Don Strack's Web Log

Mac and Me, It's Over

2009-06-26T08:35:00.012-06:00

The iMac has died.

I was out of town for a couple days in late May, for which I turned off power to the computers while I was away. Upon my return, and when I turned power back on to the iMac, all I got was a folder icon, with a question mark. A quick call to Applecare followed, and with their help we determined that the internal hard drive had died. As I have previously written about, all that was on the iMac was my music and sound collection, and I was doing a daily backup to two external hard drives, so I haven't lost anything.

Any sane person simply cannot be without music in their lives, so I purchased a Dell PC at my local Costco. I have previously owned a Dell, and this one is a nice rig. But there is still that nagging hesitation concerning the crappy, heavy accented tech support, and all the bloat that they add to their machines. One thing for sure, I knew I did not want an HP PoS, which Costco also sells. This Dell rig has Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium, with a 24-inch monitor.

Right off the top, within a couple hours of new, one of the cooling fans on the Dell kicked into high gear and tried to imitate a helicopter. Dell tech support was pretty unresponsive, as expected. A couple days later, FedEx delivered a box with two new fans and a new power supply. No note in the box, and still no email. There have been a couple phone messages, in which some guy mumbles something about Dell and what I think is his cell phone number, so I think the two might be related. Still no email, or easily understood phone call, so the new stuff sits on the floor, awaiting an uncertain fate. By the way, a review of the forums suggests that the random high speed cooling fan problem is common to several different Dell motherboards and firmware versions, and is easily fixed by a power off, power on cycle; so far, only twice in the one month of ownership, and only after the occasional warm boot.

Why another PC instead of simply fixing the iMac?

Simple answer: I like to tweak, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing when I do it. I really, really don't like it that I cannot simply open the case, unplug the hard drive and plug in a new one. Ten minutes to a fix, tops. I have always felt that the iMac ran a bit hot, with nothing more that vents on the bottom, and a long slot across the top, and no cooling fan. My own gut feeling is that since I never turned it off, and seldom rebooted, the poor hard drive simply cooked itself, and it died when it cooled down from the power being off.

Next task was how to get the music files from one of the Mac-formatted backups to the new Dell PC. The externals were hooked to the iMac by way of a couple Firewire 400 connections, which the Dell also has. A quick on-line search found MacDrive, a PC program that allows a PC to read a Mac-formatted drive. And it works great. I copied all the music files to the PC without a hitch.

Before loading iTunes, I took the opportunity to reorganize the Music folder to get them off and away from the iTunes folder. I lost about 30 bits of album art that I had previously let iTunes get for me, but I either found them elsewhere on the 'net, or rescanned them myself with Photoshop. To keep Apple's "helpful" fingers out of my stuff, when I loaded iTunes I unchecked the "Keep iTunes music folder organized". I have also decided that I'll keep the WAV and other source files separate and away from the iTunes library, using only MP3s for that purpose, which allows adding album art to the file itself.

For an editor, I reloaded CoolEdit, but Vista is a bit too fast for that nine-year-old program. So I tried the open source Audacity, the NCH suite (way too intrusive), and the nice Free Audio Editor, which looks a lot like Office 2007. FAE needs some more development work, but it is pretty good as it stands. After some consideration, and a trial period, I purchased Adobe Audition 3, which retains all the features of the old CoolEdit, plus some other bits. I especially like the ability to record a vinyl album as a single file, then use Audition's marker labels to split and save the different tracks into separate files.

As expected, due to the changes in Vista versus XP and the way each handles sound, Total Recorder doesn't play nice with the integrated sound on the Dell, so I installed a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Audio sound card. After some fiddling with the Sound settings in the Windows Control Panel, I am again able to record what I hear. To use either Audition, FAE, or Total Recorder, I have to disable the Bose Companion speakers since their USB connection confuses all other sound programs. I then enable a set of speakers connected to the Soundblaster sound card, and it all works as needed. When I'm done being creative, I disable the standard speakers, and enable the Bose speakers. (One small quirk: whatever sound application is running remembers which speakers are being used, no matter if they are disabled or enabled. So to change speakers, I need to shut the application down and restart it.)

