Blockstation.Net Goes Down

Another indispensable web 1.0 resource for those interested in Amtrak's NEC operations appears to have gone down in the last few weeks.  Blockstation,net was a small site dating from 1998 that published a set of 1992 vintage Philadelphia Division track diagrams that the site owner had made for Amtrak using MS Paint.  Covering then-CTEC Sections A, C/B, F and G, the site had some additional interior photos and information on a number of individual towers including PENN, BRWN MAWR, THORN, PARK, CORK, STATE, HARRIS and oddly enough, BALDWIN.

The good news for everybody is that I had saved hard copies of most of the informational parts of the site (at the time I didn't feel that the index pages needed saving).  This includes all of the diagrams and all of the tower pages with textual descriptions and detail photos. You can find this content here or here.

Let's all hope that the site returns.  On the pages I do have the author was listed as Ken Reinert who was using an Erols.com e-mail address that no longer functions. Like I said the page seemed to have been populated once back in 1998 and then completely left alone for the next 21 years.  For all I know the server it was running on may have been lost in some data center sort of like Milton from Office Space and some sysadmin may have simply rectified the error. it could be that poor Ken has passed away and the web hosting and/or domain name registration may have finally lapsed.

This is why I tell people that over the long run, the "cloud", is not reliable and that people need to make hard copies of everything they find important! With Yahoo Groups having been unilaterally wiped out just this past weekend, this is especially true as Web 1.0 content may be literally reaching end of life.  Fortunately I had saved this content way back in 1999 because then what was online was seen as fleeting and unreliable on a more relatable time scale. That means today in 2019 I just have to deal with another round of dead link fixing and instead of having to restore the lost content.