Railroad Lines Forum Shutting Down on March 1, 2025

ACL1504 · January 01, 2025, 01:46:11 PM

The following was posted on RR lines today.

I wish that I had better news to start off the new year, but Joe has decided to shut down the Forum as of March 1st. Rick, Joe and I decided to let you know ASAP so that you all would have time to save photos and info off the Forum that you might want to save. These two months will also give you time to discuss with each other alternative locations for us to meet up in the future.

Let's use this thread to make those arrangements and to share any tips you might have as to how to save content of interest.

I want to thank Joe for keeping the Forum going for over two decades. Over that time I have made a lot of friends and learned a lot of great modeling techniques here on the Forum, and I'm sure that you have as well!

EricQuebec · January 01, 2025, 03:58:22 PM

sad news...
Eric

tom.boyd.125 · January 01, 2025, 06:14:24 PM

That is sad news...will have to visit the RR Line Forum threads and write info down from some of my favorite ones...Tommy

ReadingBob · January 02, 2025, 10:31:21 AM

That is, indeed, sad news.

I haven't been over there lately. While I was still working, I perused both forums during the endless, boring meetings I had to endure. Now that I'm retired, I try to avoid the computer as much as possible and tend to favor this forum because the response time is much better (and if feels like home).

Jim Donovan · January 02, 2025, 11:34:23 AM

I just learned that Railroad Lines was closing. I am very sorry it is happening, these forums provide a wealth of knowledge of the hobby and a great place to share ideas.

The Modelers Forum is open and we will remain so. Let everyone you know we are open and everyone is welcome. Moreover let them know we have the winter challenge underway so join and show your skills!

Jim

jbvb · January 02, 2025, 11:37:55 AM

I have been on RR-Line since 2008. I'd started my layout thread there, I mostly posted about individual projects and commented on other people's work here (and at KItforums). I've backed most of my RR-Line contributions up to PDF, but I fear it will be a lot of work to recreate they way I used to post links to items elsewhere so non-members could refer to them.

MartyO · January 02, 2025, 05:10:35 PM

Wow! That knowledge in RR needs to be archived online and Read-only for a long time. Drop all ads, no accounts, purge useless (sub) forums where possible.

jbvb · January 02, 2025, 07:28:55 PM

I just moved my current active project here. 5 pages on RR-Line with people's comments, just 2 to get the gist of the build here. Took me about 2. hours total pulling the photos out of my own photo database (DigiKam, free). Archiving all of RR-Line is a big project, and those who've moved elsewhere (or passed) represent a lot of content that doesn't have a maintainer anymore.

craftsmankits · January 02, 2025, 10:11:33 PM

Wow. That is big news. Can't believe that some group wouldn't come in to save it. Sorry to hear this.

Mark

jbvb · January 03, 2025, 09:09:17 AM

There was a spell where crooks kept breaking into RR-Line's original Snitz software. Each time Joe had to shut it down and restore from backups. Then he spent $$$ and a month or more moving the content to vBulletin because it was being kept up to date. But links between threads were lost in the conversion. I fixed my own links, not sure if others did. Nobody took care of threads created by former members.

vBulletin was slow initially and got much worse when the AI bots started gobbling everything, over and over. RR-Line didn't get many new users after Joe hid the content from the bots (and everyone else who wasn't logged in). Personally, I was so busy with Seashore Trolley Museum and the Flying Yankee Association I hardly posted anything the past couple of years.

Bernd · January 06, 2025, 04:52:50 PM

Quote from: jbvb on January 03, 2025, 09:09:17 AMThere was a spell where crooks kept breaking into RR-Line's original Snitz software. Each time Joe had to shut it down and restore from backups. Then he spent $$$ and a month or more moving the content to vBulletin because it was being kept up to date. But links between threads were lost in the conversion. I fixed my own links, not sure if others did. Nobody took care of threads created by former members.

vBulletin was slow initially and got much worse when the AI bots started gobbling everything, over and over. RR-Line didn't get many new users after Joe hid the content from the bots (and everyone else who wasn't logged in). Personally, I was so busy with Seashore Trolley Museum and the Flying Yankee Association I hardly posted anything the past couple of years.

I was just reading through these posts and James' post stood out to me from his comments, that crooks kept breaking into RR-Line's original Snitz software. Apparently easy hackable old software. And then AI bots hitting the site and causing it to slow down. My question to the operators of this forum is, could that have been because it was on a home server and didn't have the protection of a commercial server? Seems like there is a difference between a home server and a commercial server. Is my thinking on the right track or did somebody throw the switch when I wasn't looking? Just trying to verify what I'm reading about home servers -vs- commercial servers in my online research.