For backups there are two external hard drives: a set of two Other World Computing (OWC MacSales, Inc.) 500GB Mercury Elite-AL Pro "Quad Interface" drives that allow any of the current connections (USB, FW400, FW800, eSATA) between the externals and the Dell PC. Although preformatted as Mac, they work just fine on a PC after being reformatted.

I tried a separate add-on expansion card with two eSATA connections, but there is a problem with the two drives powered on during a reboot. When I reboot with the drives powered on, the rig hangs at the RAID BIOS screen. Although I don't use RAID, the expansion card thinks I do. When I power the drives up after rebooting, they both show up in Explorer just fine. But I can't figure out how to update the expansion card's Tools/Driver/BIOS the way Silicon Image says I need to. So the connection will remain as USB until I can figure out the eSATA thing. Maybe a direct connection to the two empty ports on the motherboard.

I use iTunes, but to be fair, a couple days ago I tried Zune, having noticed the recommendation given it by the newest Maximum PC pagazine. It took Zune well over two hours to import the 6500 songs in the music collection, and after trying to use it to play particular songs, I think I'll stay with iTunes. I don't much care for Zune's look and feel, but maybe there is some tweaking I can do. Or, maybe I am thoroughly infected with the iTunes bug.

As for fixing the iMac, since it's still on the original 3-year Applecare warranty, I'll let them replace the hard drive free of charge. Then maybe I'll keep it. Or maybe I'll sell it to recover some to costs of getting its PC replacement up and running.

Some background on my audio life: It all started with my brother's return from his Viet Nam experience in 1969 with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Along with the real-to-reel recorder, the setup included an amp and a couple big-bass floor-speakers. We spent time recording our (mostly his) vinyl collection, recording songs from the radio, and listening to music, loud music. I bought my own setup within the year which included a Pioneer amp, a Garrard turntable, a Sony cassette player that auto-reversed (cool stuff in those days), and two big Pioneer speakers that are, almost 40 years later, still mounted up high on my walls.

Music has remained a part of my life ever since, through all the various moves and upgrades. Components have come and gone, and the current component setup uses those same big Pioneer speakers, plus a couple great sounding book shelf speakers at the other end of the room, and a AIWA combination CD/cassette player, together with what was literally hundreds of CDs and vinyl albums. That was until I purchased my first iPod in late 2005, which forced me to rethink of my audio life, with my computer becoming the focal point.

I soon began loading the CDs into iTunes, and scanning my own album art. Within a short period I filled the 30GB iPod. A concurrent review of the CD collection revealed several that were not really keepers, and several that were one-trick ponies with a single song being the reason for the original purchase. While keeping a realistic collection of CDs, a local used-CD store bought the rest at a fair price, and I walked out with enough cash to buy a new 80GB iPod, which as I write this, is still only half filled with over 6000 songs.

Until it died, the iMac had been kept just for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers. The combination of iTunes and the Bose speakers, along with the iMac (now replaced by the Dell PC) is essentially a great stereo, with edit capability, with more music readily available from several on-line music stores including iTunes, Amazon, Jamendo, Last.fm, or whatever else strikes my fancy. I can still crank up the volume and feel the music. The sound is so great that I haven't had my four-speaker component stereo even powered-on for over a year. And I can pick and choose the songs I want on iTunes, by artist, by album, by date added, by least played, by title, or completely random.

Asking Questions

2009-04-27T18:27:00.002-06:00

An anonymus stranger wrote in June 2006:

I cannot believe how mean spirited the responses to a simple question have been. Many of us (myself included) live on a limited income and cannot afford the spend $50.00 or more on books.

Jeff Cauthen wrote in June 2006:

I'm sick of this "limited income" crap. WE"RE all on limited incomes. Buy a book, it won't kill you!!

I have been able to get an amazing variety of books through my local county library. It may take a while, but you, too, might be surprised as to what's available through interlibrary loan. At no charge, so the "limited income" argument has nothing to stand on.

