# Is A Personal Website Worth It??



## rsmproductions (Jan 5, 2008)

Greetings Everyone,

I wanted to get some of your opinions on having a website dedicated to the hobby and whatever you might be interested in i.e. small business, family, etc. I know some of you have them and I've really enjoyed visiting and gleaning ideas from them.

Besides teaching high school choirs I also have a home studio where I create Broadway type soundtracks for theaters to use. I've been doing it for a little over 20 years and have never advertised. But things have picked up the last 3 - 4 years just by word of mouth. This isn't anything I can retire with but it is a part time business that keeps me from working packing sheds or teaching summer school for some extra income.

I would also like to make available to anyone interested the goings on of my garden railroad. My wife does some occasional writing as well.

I appreciate any of your opinions.

Richard


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

yes, make one! 

Best thing I did... nice place to keep notes and not lose anything. 

Greg


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

I had a personal web site for a while but found it a whole lot more work than any pleasure I got from making it available. On the other hand there are some great web sites out there that are done by individuals (Greg Elmassian comes to mind as someone that has a great web site that he has put together... I am sure he can attest to the amount of work that went into it and whether or not it is worthwhile to him... I know his is very worthwhile to the people that visit it!)

Recognize that if you post photos of other people, they may not like it. There are some legal hindrances to using photos of other people, based on where they were when the photo was taken (and what they were doing!).

If you have the information you want to display all ready and well defined then creating the site will not be too difficult, but if you are like me and have stuff all over and in too many different formats, it can be a pain to collect it all and make it worth others' time to view.

Good luck with your endeavour.


EDIT: HA! I see Greg has already answered before I got done blabbering.


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## rsmproductions (Jan 5, 2008)

Hi Greg...thanks for the quick reply.

I noticed your link at your signature. Nice website and easy to move around plus very informative. 

Did you buy your domain name? And is it something you have to purchase once or is it a monthly type thing?

Thanks,
Richard


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Is it "worth" it? depends on what you are trying to do. 
If you only do it because you think it's something that you 'should' do, to help build the hobby.... Then it's a lot of work.  
If you are a complete narcissist. Then it's probably a requirement by definition  
If you just want to share your ideas, passions.... and screw-ups with the world. Then it can be a lot of fun.  

Ask me which I am, lol! http://www.the-ashpit.com/mik/layout.html 

In short, if you want to do it. Then do it. If you really had to ask, then you probably don't have the right mindset to make it worthwhile to yourself. 

Mine used to be set up as a back page of my biz domain, now it's piggybacked on the domain of a board I admin.
If you want your own domain, and don't get free space with your ISP contract, look into either a paid space on one of the boards, or goDaddy


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## rhyman (Apr 19, 2009)

Richard,
I highly recommend creating a personal web site. Like Greg says, it's a good place to put things. They are fairly simple to put together, and you can get as creative as you want with header photos and the like. There are plenty of templates and tools available for web site creation. And ... the big plus ... you don't have to be a computer geek to do it!


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Richard, 

Couple of comments on the cost of a web site. 

I personally find web sites rather inexpensive. 
You need to buy a domain name, depending on the type of domain, ie the suffix, the cost will vary anywhere between a few dollars and tens of dollars - the .info domain is quite cheap, .com is more expensive. 
You also need a web host unless you want to set up your home computer that way which I would not recommend. 

I went with Host Papa as my web host because their uptime is very good, the offer basically unlimited storage and bandwidth, but mostly because they use "green" power. 
When I decided on the host I was going to use, I checked on the web for the 10 highest ranking ones as far as customer satisfaction was concerned and Host Papa was the only one in the list of top ten that used green power - so that decision was easy. 
Cost per year for a host is around $100.- give or take, Host Papa includes one "free" domain name of your choice and they renew that for you as part of their annual fee - but they also allow multiple domain names under one account if you want to set up a different web site for various topics. Price for the hosting service stays the same but you have to register and pay for the other domain names. 
One of the web sites I run with my Host Papa account is the Large Scale database at www.gbdb.info 
Currently I have two other unrelated (to Large Scale) web sites using the same account, so cost is quite cheap. 

I did my secondary domain registration using Go Daddy, but there are lots of registrars and also lots of web hosts. 
I just looked up Host Papa - they have an introductory special on right now at $3.95 per month. 
http://www.hostpapa.com/ 

Regards, 
Knut


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## afinegan (Jan 2, 2008)

If your a computer guru, you can host sites on your own home internet (and save some money).

