonsense posted online and need a break.

I also think Facebook is terribly inefficient for sharing railroad content, except maybe sightings. Even then, users have no guarantee they will see the posting. FB controls everything and they change the algorithms all the time without warning. I can look at my FB feed on my laptop, my iPad using the FB app, and my iPad using a browser, all simultaneously, and get completely different content in each feed. The more pages you follow, the worse it gets too.

I don't follow any RR content on FB any more except for my union's national and local pages, and those of the carriers I've worked for, past and present, just to keep up with their propaganda machine. I also stay in touch with a lot of my fellow rails there, past and present. I actually can't stand getting railfan content in my FB feed. If it's something you want to come back to later, it's often too difficult to find it unless you have the presence of mind to save the post when you first see it. I think forums are much more efficient for this kind of content. They stay organized and are realtively easy to find later, even years later.

Flickr? Again, inefficient to me. It's like YouTube. 99.8% crap to find something interesting and of reasonable quality. With Flickr I have to look through mountains of galleries and albums of stuff I don't care about to find the occasional gem. It's like being subjected to my uncle Fred's family vacation slideshow. I prefer a discussion thread with a relevant title so I can decide whether to look at it or not before I even click on it.

I hope the forum platform doesn't get displaced by social media or photo gallery sites. I probably won't follow the trend. I have better things to do with my time then wade through all of it hoping to find something interesting. I prefer the way forums allow content to be consolidated, organized, discussed, and easy to locate later and Trainorders handles all of this very well.

Personally I think most people are just too cheap to join. They are willing to put up with advertisements, endless digging and searching, spam, trolls, etc. all to save a few bucks. If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product IMHO.

Case in point, Altamont Press, which used to be excellent and has turned into total tripe.  but it's free!

Out

I'd post more with photos, but my funky phone likes to lay the photos in sideways, and I no longer use a camera. Ive worked for hours trying to get pictures to appear right, but most of the time it's a waste of time.

Posted from Android

From what I'm hearing many people moved over to regional FB accounts, like Northern California, or PNW, etc. It's not so much what is being said, it's that there's too much being said that's not about a particular subject, like moving trains or trains in my town. There's a huge number of newbies that chat on the RR Live Cam sites as well, mostly focused on that location but also very chatty.

For me, there's a place for RR-interested people to talk about things amongst themselves, but those discussions often go way off track.

Valleyman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think there are twice as many if not more active
> railfans on FB then Trainorders! FB provides a lot
> more real time info than what I call, after the
> fact Trainorders. There also, seems to be a much
> younger following on FB as well. It’s very rare
> on TO to find any real time info on train
> movements, unless your in the know. 
>
> There has become too much negativity on TO now. If
> you don’t work for or had prior Railroad
> experience your nothing but a, don’t know
> anything “Foamer”. If it wasn’t for the
> Foamers from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s
> we wouldn’t have any photos to look back on
> today. Heck, if you work for a Railroad now leave
> your camera home not allowed to be used on the
> train. 
>
> Valleyman

Very well said.

Also I can post pics directly from phone to Facebook . News seem closer to real time . I'm a Santa fe fan so I can go directly to that page .
( instant gratification ).

Posted from Android

Valleyman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There has become too much negativity on TO now. If
> you don’t work for or had prior Railroad
> experience your nothing but a, don’t know
> anything “Foamer”. If it wasn’t for the
> Foamers from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s
> we wouldn’t have any photos to look back on
> today. Heck, if you work for a Railroad now leave
> your camera home not allowed to be used on the
> train. 
>
> Valleyman

To another point with Valleyman and others,

Even if we are allowed to take our camera, some of us are working 190 to 230 hour months..   There is not a lot of time to do anything else, PERIOD..  Not even have a chat with the significant other 2x a week..   Work and sleep..  Eating MAYBE twice a day..


SP8100 - A very tired rail right now..

 

YukonYeti Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> yelling “where is everybody?
> yY

Well, it’s a great question, but please don’t yell.
 
Now you’ve gotten me to wondering, how AM I spending my time? 
Thankfully, TO is far from my top priority.  I do like to check in daily and see what’s been posted, and I hope to keep it as a spare time thing.  As such, I don’t post very often.
 
Personally, I’ve pre-occupied myself with learning to fly my new camera for the last 7 months.  Whoever is in charge of the weather where I live has granted me a 5-week bonus period of almost no rain (I’m hearing rumors it will cease this week), and I have taken advantage of it.
 
When the monsoons arrive, I expect to get less flying time in.  Those hours will be instantly consumed with other activities such as “waterfalling” with my lovely bride and/or studying up on how to use “Lightroom” (hoping to subscribe soon) for photo + video editing.
 
For now, though, we’re preparing for the Festival of Thanksgiving and the gathering of 65 (a moderate year) relatives and friends for 4 days.  After that, numerous family Christmases.  In short, life is busy. Trainorders shall remain at its current priority level, and that works well for me.

HH

Personally, I find the layout for TO to be tired and not mobile friendly. I often read TO on my phone while my kids go to sleep, and looking at pictures can be a challenge. Posting comments from mobile can be less-than-ideal. I prefer the forum structure, ability to search and read comments much better to Facebook.

I just renewed my TO subscription, I still find it valuable. These sites are really only as good as people make it. TO does not have a strong modeling forum and Facebook is easy and free for just looking at pics. Hopefully, TO will continue to evolve and find a spot they are very effective.