What's new on RailPage

What's new?

OR

A brief potted history of RailPage Australia



1st January 2001
Railpage welcomes the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society. In 1994, when it became apparent that the DHR could close in the near future, a member of an old Darjeeling family, long resident in Canada, with a deep commitment to preserving the best of the past, formed the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Heritage Foundation (DHRHF). Its aims include restoration and preservation of the line, creation of a mountain railway museum, and provision of improved services both to the local population and visiting tourists.

27th December 2000
Railpage welcomes South Western Railway Society. The South Western Railway Society, is a non-profit organization involved in maintaining Railway Operations in The South Western area of Victoria. We operate various Special trains around Victoria and Southern NSW, and are available to assist other parties in railway operations. Special thanks to Steve Dalton

27th September
Added popular AusLoco Mailing List Archive to Railpage.

16th May 1999
Australian rail passes added.

14th May 1999
Guestbook added after a 2 year absence.

8th May 1999
Railway buffoonery added.

22nd February 1999
Audio archive added.

13 January 1999
Railpage Server upgraded to support further sites and archiving of newsgroup traffic.

10th August 1998
Railpage welcomes Central Highlands Tourist Railway online.

4th July 1998
Railpage welcomes the Light Rail Research Society of Australia online.

Railpage is proud to welcome West Coast Railway to our service. Please take some time to look around the site as it is most impressive. Special thanks to Craig Haber for his expert work.

Railpage welcomes the Australian Tram Information page online. Railpage wishes to thank David Hoadley for choosing Railpage Australia.!

26th June 1998
Railpage installs Statistical Reporting Software to enable online viewing of Railpage Usage Stats on a daily basis, replacing the previous hit counter.

19th June 1998
RailPage wins Sofcom's Pick of the Net award.

1st February 1998
Majordomo mailing lists added to RailPage.

14th December 1997
Railpage Welcomes Hills Model Railway Society to our community of railway related associations.

13th September 1997
First search engine added. 3rd June 1997
RailPage adds National Locomotive Database thanks to John Cleverdon

1st June 1997
Railpage provides FrontPage '98 Server Extensions to organisations requiring "hosting" services on the internet.

1st June 1997
Railpage opens it doors by allowing rail preservation groups virtual host services. Many organisations have already joined.

1st May 1997
Railpage begins to "officially" archive aus.rail newsgroup postings.

25th April 1997
Aus.Rail Newsgroup Archive testing begins. April 1997 postings are made available online.

12th April 1997
Guestbook added, but due to server problems lasted only a few weeks.

18th March 1997
New server www.railpage.org.au officially takes over, thanks to Interactive OmniMedia. See announcement from the Google archive.

24th February 1997
New server with new IP address takes over, but site and domain names remain the same.

24th January 1997
www.railpage.org.au goes online for the first time. Entire site transferred over the next few weeks.

October 1996
Severe problems with www.com.au mean nothing much happens for the next few months.

24th May 1996
South Australian events page created by Neil Waller

22nd May 1996
South Gippsland Railway home page added

9th May 1996
Picture archive created. See announcement on aus.rail from the Google archive.

February 1996
Around the time, David moved from Melbourne to Armidale, Railpage was gradually moved from old site at Monash University to new server. A new format was created. See annoucement on many newsgroups from the Google archive. Note the optimistic assumption of a permanent URL.

17th November 1995
New RailPage site created at www.com.au/railpage

25th October 1994
RailPage (timetables) reviewed by Jason Romney in Computer Age

August 1994
The first timetables added to RailPage. See announcement on aus.rail from the Google archive.

July 1994
The third incarnation was when David finally got his hands on a DECstation which was mounted on an http server. He added a "railpage" as a subsection of his personal home page. It became the first Australian railway site on the World Wide Web. The entire site was officially named RailPage Australia. See annoucement on aus.rail from the Google archive. Note the hideously long URL!

The timetables project was started around the same time. The timetables were kept as plain text as it was thought they could also be available via gopher and ftp. Everything was a bit messy during that time while David was learning HTML.

December 1993
The second incarnation appeared when David uploaded the finger service files to an ftp site. See announcement on aus.rail from the Google archive.

Late 1992
The first incarnation of appeared as an experimental "finger" service on David's general access Unix account at Monash University. By fingering the account, various bits of information could be requested, including David's "personalpage" and a "railpage". It contained information coming events which were also periodically posted to the then new aus.rail and the late rec.railroad.



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