All the pictures I post on here run from dimensionware.com which points to my home comcast connection, so I don't pay anything more than my normal broadband internet access bill and the yearly domain name renewal. Theres a script on the server that updates the dns server if comcast decides to change my ip address. This is not for the faint of heart, just a possible solution.

Heres a pic hosting from my comcast connection (my server is an old pc running linux under my entertainment center):









If any of you are savvy and understand how, lookup zoneedit.com, they give you 2 free external dns zones, so you can setup a script on your local computer to update them if your isp changes your ip address

I know it might not help you, but I want to show you its very possible. I have been doing it this way for about 3 years now (and maybe 1 day or less a year you might catch my signature not loading lol).


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

I've had my own domain and website for a few years now and I recommend it. 

In the past I was using "free" photo hosting websites. The first one went bankrupt and pulled the plug without warning and allowing anyone to get any of their photos from it. That was inconvenient for me, but it really hurt the people who had been uploading their pics directly to the site without first putting them on their computer. 

The second photo site I used was owned by Epson and they got tired of supporting it, so they shut it down. They at least gave people advance notice. 

Both sites also had limits on the amount of photos (data) that you could upload.

Anytime you are using someone else's service, you will be at their mercy. They can restrict the number or size of photos you can upload, or they can shut down the whole thing. I much prefer owning my own site where I am in control.


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By afinegan on 15 Aug 2012 10:00 PM 
If your a computer guru, you can host sites on your own home internet (and save some money).




















That only works reasonably well if you have an internet connection with a fast upload speed.
I use DSL with a download speed of 6 Mb/sec but the upload is only 620 Kb/sec.
Your upload is a lot faster - the picture you posted came up reasonably fast.


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## ralphbrades (Jan 3, 2008)

I would say yes that it is worth the effort. But do not expect it to be an instant thing. I began mine an 1994 using raw HTML code, a VT100 terminal emulator and * vi* as an editor, (I date back to 1986 *System III Unix*), needless to say that modern tools are a lot quicker to produce sites with... Over the years it has passed through several ISPs and is now firmly lodged at my former employers, I designed some of the computers they sell before I retired. According to the SYSADM login I have 774.78Mb of data held there with a "scratchpad" of 50Mb. The scratchpad is where I build the new pages and test them before release. It uses a commercial grade synchronous data line at 144Mb S-1. We have a domestic synchronous line at 50Mb S-1. If you use your website to promote your aspect of your hobby (and mine really needs a spring clean!) then don't expect that much traffic. I get roughly 6,000 visits per annum with around 0.8Gb of data transfer per month. To put it into perspective my wifes' site is devoted to her quilting and garden and gets NINE TIMES the traffic that mine does even though the content is only 60Mb. My son uses his site to promote his chess program written in C++ he has been writing it for about the past 18 months -it seems to be quite popular and his moniker is well known amongst chess computer forums. He is now working on the problems of porting it to "Beowulf" clusters of Raspberry Pi computers. The problem is that very few people realise that he is only 12(!) 

regards 

ralph


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## afinegan (Jan 2, 2008)

Heh, I still use vi on the command line, because I don't feel like mucking up the os with some other editor (like pico or nano). 
Cool project with the Beowulf cluster, those little "Rasberry Pi's" are a hit in the maker world (along with the arduinos) 

A website, is a labor of love type of thing. You do it because you like to (and yes it can easily be a full-time job if you let it).


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Yes, you can get down and dirty in programming and have it take a lot of time. 

But there are many web site softwares available from the ISP where making a web site is no more complex than making a document in an editor program. 

I use Joomla, powerful enough to be used for many commercial sites but easy to use. I only use very little of it's capability, but like DCC, you only NEED to use a few fundamental to "run trains". I can create a new page, a menu item to point to the page and place the menu link in one of the existing menus in about 50 seconds. 

It's so easy I use it on a pc to keep notes as I work on a project, and then later refine the page into something more organized. (You will see evidence of this on several pages at any one time on my site). 

Most of the big ISP's have an easy to use system like this. I can always add "manual programming" if I want. 

It's easy and fast and fun. I think I have 400 pages now, accumulated over the years. 

Just find a nice one and jump it. I'd take a look at GoDaddy. 