But I can understand Jeff's frustration. I suspect the question asking for a detailed list of Cab Forwards that operated in northern California and southern Oregon was simply ill-considered about the depth and range of possible answers, but Jeff's words could have come from any of the 30+ authors that I know.

There are times that we authors get real tired of answering basic questions that we have all written about many times (kind of like a doctor being asked medical questions at a party). Why oh why don't people read the books and magazines they buy. By far, most railroad books are sold for the photographs, with most buyers simply flipping through a new book and putting it proudly on the shelf.

As for asking simple questions, it's a whole lot easier to simply tap a question on the computer keyboard, than it is to spend a couple hours reading various printed sources. A good comparison would be a conversation on a street corner, which is what I consider all of these discussion groups to be. Two people are talking, and one of them will ask the other a question.

I run a very large web site, with over 1500 pages. It has a "Contact Me" feature. Anyone would be amazed at the variety and range of questions that get thrown my way. Most are pretty senseless, like a recent one, "Can you tell me about my Grandfather Hector Holmes, who I think worked for a railroad in Colorado?" This to a web site that is clearly marked UtahRails.

But every now and again, a question comes in that makes it all worth while. Or, even better, an offer to send along some item of interest. The good questions force me to think about what I may, or may not know. The good questions make it all worth while. I love doing research, and I enjoy sharing the results of my research, but please, do a little basic research before asking your question.

History and Web Sites Are Fragile

2009-04-26T18:28:00.006-06:00

In June 2006, Ken Clark wrote:

The problem is that the records are fast disappearing. Twenty five years ago we had a lot of records that were 25 years old, now we can't find or read files that are three years old.

In my recent visit to UP at Omaha, I was more than surprised to learn that UP themselves cannot access equipment records from the mid 1980s, and through to the time of my visit in 1995. It was during the mid 1980s that UP computerized their record keeping. I discussed this with several contacts within the company, and learned that they accept the new reality, along with the fact that if an employee did not print the report out, and keep it in his personal stash, the record is likely not available. Also, now that the ICC no longer exists, with its requirements for volumes and volumes of retained records, the railroads simply don't retain the depth and range of records that they did previously. Also, one of the "buried-in-the-minutiae" parts of the 1980 Staggers act was the reduction in reporting required by the railroads, and less reporting meant less records retention.

Ken continued:

One author who contacted me brought up a more troubling issue, that of the relative fragility of the web site. Many have not had the staying power of the hard bound volume. What happens upon the maintainer's death? or the internet host quits? Dead links abound. Will historical societies provide secure host space and maybe digital backups to ensure that the information is not lost? At this time I think the digital media has proven more fragile than the printed medium. It requires continual renewal onto current technology to avoid rapid obsolescence.

When I realized just how fragile web sites are, I determined to generate web pages that conform to current standards of future compatibility. All my web pages are fully compliant with XHTML standards, meaning mostly that they are simple text with formatting being handled by separate style sheets. I use PHP server-side includes so that I don't need to worry about keeping the formatting of every page perfectly up to date. No glitz. Each and every page is all about just the content.

I'm a great believer in open source, public web sites, such as Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. They have over 200,000 articles, supposedly more than Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta combined. For us railroaders, there is a remarkable range of railroad-related subjects. The editors take their (volunteer) jobs very seriously and strive to the most accurate information available. But their weakness is similar to any author's weakness; you can't use a source if you don't know of its existence.

The information at Wikipedia is always suspect, as is information in any printed source. But Wikipedia is fully editable by any registered user, with a full history shown of all changes. Wikipedia makes good use of peer review, much like academic research. Peer review is something our railroad writing could certainly use more of, but I have learned that there is a definite shortage of peers in the subjects I write about.

I determined years ago that railroad publishing to paper has a severe limitation. The potential market is astronomically small (1000 to 1500 books), therefore the economics of such a small market severely limit both the size and content of the published work, and the promotion and advertising of newly released, or still available, books. I figured this out at about the same time that Google became available as the web's premier search engine. From then on, I decided to make my research readily available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. The hard part, a difficulty also shared by commercial interests on the web, is to get the search engines to find your web site through a simple key word search.

