It's like checking the news -- I turn on the PC or open a browser on my phone, and it's there.
And I'm glad it is -- there are folks here I've known to varying degrees dating back 20 years, and this hobby is one of the few distractions I get from everyday life, and for that I'm grateful.
Some of you may not realize how close this site came to being like UKTrainsim and Steam4Me i.e. talked about in the past tense.
Up until July 2022, this site was part of a larger company run by Nels, who also ran FlightSim.com and its retail store. In July, Nels chose to take a well deserved retirement, and sold his site as well as the store to a Canadian internet company he'd worked with for a while. Unfortunately, they chose to flip it at the end of 2022, and sold all three to Nic Taureau, who some of you might know as the owner of X-Plane.org (not officially associated with X-Plane the game), another online community for the FlightSim community.
The short version to that story is that Nic and his son Adrian wanted nothing to do with trains, and saw this site as a drain on the other two ventures. I stepped up and offered to take TrainSim off their hands, which they agreed to. They'd keep all the money, and I'd get all the obligations along with the file library and forum data....
Yes, it was a steaming pile of dog crap deal from a business standpoint, but the value of the library and the forum data to the community was priceless. The more I learned about Nic thru my own interactions, I also determined it was best to get our stuff packed and out of his house as quickly as possible. Zero regrets.
Let's fast forward to today. The divorce is long finalized, and nobody's fighting over custody or alimony.
The site has remained successful as far as I'm concerned -- we have new members arriving daily, and saw some former members return. We've also lost a few along the way due to age and other factors.
From a sustainability standpoint, I'm optimistic. Without the "halo effect" of a retail store, it was made clear that the site would only survive with paid memberships, be it a monthly FastPass or a full year First Class Membership.
Many of you responded to that call, and that's a good thing. My wife doesn't mind me spending a little here and there, as long as I don't comment too loudly on the room full of crafting supplies, Cricut accessories, and other assorted tidbits she's collected for her hobbies.
When we did the initial split from FlightSim, it was my credit card that paid the bills for that first month and then some. Fortunately, we got enough renewals and new memberships to cover the bills from that point forward, to the point that a reserve fund was able to be started and tucked away to keep the site up for a timeframe if we ever get to the point nobody is helping to support it financially.
Last month, I had to dip into the reserve fund for the first time to help pay the bills. Our costs are up, and memberships are down.
Costs being up should go without saying, but I'll do it anyway. If you've bought gas or groceries lately, you've seen the same thing: $30 doesn't go as far as it did two or four years ago. We've had price increases for our server and bandwidth costs, and the only thing not increasing in price is storage, which is remaining flat ( for a while, it had been getting cheaper...).
Memberships being down is what's concerning. Some of that is due to members moving on to other interests or passing away, but a larger issue I've seen is two and three year memberships expiring and and people forgetting to renew.
The good news is that prices for the annual First Class and monthly FastPass aren't going up.
The bad news is that I will be retiring the two year membership option in the coming days.
It's not because I'm worried the site won't be around in two years, but with the addition of the automatic renewal for both the monthly FastPass and the annual First Class Membership, I've seen a fair number of people who had two year memberships opting for the automatic renewal.
If you haven't considered a membership, or if it's time to renew, I do hope you'll consider the annual First Class option with automatic renewal. You'll never have to worry about an expiration date again, and works out to be a 50% discount compared to the FastPass.
Nels and Rick's vision for this place was to be a digital museum, and that's still a primary goal today. It's why we still have routes and rolling stock from the earliest days of the hobby, and why we have sections for games that you can't get commercially anymore like Railworks and BVE. It's why the forum posts from 20 years ago are still available.
For those of you who've maintained your memberships, I thank you. And my wife thanks you, as there are still some bare shelves in her craft room, and every dollar I'm not spending to keep this site up is a dollar she can steal from me.
As always, thanks for reading and for being part of the community.
Fred
Off the top of my head here are some things I remember changing:
- Site theme of the day - this is cool and I appreciate it!
- Improved layout with options for larger fonts for us older folks (I /really/ appreciate this one!)
- Improvements in searching the file library
- File library Bundles
- Banners for forum posts that link to the discussed file library item.
- Bringing multiple "Out of print" MSTS items back from the dead.
- Creation of the "Store" as a fair way for abandoned projects to resurface while still providing royalties to their creators.
- Resurrection of the abandoned TSRE route and consist editor for OpenRails.
- Speed improvements to the forum.
I can't imagine the number of hours spent on this and appreciate what you've done to keep the site alive.
- TrainSimJack
Eoin
(ExPSTR)