Greg


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

I personally find web sites rather inexpensive. 
You need to buy a domain name, depending on the type of domain, ie the suffix, the cost will vary anywhere between a few dollars and tens of dollars - the .info domain is quite cheap, .com is more expensive. 
You also need a web host 

Richard, 

yes, you should have a website. And it doesn't have to be expensive. I have several that I set up for realtors and they cost $100-200 year, but I also have a couple that cost $10-20 year. That cost is mostly the domain name - I was buying .INFO names for $1.50 for the first year and $10+ thereafter. 

The hosting can be free. Google sites allows you to make up and save a multi-page site quite easily and for $0. The domain name can be pointed to the Google site (once you figure out how - their help system is quite decent since I posted the querstion and got the answers!) They have an online editor that lets you add text, picts, youtube videos etc. They will also put ads on the site and pay you if anyone clicks on one.

See http://www.ebt-in-fn3.info or http://www.cpthornton.info (My son's website) and http://www.marinatowersandyachtclub.com . All free except for the domain name. 

If you are happy with a complex domain name (URL) then just use the Google site and don't buy a name. The last of those three websites above is also accessible as https://sites.google.com/site/marinatowersandyachtclub/home.


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

One thing I'd like to add is, even when you have your own site and domain name, you should be sure to keep a current copy of the site on your computer. Then if your web hosting provider goes out of business you can just move the domain and site to another provider.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

I'll underscore that... In Joomla, I can run my own backups and it creates a universal backup file that can be put on any server that is supporting Joomla. 

Failing that, you can keep copies of your pages youself, and the pictures. 

Also, don't forget the "internet wayback machine" if you think you have lost something.. 

Greg


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## afinegan (Jan 2, 2008)

Joomla is great, Wordpress is also great.

I did http://www.livesteamers.org with wordpress (and it REALLY needs to be updated but I have run out of time to do so)


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## alecescolme (Dec 20, 2010)

I will add my experiences... 
I first used Google to create a free blog, easy to use and no expense. But there was no 'static' homepage, the newest post will be at the top. 

Recently, I learned about Wordpress and installed it on a home server, bought a £7 domain name. The site is limited by my upload speed (acceptable). But the biggest issue is that when the router re-boots, then the site is off-line for a few days. I have to update the DNS manually and it takes a while to update the records. I don't know if a script would be compatible with my domain provider. 

Anyhow what ever you choose, go for it, it is definitely worth it! 

Alec


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

You do not have a dynamic ddns service? dyn.com will give you one free, and almost all home routers have ddns.... your registrar does not support ddns? 

Greg


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## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

Bluehost hosts our Tortoise and Lizard Bash website that Linda set up to keep people informed about the railroad's doings.

Tortoise and Lizard Bash Website

iPage hosts our Header Power Bracket website that Linda also set up. It is fairly easy to deal with and edit the site once you get the hang of it and you can get statistics updates anytime. While the site is cheap, you need to pay more if you want some of the options, like the little "emoticon" that appears on your "Favorites" bar.

Header Power Bracket

Godaddy hosts the Orange County Garden Railway Society's website that Linda also set up. But she says that Godaddy is a huge PITA to deal with.

Orange County Garden Railway Society Website

It is interesting that George Schreyer set up a free website for the Tortoise and Lizard Bash way back in 1997, with 1998 and 2000 supplements, and these have never been taken down and all still appear free of charge.

Tortoise and Lizard Bash History


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

I use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor called nvu to build pages. Somebody told me they resurrected Netscape Composer under a new name. I used to us that, and another defunct one that used to be offered by Always Off Line. 

a couple things to watch 
1. The actual page building is usually pretty darn easy. OTOH, some updates can be tricky (the default settings don't always co-operate intuitively) before you upload a patch, check where the links and photos are referenced... if it's your harddrive, it will look OK to YOU, but everyone else will get the dreaded red x 
2. Watch your photo names..... nothing is more irritating than loading this great new page, and finding out you re-used the photo name and overwrote your favorite photo your homepage. (It sounds like it's easy to avoid, and maybe it is, at least until you get a website that has a couple hundred images.)


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## rsmproductions (Jan 5, 2008)

I really want to thank everyone that contributed their thoughts to my post. I found everyone's ideas very helpful. I even visted your websites and liked what I saw.