Bernd

deemery · January 06, 2025, 05:02:15 PM

Quote from: Bernd on January 06, 2025, 04:52:50 PM
Quote from: jbvb on January 03, 2025, 09:09:17 AMThere was a spell where crooks kept breaking into RR-Line's original Snitz software. Each time Joe had to shut it down and restore from backups. Then he spent $$$ and a month or more moving the content to vBulletin because it was being kept up to date. But links between threads were lost in the conversion. I fixed my own links, not sure if others did. Nobody took care of threads created by former members.

vBulletin was slow initially and got much worse when the AI bots started gobbling everything, over and over. RR-Line didn't get many new users after Joe hid the content from the bots (and everyone else who wasn't logged in). Personally, I was so busy with Seashore Trolley Museum and the Flying Yankee Association I hardly posted anything the past couple of years.

I was just reading through these posts and James' post stood out to me from his comments, that crooks kept breaking into RR-Line's original Snitz software. Apparently easy hackable old software. And then AI bots hitting the site and causing it to slow down. My question to the operators of this forum is, could that have been because it was on a home server and didn't have the protection of a commercial server? Seems like there is a difference between a home server and a commercial server. Is my thinking on the right track or did somebody throw the switch when I wasn't looking? Just trying to verify what I'm reading about home servers -vs- commercial servers in my online research.

Bernd

Well, let's not confuse "home server" with a "commercial service provider." One would hope that a CSP would provide services beyond just running the same software you can run at home. But that's not guaranteed. You can move your home server to the cloud, and get exactly the same results. Now I suspect one service provided by cloud companies is at least basic denial-of-service/flow control on their connections (i.e. they provide a digital traffic cop on the road to your website, but all that cop provides is traffic control. It doesn't check each vehicle turning onto your road to see if it's an authorized user.) But when engaging a commercial service, it's important to read the fine print about what services they provide by default, what services they can provide you'd have to pay for, and what situations you're responsible for handling yourself, with your software running on their computers.

dave

jbvb · January 07, 2025, 08:47:43 AM

AFAIK Joe has been an IT professional since before the creation of RR-Line. His business hosts RR-Line. I believe RR-Line grew out of the long-gone Atlas Forum, which Joe may have been professionally involved with. A quick search shows Snitz built around 2000-era M$ tools that M$ eventually abandoned, unmaintained since 2009 and lots of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. I didn't see anything from Joe about how he chose vBulletin, just that the conversion involved considerable work.

Looking around, I see Modelersforum using Ezportal layered on top of Simple Machines Forum. This structure is aimed at hosting in the cloud, on Linux platforms using the Apache web server and the MySQL database (I used MySQL a lot in my last two jobs). So the hosting company gets to keep the operating system and (probably Virtual) server clean, the Forum maintainer works in PHP and may never see a Linux shell prompt. In general, Unix operating systems make much more efficient use of the computer (including disks and network) than M$ products, so that may be most of the performance difference I see between Modelersforum and Railroadline.

[Looing around further, vBulletin is also described as PHP using MariaDB or MySQL as the database. So I can't say how Joe is hosting RR-Line.

Bernd · January 07, 2025, 10:15:52 AM

James,

That made the most sense to me so far as to an explanation of how things work. Thank you for putting it in layman's terms.

Bernd

Jim Donovan · January 07, 2025, 06:41:21 PM

Quote from: jbvb on January 07, 2025, 08:47:43 AMAFAIK Joe has been an IT professional since before the creation of RR-Line. His business hosts RR-Line. I believe RR-Line grew out of the long-gone Atlas Forum, which Joe may have been professionally involved with. A quick search shows Snitz built around 2000-era M$ tools that M$ eventually abandoned, unmaintained since 2009 and lots of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. I didn't see anything from Joe about how he chose vBulletin, just that the conversion involved considerable work.

Looking around, I see Modelersforum using Ezportal layered on top of Simple Machines Forum. This structure is aimed at hosting in the cloud, on Linux platforms using the Apache web server and the MySQL database (I used MySQL a lot in my last two jobs). So the hosting company gets to keep the operating system and (probably Virtual) server clean, the Forum maintainer works in PHP and may never see a Linux shell prompt. In general, Unix operating systems make much more efficient use of the computer (including disks and network) than M$ products, so that may be most of the performance difference I see between Modelersforum and Railroadline.

[Looing around further, vBulletin is also described as PHP using MariaDB or MySQL as the database. So I can't say how Joe is hosting RR-Line.

James you have described how the Modelers Forum operates exactly. It was originally set up on Simple Machines utilizing a portion of a file server JimmyD operated in his business. For some reason he attempted to migrate to a different forum program, at that point, everything started to come apart resulting in JimmyD saying he had enough since he had sold his train business. He agreed to let me take over the site and I had it moved it to a commercial hosting company. Craig Rusty stepped in offering his help. He, along with some outside professional help were able to reconnect all threads back to the original Simple Machine programming. We were very fortunate to have Craig's expertize in saving our Forum. Now that the site is on a large commercial host server we have a provider helping us maintain the safety of the site. Moreover, we have no real size limitations. We bought enough space to handle our needs for the foreseeable future and can expand if needed. Hope that information helps.

Jim