20th Anniversary Information

Background Information About

Operated by a solid staff of railway employees, railfans and model railroaders, the roots of the world-wide community of TrainNet.org go back to early 1986 when the CompuServe^® ModelNet Forum, run by Doug Pratt of Pratt Hobbies, opened two railway oriented message boards, one for railfans and one for model railroaders. These boards proved to be very popular and on 1 February 1989 they spawned the CompuServe^® TrainNet Forum with four staff members: Bill Havrilla, Corky Price, Dorr Altizer, and Jeff Kucsma. To commemorate our beginning date as a stand-alone forum, the steam locomotive represented in our logo is numbered 289. The TrainNet Forum was a busy and lively gathering place for railroad and railway fans, modelers and employees for the next twelve years with over 19,000 members at it's height in the early 1990's, at the dawn of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

CompuServe^® (then owned by Time Warner, Inc. and operated by it's AOL division) began closing all of it's "hobby" forums in the late 1990's and early 2000's. As a result, on 1 November 2001 the TrainNet Forum was integrated into TrainNet.org, which had opened on 5 August, 1999, with message boards, twice-weekly moderated conferences, a site map for those who don't like clicking on menus and a collection of over 2,600 railway photos plus more than 700 reference files organized in ten fully searchable libraries.

The current staff members are Becky Morgan, Corky Price, Don Howe, Dorr Altizer, John Horvath, John Reay, John Wallington, Martin Schrader, and Simon Lowe. Read short biographies about each staff member and view links to some of their favorite web sites.

Many fine people, who have moved on to other pursuits and interests, have served in various capacities on our staff in the past 20 years: Andy Beebe, Bernd Fanghanel, Bob Harbison, Bob Pinsky, Brian Kreimendahl, Colleen Peeler, Craig Bisgeier, Dan Dawdy, Dean Davis, Dean Portz, Dick Beebe, Dick Knisely, Erhard Baltrusch, Jeff Jordan, Gerald Kackman, Glen Suckling, Joe Morrison, John Feagans, Lynn Burshtin, Phillip Mackay, Ray Peeler, Scott C. Montani and Steve Blackson.

TrainNet.org is home of the world renowned International Railway Links, the most accurate and up-to-date list of railway links on the planet (read about the history of this effort). TrainNet.org is also home of the coveted Web Gem Award for railroad or railway oriented web sites, one of the most well-known and respected awards on the Internet.

The pages that make up TrainNet.org were created using many versions of Macromedia Dreamweaver (now part of Adobe Creative Suite 4) and CSE HTML Validator to ensure that the design and content conformed to the "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines" from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The pages also adhere to the standards & guidelines of the Internet Content Rating Association, the SafeSurf Internet Rating Standard and the International Webmasters Association.

The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an international, independent organization that empowers the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labeling of content. ICRA's dual aims are to protect children from potentially harmful material and to protect free speech on the internet.
The SafeSurf Rating Standard is a voluntary rating system designed to protect children, as well as the 1st Amendment (U.S. Constitution) rights of their parents.
The International Webmasters Association (IWA), a non-profit professional association, is the industry's recognized leader in providing educational and certification standards for Web professionals. IWA's initiatives now support more than 100 official chapters representing over 22,000 individual members in 106 countries. IWA's accomplishments include the industry's first guidelines for ethical and professional standards, Web certification and education programs, specialized employment resources, and technical assistance to individuals and businesses.