So, I made the decision to go for it and purchased a domain name rsmmusicproductions.com and hooked up with host that was recommended by our high school IT guy. Its called Westhost.com. They also partner with a fairly intuitive DIY website design program called DropClick. They have a ton of templates that are completely customizable (once you get the initial thing started)

I only had one glitch today that made my experience less than happy and one that caused me to call and try to cancel the DropClick from the package. After renaming the original "index" file so things would be directed to the website I had created I couldn't get my IE to see the site. It kept showing the original "blue screen" with "website coming soon". I was able to see the site using Google Chrome and it also popped up on my iphone. But not on my IE. I booted my wifes laptop and tried her IE and it worked just fine...also called some friends and it worked fine on their systems as well. Came back to my system and it finally worked. So not sure what the delay was but its all happy now.

The big job is getting my music loaded on so people can peruse. I've mainly been working on the page dedicated to my garden railroad.

If its ok with any of you I may revisit your sites and glean some ideas on how to set mine up.

Feel free to check it all out... www.rsmmusicproductions.com there's not much yet but its at least started.

Thanks,
Richard


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## Randy Stone (Jan 2, 2008)

Maybe this was mentioned, but with only one eye working at the moment, I may have missed it, but a remote provider for your website is a great place to keep a list of you posations and photos for insurance reason incase of a fire or theft. 

As for being a lot of work, it all depends on what you want the website to be. 

You can have a website that is really simple and easy to work with.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Richard, you need to understand that Internet Browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc) keep a "memory" of the pages they visit, called a cache. 

Also, things called "cookies" are bits of data that a web site can leave on your computer. 

Both the cache and cookies can influence how you "see" a web page, and are not always updated. 

Your IE had the "website coming soon" "picture" in it's cache for your web site, and did not re-load the page from the Internet. This happens all the time. 

learn how to "clear the cache" and also you may have to "delete cookies" some times to get things to work right. 

I could go on and explain all of this, but too much to type, and distracts from the thread... lots of places on the web to read up on this. 

Greg


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## jake3404 (Dec 3, 2010)

Richard has asked the same question I've been thinking about. 

Lots of good ideas here. I'll look further into this also.


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## rsmproductions (Jan 5, 2008)

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the tips on deleting the IE cache and cookies. I know all about this but sometimes it gets shoved to the back of my thought processes. This, I think is exactly what occured when I couldn't see the fresh page. When I refreshed everything all was good.

Richard


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## rsmproductions (Jan 5, 2008)

Richard has asked the same question I've been thinking about. 

Lots of good ideas here. I'll look further into this also. 

Jake, if you are even remotely considering doing I'd say go for it. After getting some gread advice here it didn't take me long to make the decsion to go for it. 

Richard


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## Tom Lapointe (Jan 2, 2008)

Been giving a bit of thought







to this subject myself; with retirement looming in about maybe 8 years (more or less







), thinking of getting a small home business off the ground to try to supplement both Social Security & my 401K. Have a few ideas "in the pipeline"







that are in early stages at the moment (mainly worked on when I get the time - a commodity that's in *very *short supply currently







). But in addition to the potential business aspect (& these days consider a website a business *must-have! *







), want to have some of my hobby stuff there as well (not only garden railroading, but some of my other interests as well, such full-scale railfanning, RC flying, & recumbent cycling.







). While I do have an active YouTube channel (just put "WA1LBK" into the search engine on YouTube), I have about *ZERO *







interest in the so-called *"social media" *(Facebook *especially *







, which the local bike trail group I'm involved in uses; *way too many privacy concerns *







for my liking!). 

The comments on local vs. remote hosting are interesting; I do have a reasonably high-speed ISP (Comcast) & I'm pretty sure they have something called "personal web pages" (which I haven't bothered to check fully into, so far). Probably around the holidays this year, planning a major PC update (actually considering going the Mac







route this time around, just haven't decided on the specific "flavor"!







). I might consider reconfiguring my current desktop tower PC towards server use; although on a recent trip to one of the Apple stores noted they have a version of the Mac "Mini" designed *specifically *







for that purpose (a consideration vs. re-purposing the older PC, which is getting a bit tired







hardware-wise). My main concern would be designing & setting up the web page itself; while I've worked for years in the computer industry as a hardware tech, I definitely do *not *consider myself a *"coder"*







- but I'd still be inclined to try doing it myself.







