shawmat
Member
Forum readers are encouraged to have a look at the updated Railway Correspondence & Travel Society (RCTS) website at https://rcts.org.uk/. It went live on 17th November, and training is still going on for the various editors. However, this post is more about the future, and how the website might develop as a platform for digital services for rail enthusiasts. I hope that readers with data - whether members of the Society or not - will take up the opportunity to contribute.
The Society has had a website since about 2005. It has evolved and grown to become a surprisingly sophisticated system for a volunteer-run organisation. I took over as webmaster in at the beginning of 2021 and set about rebuilding it for the next stage of its life. Most of the established features are still there, but the layout is more suited for accessing on hand-held devices and I hope the navigation is a lot clearer. Importantly for a voluntary organisation, it avoids using custom code, and demonstrates that there are off-the-shelf components available to achieve what we want, many of them free to use.
The website serves many purposes. It is a shop window for the RCTS; it informs members about what’s on; it has an e-commerce capability for selling books, memberships etc. It is the “Features” section that we are considering expanding.
The current features are maintained by several people. Diesel Dilemmas, Carriage Conundrums, and Preserved Coaches, are three examples, the results of many years’ research into what happened to various locos and rolling stock. (A selection of images from Diesel Dilemmas follows...)
We could add more features. For instance, I’m currently working with a railway picture researcher to put his database of 200,000 references online.
The idea is to open a dialogue with anyone who has a substantial dataset that they would like to put online – or move from elsewhere online. It has to be substantial, not widely covered elsewhere, and of course reliable. No promises – we must do some due diligence – but this is an invitation to start talking.
Contact me via the webmaster email account at rcts.org.uk.
The Society has had a website since about 2005. It has evolved and grown to become a surprisingly sophisticated system for a volunteer-run organisation. I took over as webmaster in at the beginning of 2021 and set about rebuilding it for the next stage of its life. Most of the established features are still there, but the layout is more suited for accessing on hand-held devices and I hope the navigation is a lot clearer. Importantly for a voluntary organisation, it avoids using custom code, and demonstrates that there are off-the-shelf components available to achieve what we want, many of them free to use.
The website serves many purposes. It is a shop window for the RCTS; it informs members about what’s on; it has an e-commerce capability for selling books, memberships etc. It is the “Features” section that we are considering expanding.
The current features are maintained by several people. Diesel Dilemmas, Carriage Conundrums, and Preserved Coaches, are three examples, the results of many years’ research into what happened to various locos and rolling stock. (A selection of images from Diesel Dilemmas follows...)
We could add more features. For instance, I’m currently working with a railway picture researcher to put his database of 200,000 references online.
The idea is to open a dialogue with anyone who has a substantial dataset that they would like to put online – or move from elsewhere online. It has to be substantial, not widely covered elsewhere, and of course reliable. No promises – we must do some due diligence – but this is an invitation to start talking.
Contact me via the webmaster email account at rcts.org.uk.