I want to congratulate and thank George Irwin on his 25th anniversary of publishing the excellent "Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report", a seemingly monumental task to do each month. I don't remember exactly when I signed up to receive it but I know it was fairly early on. I also want to thank him for hosting my site since 2008 when AOL irresponsibly shut down their website hosting service. Doug
Thanks, Doug and all. The latest issue, for May 2021, is now out the door. Still welcoming new subscribers. Remember, it's "Still Free And Worth At Least That Much." I've been hosting Doug's A1G Locomotive Pages since 2008? Now I feel old
Was the Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report always on-line? Thinking back 25 years, Internet use was not yet common. My wife and I were members of a local computer club that used modem-connected WWIV BBS software and basic ASCII characters for display and transmission. The Sysops who hosted the local BBS phoned long distance to other Sysops to exchange messages, forming a national network. It was all pretty cool and there was some train chatter in places. My wife somehow formed a signal bridge using ASCII characters that was worked into my screen name.
It's always been online, nothing else, but before Al Gore invented the Internet... (sorry, couldn't resist) it started sometime before 1996 as just a listing of coming releases on the old Prodigy Bulletin Board. (Yes, I'm old.) I then switched over to rec.models.railroad and started to expand to a commentary as well as a release listing. From there it went to a combination of e-mail newsletter and rec.models.railroad and then finally to the e-mail opt-in subscription format only. In 2010 I finally arrived in the 20th Century (yes, do the math) and changed the format from a text file to a PDF which allowed photos and graphics. I do not actually remember when before 1996 I started what became the UMTRR, and I don't have what I wrote back then either! So I arbitrarily back-numbered the issues starting with January 1996, which is what makes 2021 the 25th Anniversary Year. December 2021 will be Issue Number, let's see, what is 25 times 12... hmm, five times two, carry the one... oh, yes, Issue #300! Doug has been a subscriber since the "previous century"-- and I'm honored to still have a few "Charter" members of the UMTRR Gang who signed up for the e-mail distribution list... uh, whenever I started that.
Worth at least twice that much...maybe even triple! ...and you beat me to the Al Gore inventing the internet comment! I think that I had to be one of the early members as well. I was using BBS's in the '70's and Usenet back in the '80's.