Tom


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## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

should you make a website? - only, if you can live with something less than perfect and finished.
a website always needs a tweak here and an addition there.
if you sell something, or like to brag (like me) you "must" have one!

which way to go? pay for it, or do it nearly free of cost? - well, free lunch is an urban myth.
either you pay for space, domain (address) and programs, or you take avertisement financed space, free domains so complicated, that nobody can remember them, and free programs, that always lack just that one feature, you would need most.

i started out with advertisement-paid space, a domain they provided, and instead of a website a free forum (that was easier to write in, than websites)
(you can find that by clicking on my signature and select "Forum" on the left)
lots of downtime, problems to access the site, and problems to access the settings of the space made me change.

now i rent my space (about 150$ a year), rent a handfull of domaines (for the business, for the hobbies, for our firedepartment and for other projects. between 5 and 10$ each per year)
i use a free FTP program - http://www.coreftp.com/ to upload my pics and up- and download the index files (the orders, that tells computers what to show)

i downloaded a free website template at - http://www.steves-templates.com/ and learned , how to add or remove things and how to change aspects of the template.
(to see the result, click on my signature)

every now and than my ftp program asks me if i want to make a back-up of the site on my pc.
apart of that i made some folders on my pc, that have the same structure and content as the website.

for somebody starting out now i would recommend to use one of these "what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) programs. (so you won't have to learn all that html stuff.
(and you can be sure, that the ones you have to buy give you better results, than the free ones)

even if you are as cheap, as i am - *don't use free space and free domaines!* they will quit or change - and all those hours you spent making the site are lost!


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## ththfxr (Dec 27, 2007)

I have enjoyed having a personal web site, I did learn some basic HTML, and have kept my web site as simple as possible, staying with HTML1, so that anyone with any browser, no mater how old can see it. 
I do agree with kormsen's post, I went through the same thing of free space, and banner adds, my web site was a mess of pre determined formats and adds.

A personal web site is a nice way to share pictures, and embedded YouTube video's.


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## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Word to the wise, ALWAYS back up EVERYTHING. When my biz domain lapsed while I was out of town, it was snapped up by a cyber squatter, and they wanted me to pay $300 to get it back..... I declined and lost 10 years worth of photographs.


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## lvmosher (Jan 2, 2008)

Rants aside on why you hate it...
Could you use FaceBook instead?
No I don't have a FaceBook account...or rather I have one but never used it


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Facebook is not even close to a web site... 

You also lack control of stuff on it, and the page layout to a point. 

But indeed if you just want to share some pictures and a little information and a blog... well then it can work. 

Greg


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## jake3404 (Dec 3, 2010)

I'm taking the plung myself I got a basic one setup but I've got to teach myself wordpress.


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

Korm, your web site's a delight. In English and auf Deutsch.


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## kormsen (Oct 27, 2009)

thanks, torby. 
it has to be in both languages, because i got largescale friends in different countries.


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## Bob Pero (Jan 13, 2008)

I have a personal website that has existed since 1997. The busiest part is the TIPS section that was started so that my FGRS members could find information that was published in our monthly newsletter. I need to go back and re-organize it by specific topic. A lot of the information was gathered from other sources, and I have given credit as to where it came from. When I go back and fix the site, I will make sure this is the case on many atrticles. It is a lot of fun to update, and I have corresponded with many people across the country to verify information.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Ditto... although it first started because my wife was across the continent and wanted me to email her many megabytes of pictures to show her family. 

Once I made the site, it was pretty easy to use it as a source for information I needed, and things that were not in the manual. 

When I take a loco apart, I have a laptop right nearby and type in the procedure as I perform it. The next time I do it, I follow the procedure to check my work. 

Greg


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## Bob in Kalamazoo (Apr 2, 2009)

Posted By Greg Elmassian on 13 Oct 2012 01:08 PM 


When I take a loco apart, I have a laptop right nearby and type in the procedure as I perform it. The next time I do it, I follow the procedure to check my work. 

Greg 
That's really a great idea. I wish I was disciplined enough to do that. It would save me so much time when I had to go back and work on something a year or two down the road. Until I've worked on a locomotive at least about three times, it's almost like the first time for me. I can never remember what I did the last time. Now I can take an Aristo FA-1 or FB-1 apart and put it back together without much thought, but my Mallet and RS-3's still take a lot of thought. This winter I need to figure out how to get my Rogers apart.
Bob


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