Western MD Scenic RR by H. Pincus
Conway Scenic Railroad by J Salomon
Baldwin 606 prime mover
CN "Van", Stouffville, ON, Canada
East Broad Top RR by J Salomon
RailSwap logo

RailSwap.org

Rail Swap went away...
 

RailSwap was a place where anyone could post free classifieds ads to buy/sell/trade items relating to real railroading.

 

Over the years, the site hosted tens of thousands of ads, including ones for Amtrak, Union Pacific, virtually every significant historic railroad operation in the USA, and quite a few throughout the world.

 

RailSwap started as a simple 'guestbook' script in 1999. You typed your info into a form, hit POST, and your ad appeared on the webpage. Believe it or not, anyone could freely post to the ads. No email verification, no accounts, no passwords, no facial recognition or fingerprint scans, no AI, no "captcha" bullshit. And there was essentially ZERO abuse. In several years there might have been 1 or 2 ads removed. The biggest pain was that you couldn't really manage ads once posted.

 

Eventually ads were migrated to classified ad databases (several over the years) to try to provide better management, secure the site, and allow photographs. Unfortunately that added considerable cost and management time to keep things running, deal with updates, etc. User validation, in particular, was a huge problem.

 

In the end, a significant investment of time and money seemed necessary migrate to new software, meet demand for 'apps' to push ads to viewers, provide 'social media' sharing of postings, verify identity of users, etc. None of this is an appealing way to spend my time.

 

The final straw was when the owner of "Midwest Rail" had the audacity to contact my webhost, tell them I was dead and that they were my 'business associate' and were working on the site with me, and that they should be allowed to transfer the railswap.org domain to their control. This really happened, and I have correspondence from my webhost to prove it. Please don't ever do business with this jerkoff.

My apologies to all the GOOD people who found RailSwap useful! - - - Life is just too short to deal with endless bullshit.

Curious for specifics of why the site is gone?

Here are a few contributing factors...

  • That company that starts with G. Those parasites think they should control the world and make all the money. They make it ridiculously hard to make enough ad revenue just to keep a site afloat. Please avoid using them before they take over every aspect of your life.

  • That website that starts with F. Since FU-book came along, the number of a-holes who think they know it all has exploded exponentially. Instead of doing constructive things with their time, people would rather spend all day with a 'device' held in front of their face, while a website spies on them, controls their thinking, and makes endless money off them. Have fun with that!

  • Idiots. Gads, where do they all come from? And why do they all now have to be on the internet?

  • Spammers. Please do not EVER do business with people or companies that spam!

  • Smartphones. Life used to be SO GOOD.

No, I'm not dead. But thanks for asking!

Questions, comments, bug reports? Too bad!

Rockhill Trolley Museum #1875 by J Salomon
Former Cape Cod #1114 at Indian Head, MD
C&O Motor Car, Wellsboro & Corning RR
Hopper car print, courtesy of V Smith
WC Coil Steel Car in New Jersey

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