Appears that rrpicturearchives.net has gotten a facelift

[mu26aeh]

Went to mentioned website tonight and noticed its gotten a face lift.  Don't think all the links are worked out yet, but hopefully a move in the right direction ?

[C855B]

Appears so. Quick check impressed me as much better performance, so must be a new server or new host. Some issues on page display; photo pages were clipping off comments. But as he said, work remaining.

Laudable effort. Too bad so much was lost in the crash... was it two years ago?

[nkalanaga]

Yes, I still find pages that show "1 of 0 photos", because the images were lost.  Nit many, but every now and then.

I just tried it.  I've had multiple railroads bookmarked for years, to go directly to the "Rolling Stock Number Listing" page.  Those pages still work, but none of the number range links do.  Going to the new home page, I don't see any way to find a railroad except to search the list - all 9,987 of them.  As a test, I entered "BN' in the search box.  That gives every reporting mark with "BN" anywhere in it.  Burlington Northern was NOT the first one.

[cv_acr]

As a test, I entered "BN' in the search box.  That gives every reporting mark with "BN" anywhere in it.  Burlington Northern was NOT the first one.

That's one thing that really annoys me about railcarphotos.com as well. They have a good search page with lots of options, including "lineage" but any search just does a simple sort of "text exists" match that matches on not whole words. So any attempt to search for a two-letter reporting mark returns everything else.

I specifically made my site's search do whole-word-only matches so reporting mark lookups are accurate.

[nkalanaga]

I just tried their "Search" again.  Searching for "ATSF", "MILW", and "GN", all resulted in "no results found".  Apparently the only way to find a specific railroad really is to manually go through the entire list. 

This "upgrade" is definitely not an improvement!

[mu26aeh]

Getting to search is a multi-step process at this point.  If you hover cursor over Photos, click on search.  This takes you to a page that looks like the old setup, click on search on the left side and the old search box comes up.  Type ATSF and you get results.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I applaud his effort to modernize the site.

But I wish he had FULLY modernized it instead of just moving it into the 2010s.

I also wish he gave the whole thing done thought from the user experience perspective.

I know I agonize over all of the archive sites that I've built and continue to build. Like the rebuilt Conrail archive or the D&H one. Or the New Haven and NKP ones.

Honestly, I've thought about recreating his site but I haven't figured out a business model for it that makes any sense.

So I guess I shouldn't throw stones and just be glad it exists in the first place.

[nkalanaga]

Yes, one can get to the old search page - for individual photos, if one knows the date of the photo.

Going to the far left, and clicking on "Railroad", gives the new search page.

Clicking the old "Search" gives a page for searching individual photos again, this time by title and keywords.  I tried "GN" and got a page of photos having nothing to do with Great Northern rolling stock.

This new design may be great - for those who know what photo they're looking for, or when it was taken or uploaded.

[Mark5]

Seems to be a work in progress, this morning I noticed under fallen flags a search window, which makes finding something like "NW" much easier.

I went to the number range section for rolling stock - the first road number I clicked on was missing the photo.

Hopefully, they are aware and are working to fix.

I am a "member" there, but I'm still highly annoyed that they rejected a photo that I submitted that is clearly superior to many of the pics on that site. 

Mark

[C855B]

I am a "member" there, but I'm still highly annoyed that they rejected a photo that I submitted that is clearly superior to many of the pics on that site. 

SOP. It was a while back, but I submitted halfway-decent photos that filled roster holes also to have them rejected. I complained mightily, as if it was going to do me any good.