It seems that I'm not the only person running into a hosting jam lately. For literally the last 20 years when I have needed information on one PRR era interlocking or tower I have dutifully gone to Google, typed in "Maps of the PRR" and been taken to
broadway.pennsyrr.com, and been taken to a wonderful Web 1.0 gem that gave me my information with little fuss. The PRR part of the site had the aforementioned archive of interlocking sheets while else where on the file tree was a general signaling site with a good yet somewhat incomplete listing of signal rule sets and explanations of operating principles.
Unfortunately Mark's The Broad Way site was hosted on
Keystone Crossing, a long running PRR history website that also hosted my interior photos of STATE tower in Harrisburg that I took in 2003. As the decades past the site owner
Jerry Britton was overtaken by mounting costs and shrinking ad/donation revenue and I never noticed that he had announced the site's closing. While a stub of Keystone Crossing is still up (for now) most of Mark's page has completely vanished from the internet.
Fortunately, back in the day when broadband internet was yet to be a thing and websites were often highly unreliable, I was obsessive about saving everything to disc and I have long since backed up The Boad Way's interlocking charts as well as the html pages they were linked from. These have now been uploaded to Google Photos. Moreover, a lot of the site was archived here, including the HTML copy of the 1956 PRR rulebook.
I am still trying to find out what happened to Mr. Mark D Bej and/or the full contents of his website. For all I know he may have passed away, but if he is still out there, and if I can get my own hosting back, I might be able to get his content back online. I am sorry I was unaware of KC's problems as I would have done everything I could to drum up donations and support. Meanwhile, some of KC's content has migrated to a PRR group on groups.io. Of course I am now going to have to go through my own posts to change all of the broken interlocking chart image links 😢
I worked with Mark back in the 90's to scan and edit many of the diagrams that were on his site. I have all of his diagrams as well as the html pages. I will have to compare your archive against mine to see if there are any differences. I also have 1992 Amtrak track charts of the NEC that were not on his site. I'd be happy to talk privately about sharing any documents I have or reconstructing the site. - John Cooper
ReplyDeleteThanks, good to know the material isn't lost forever. If I can get my own hosting solution back I'll definitely be able to give those materials a home.
DeleteBTW, what ever happened to Mark?
Does one of you have the diagram for the interlocking at Rochester, PA before it was simplified adn reconfigured in the 1970's?
DeleteI have not spoken with Mark in well over a decade, maybe two. I'd be happy to share everything I've got with the community. Don't see any obvious contact info for you on this blog, and I'm reluctant to publish mine here, so we'll have to figure out how to overcome that.
DeleteI am not familiar with Rochester. I don't have any files by that name. Would the tower have been named Rochester or would it have gone by some other name?
DeleteJust a reminder for those who are planning on dieing someday. If you have original material that should be archived for posterity, a website that requires monthly payments to keep going might not be a good solution. Apparently, there's no internet access in the afterlife so it's tough to make payments.
ReplyDeleteThink about leaving your original material to an actual museum that has the resources to last for many generations.
I've noticed more and more good websites disappearing lately. I know I'm not aging, but it seems everybody else is...
It's not foolproof, but Google Photos and Blogger (by Google) will likely be around forever. In that case one can transfer administration (there isn't much) to a historical group that just has to keep an e-mail alive and respond to DMCA-like complaints.
DeleteThanks to both of you for preserving Mark Bej's files. Jerry Britton, the proprietor of the former Keystone Crossing site, has been migrating some material to his new site, Pennsy on groups.io. When I questioned him about moving these files or making them available to others, I received this reply:
ReplyDelete"They won’t be coming back. Mark hadn’t kept his site updated in over 18 years and had many broken links."
I'll contact him and see if I can get a site dump for possible future mirroring. Lack of updates mean no Java script, endless scrolling bullshit!
Delete