Railpage.

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Re: Railpage.

Postby gwiwer » Sun Feb 14, 2010 4:58 pm

Webslave posted on Whirlpool after your post on Whirlpool, and he did say that it was non-technical in nature, and said in another that's all is appropriate to say.


Been following that topic out of interest as the silence is deafening on the subject generally. It seems certain individuals who have had major involvement no longer do so leaving it more or less in the hands of a single admin and a few mods.

Mods don't generally have access to the hardware of any site nor, necessarily, to the nuts, bolts, dollars and cents of keeping a site going. As the Whirlpool thread also mentions they are basically ordinary members with a few special permissions.

A "non-technical" matter which has caused the complete shut down of Railpage and the consequential shutdown of those sites it, in turn, hosts, and with an absolute wall of silence, leads me to conclude that there are legal wrangles going on. These might not necessarily involve Railpage which is in turn hosted by a commercial operation and it might be the case that the root cause lies within that business. The owner of the Railpage domain is also listed as a Director of that business.

It is unusual to have had no response from anyone, including those with whom I have exchanged emails in the past, which suggests a gagging order of some sort has been imposed.

This is only my summation of the situation. It cannot be based upon hard fact since there appears to be none available. It was also noted in Whirlpool that ways around the situation were under investigation and that we haven't seen the last of Railpage.
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Re: Railpage.

Postby Galron » Sun Feb 21, 2010 11:24 pm

Latest on this over at whirlpool suggests that there has been a dispute in management at the railpage hosting provider, digital river, that has lead to the RP servers being turned off. The primary sysadmin at RP is apparently still on holidays, so a resurrection of RP may be a a little way off still.
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Re: Railpage.

Postby gwiwer » Sun Feb 21, 2010 11:29 pm

I have also read with some interest the current version of what has been passed for public consumption. It makes some degree of sense but illustrates how thinly is suspended the Sword of Damocles over such "hobby interest" sites which are, in effect, reliant of goodwill and often a single personality to function at all.

There are of course many alternate hosting options once the owners of RP regain possession of their hardware. However whether anything as cheap could be arranged, or whether commercial rates cold be afforded, beg more questions.

We could read between the lines and guess that previously-active personnel might be returning to the fold. But what will be required to reinstate the site will be ongoing income. Hosting for a high-traffic site such as RP is not cheap.

Whether there is anything to be gained from the issue of being unable to access their own hardware is for the site management to nut out.
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Re: Railpage.

Postby MOM » Mon Feb 22, 2010 4:55 pm

gwiwer wrote:snip

Hosting for a high-traffic site such as RP is not cheap.

.


Not being up to date with hosting prices etc, I did read a figure of 35Gb being bandied around.
Where does a number such as just sit exactly, ie is it considered small, medium or large and what sort of monthly pricing would it attract?
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Re: Railpage.

Postby Galron » Mon Feb 22, 2010 7:23 pm

MOM wrote:
gwiwer wrote:snip

Hosting for a high-traffic site such as RP is not cheap.

.


Not being up to date with hosting prices etc, I did read a figure of 35Gb being bandied around.
Where does a number such as just sit exactly, ie is it considered small, medium or large and what sort of monthly pricing would it attract?


just had a look at my hosting provider for my website. They have a 100gb/month plan for $21/month. A quick google found another plan (OS hosting) offering 35 of disk and 400gig of traffic for $8 US/month. These seem reasonable pricing to me. Not sure about a co-hosted solution (byo server)
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Re: Railpage.

Postby gwiwer » Mon Feb 22, 2010 7:45 pm

You need to take account of the hit rate as well.

Not only does RP have a massive hit rate (I believe it's in terms of millions per year) but they in turn also host other small sites such as John Claverdon's original Locopage.

As well RP holds thousands of image files in the long-locked gallery section so the bandwidth required is not small.
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Re: Railpage.

Postby dthead » Tue Mar 02, 2010 2:31 pm

Hi there everyone.

Yes it is Dthead from railpage ( vigsig and other sites as it is my favourite username )

And I'm exactly like everyone else here in knowing what happened, what will happen. ( I do not know )

I suspect just like all mods we all are in the same boat, enjoying life, smelling the roses, gunzelling, modelling, drifting onto other good forums like here.

I wish you all the best and will now get back to reading this forum and others I belong to.

Regards,
David Head
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Re: Railpage.

Postby ozfreight » Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:43 pm

Railpage is cactus for a number of reasons
Legal, commercial and financial.
No one that I contacted knows for sure.
Future will tell ,in the meantime I have joined Vicsig as a railpage refugee.

Edward
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Re: Railpage.

Postby Galron » Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:03 pm

ozfreight wrote:Railpage is cactus for a number of reasons
Legal, commercial and financial.
No one that I contacted knows for sure.
Future will tell ,in the meantime I have joined Vicsig as a railpage refugee.

Edward


welcome. may your stay be a pleasant one
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Re: Railpage.

Postby Galron » Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:18 am

Looks like railpage is on the way to being back up after a couple of months of being down.

Only a “outage” type page up at present, and a link to discussions on whirlpool, but it looks promising. No reason specifically for the outage, however Brian Evans (site admin) has posted in the thread “Once we are back online and I have closed out some other issues, we can talk then.”
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Re: Railpage.

Postby Unauthorised Officer » Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:00 pm

People.
In respect to rail page all the speculation means nothing unless there is a public statement from the operators or site admin staff to let members know of the current situation.
Until its back up if it is back up soon then rail page is dead in the water.
Regards,

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Re: Railpage.

Postby heisdeadjim » Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:05 pm

Unauthorised Officer wrote:People.
In respect to rail page all the speculation means nothing unless there is a public statement from the operators or site admin staff to let members know of the current situation.
Until its back up if it is back up soon then rail page is dead in the water.


Yep, does this count?
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Re: Railpage.

Postby gwiwer » Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:30 pm

As with the post above I would have to disagree that
rail page is dead in the water.


We wondered for a long time because of the absence of any message or news whether there would be a return to service but it seems the return is imminent. It has in fact been under negotiation for the entire time of the outage if one reads the topic linked to above. The nature of those negotiations has, as explained by a RP Admin, meant that public statements were not in the best interests of any party nor even possible at all at times.

The owner of the domain has now made public comments and we should therefore be ready for a return to active service.
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Re: Railpage.

Postby METROL » Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:59 pm

Railpage is currently unavailable.

However signs of it coming back are positive
http://www.railpage.com.au/
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Re: Railpage.

Postby msilsby » Fri May 14, 2010 2:00 pm

Back.
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