Rail-related Links

• Steam Media Productions' home page (I'm one of their videographers) where you'll find information about all their productions from the latest productions right back to their earliest tapes, all of which are still available.

 
• The Victorian Railways Telegraph Code Book 1972 is reproduced here in its entirety.  Ever wondered what an "ACRE" is, or what happens when a train is "AMEX"ed?  The answers are here.

 
• I'm pleased to be able to host Mark Bau's railway map of Victoria, an excellent reference work you'll want to download or keep; it's a 1.2MB .PDF file showing all the lines in Victoria with their opening (and closing if applicable) dates, all stations (with their opening and closing dates). We'll keep the latest version of the map at this link. A suburban map is also in preparation and will be posted here when available.

 
• Steamrail Victoria is Victoria's oldest and largest operator of mainline steam excursions and charters.  Their site gives details of their operations and contains a summary of their current steam and diesel locomotive fleet.

 
• Railpage Australia contains a huge amount of information on the current Australian railway scene.

 
• Compuserve's TrainNet Forum brings together railfans from all over the world.  Their links page is an excellent resource for quality web pages from all over the world.

 
• Hugh Odom's Ultimate Steam Page:  Hugh tries to keep his finger on the pulse of steam around the world in the 90's by featuring the application of modern technology to the original concept of the iron horse.  His pages feature the work of the icons of modern steam development.......Ing L D Porta, David Wardale and Phil Girdlestone.

 

Scanners & Scanning

• Wayne Fulton's site entitled "A Few Scanning Tips", probably the Web's best FAQ site for scanners.  This site is a "must visit" for anyone contemplating buying or using a scanner.  The huge web site is also available as a "shareware book", and is one of the few instruction books I've ever read cover to cover.  Although he's not employed by Microtek, his pages are a good advertisement for their product (I concur, I've purchased a Microtek X6 and am very happy with it).

 
• Tony Sleep's Home Page, where he provides information on and  critically reviews (using Kodak's Q60 colour chart) a variety of photo scanners.  Visit here before you buy.

 

Web Site Design

As I've browsed the web, I've thought long and hard about the sort of web page I would like to see; I suppose I sink or swim as I put my thoughts to the test of actually writing and maintaining a web page:  my design principles include:
 
• Fast loading pages:  there's no page greater than 25k in length:  yes there are links to photos that are sometimes over 100k in size, but they're not on the main page.  I'm progressively adding size in pixels and k of each image when you "mouse over" its matching thumbnail, so that you won't have any surprises;
• No frames;
• Menu at the top of each page to enable rapid access to the page you want;
• minimal graphics (which mostly slow down page loading);
• no background images or colours to reduce legibility;
• NO "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" signs - web sites are always under construction, destruction, reconstruction, renovation or restoration.

• Lighthouse on the Web is the web site of David Walker, a columnist in the computer section of Melbourne's "The Age".  David's regular column on web design is a beacon in the night (and he'll email you a copy of the column the night before it goes to press if you like).  The web site is a great place to learning the fundamentals of good web design.

 
• Web Pages that Suck is a site that seeks to teach good design by demonstrating bad design - the irreverent title disguises the excellence of this site as an on-hand teaching tool.

Windows 95/98 and Computer upgrades

• Installing a replacement hard disk on your system:    I've just gone through the nuisance of having to install a new hard drive on my computer.  This file will take all the pain out of it, and enable you to load all your programs from the old HD to the new, preserving all your desktop and file layouts.

 
• Getting rid of that pesky Win95 logon prompt:    I've just had to help a friend with a hand-me-down computer and this file (also from Compuserve's Win95 forums) gets rid of the log on prompt whenever you tun on Windows 95.  I've plonked it here as I seem to need it myself every now and then.

 
More links to come shortly.