I gotta say I agree with AEM7, railroad.net has slipped far far down the slippery slope.
Back in the days (2000 or so to November or December of 2001) when John Stewart in Rochester ran the site it was just like Subtalk, an HTML board that was easy to use, simple to read, and very bare bones. My favorite feature of of Railroad.net Mod 0 were two boxes under the message composition area which allowed you to post a HTML link and an Image without knowing any HTML. To me, a complete n00b to internet message boards, this was great, and is possibly something Mr. Pirmann might want to think about in light of recent disasterous attempts at HTML by some of the noobies. Of course then along came Crazy Nip and the rejects from Trainorders.com after that site went pay. They succeded in attaching so much BS to the board, such as 5 minute wavs and animated gifs where they cursed each other out, that people started worrying about viruses. John Stewart shut down the site after threats of lawsuits and claims of harassment. That ended Railroad.net Mod 0.
Mod 1 started in April of 2002 I think, the site had been gone for some 6 months, over the same time that Subtalk had had it's hiatus (what was that, 6 weeks? 2 months?). During that time I went off and found Mr. Beck's Other Side Of The Tracks messageboard as an interim to RR.net, and from there I funneled back into Subtalk with the other temporary residents of that board when Subtalk returned. Anyway, that's how I wound up here. RR.net Mod 1 was a nightmare, it had limited everything, for example, you had to log in to post, but it'd logout after a given time, so if you composed a long post, hit "post message" and got logged out, you were SOL. It crashed frequently, going down for weeks on end with no one able to post to it. However, for all it's faults, I still have to say I liked the format, it was simple to read, lacking all those BS photos and crap, it was fairly simple to post to, so long as you made sure you copied your post to Notepad or something before clicking "Post Message." My only real gripe about Mod1 was that it limited you to only 1 HTML link, and no HTML, UBB, or anything else could be used in your post, however in light of the reason for the shutdown coming from idiots posting massive files which might contain any number of Malware things, there is little surprise that they were so controlling in that respect. Also, the moderators on the Mod 1 version were a bit more serious, I actually received a threatening Email for the following comment:
(Dear god I'm making catenary lovers everywhere sound like it's a cult thing, or possibly a low-rate religion! Oh wait, it is a religion, Cat-lick! 11.5kv AC at some 500 amps flowing through your tongue and out your grounded feet is bound to produce a religious effect ;) ), after a bible-thumper read my heretic paragraph and decided to email the Moderator and complain about me. Nothing came of it, I apologized to the Mod, and never was bothered again.
Of course the one big problem with the Mod 1 version of Railroad.net was that the forums themselves sucked on a basic level. The servers couldn't keep up with the demand, and finally the whole system just about up and died about 2 months or so ago now I believe. The forum has now returned in the Mod2 iteration, with a board crowded with Avatars, using php or something, no real connection between the railroad.net homepage and the forums, and an astoundingly frustrating color scheme (I was a big fan of the green and white). The main forum page is now confused by having all the forums displayed at once in a completely disordered fashion. I will admit that it allows more control over the content and formatting of the post, but it seems to me that Railroad.net has finally completed the transformation that Crazy Nip and the rest started 3 or so years ago.
RIP Railroad.net Mod 0