Western Railroad Discussion > Followup to yesterday's derailment

Yesterday was quite a big day on Trainorders.com. It was the most read day ever for the site, hosting more than 200 users at any given time for most of the day. We served out close to 300,000 web pages, about double out typical amount. Our logs show about 14,500 visits. However, due to proxy servers used by many ISP’s and corporations this total is probably closer to 20,000 visits. Our dual processor servers held up well and for the first time I think they were actually under a load. Thanks to our programmer Brian Moon, our software ran very efficiently under the load.

I was particularly impressed with the civilness among our members. In past years these types of incidents would result in crazy flame wars on the forums. I can think of a couple of railroad accidents in previous years where the member response caused me to ponder the future of the web site. Most of discussion yesterday was not only civilized, but also very constructive and informative. There are so many folks on Trainorders.com that work in related engineering and railroading fields that it was really enlightening to hear all the input.

I also read into many of the postings that a lot of you felt compassion towards the human loss. It was nice to see that kind maturity than just the nuts and bolts of railroading. As hobbyist we tend to look solely at the mechanical side of things, but it was nice to see all issues and feelings talked about

In closing I want to express that you are a wonderful bunch of people. You are great ambassadors not only for the hobby, but also for the railroad industry and that is something to be proud of.

Todd Clark
Trainorders.com

Thanks Todd, Everyone. I was on the road all day yesterday and didn't hear about the accident until the afternoon. I plugged in the lap top when I got to the hotel and went right to Trainorders to find out what really happened. I was able to easily sort through the posts and find out the real story. In fact, every time I am out of town and the tracks are closed I go to this site to find out how long I will be waiting to go home. This has really become an informative rail site that I have been coming to ever since the first Tehachapi webcam, that was probablly '96 or '97.

Brian

webmaster Wrote:
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> I was particularly impressed with the civilness
> among our members. In past years these types of
> incidents would result in crazy flame wars on the
> forums.

Well, that explains why it's been so cold outside.... :D

Still, it's probably the shock of it all....


Kennedy