My first Wiki edit was for Cooper bridge loadings. Some recent research about the weight limitations of the Salt Lake trestle brought a private email that mentioned the bridge loading standards known as Cooper loadings, with its axle loading standards, of which E-70 is an example. I did a search on Cooper loadings, along with the engineer who developed them, Theodore Cooper, and was a bit surprised that neither Google nor Wikipedia had any reference to this basic facet of railroad engineering. There is an article about Cooper, the man, but it makes no mention of the bridge loading standards named for him. Oh well, yet another subject to be researched and developed. Life goes on, and every work is a work in progress...

Metallic Smokebox Color

2009-04-26T18:05:00.005-06:00

In October 2006, Harry Wong wrote:

...had a darker shade of metallic on the smokebox.

This brings to mind my experience as a boilermaker apprentice back in 1971. I was an active modeler at the time (Denver & Salt Lake), and we were retubing the boilers in UP's huge power plant in Salt Lake City. These were massive water tube boilers, three in a row and three stories tall.

My journeyman was Glen Rice. One day he had me mix up what he called graphite paint. It was about a half gallon of some thick valve oil (a bit darker than your typical motor oil for automobiles), into which I mixed an equal measure of powered graphite. I then brushed it on an exposed part of the upper tube sheet. The heat took care of the oil in a couple hours, leaving behind a durable graphite coating as form of corrosion control. The next day, it was exactly the same color as Floquil's then-Graphite color that I took with me to work to compare.

I have since learned that what we modelers know as silver paint is actually aluminum paint, or aluminum powder in a carrier solvent. I have also learned that aluminum paint came about as a replacement for aluminum leaf, which itself was a cheaper version of silver leaf in lettering. Aluminum paint was so cheap and so durable in high heat situations, that many railroads began using it in lots of applications. It wears very well, but also oxidizes pretty fast.

History

2009-04-26T17:37:00.002-06:00

History as pure dates is boring to many. But dates are the skeleton of history.

If you have your dates wrong, then any history based on those dates will be seen as lopsided and unsupported. This includes any history of equipment, of operations, or even social and cultural histories that seem to be in vogue today.

History in context brings the past alive.

Local History

2009-03-28T09:07:00.002-06:00

I've been asked for my thoughts about compiling the book with local history as its subject. Like any other project, you will have to decide what story you want to tell. No publisher will touch an "all-time", definitive history. So the challenge is the compromise that the author is willing to live with.

This is precisely why I do web pages. I'm in complete control, with no publisher breathing down my neck about page count and always trying to reduce costs. Plus there is no fear of a lack of promotion. Any good internet search engine will find a web site.

In my case I will always consider the Ogden Rails project incomplete. But there comes a time when you have to move on. I'd love to do a "Salt Lake City Rails" book, or a full history of Brigham Young and the railroads. But in reality, I doubt that such projects will ever see publication, other than in the form of loosely associated web pages.

About doing a local history book: maybe a simple update of a previously published project might be good enough, such as my personal favorite, Ira Swett's "Interurbans of Utah", but with more and bigger photos, and good maps. Doing day-to-day newspaper research almost always adds new information, but can be incredibly boring and time consuming. At some point you will have to ask yourself, "will it really add to the story I want to tell?"

As words of encouragement, continue gathering data, photos, and maps. At some point, you will have to decide what exactly you want to say. Hopefully that decision will come sooner rather than later, and you won't pass from this world and leave your family with the decision as to what to do with all of your research.

Local Museums

2008-11-15T07:18:00.007-07:00

Sorry to say, I've never been much of a preservationist, other than photos and books. I have found that too many people get wrapped up in keeping for all time and forever, their mother's wedding dress, or Uncle Wilbur's family bible, or Aunt Wilma's dress from when she was baptized.

Too much attention is paid to keeping the "one-only" stuff, rather than the every day stuff used by people to get through each and every day. The worst I've seen is at Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and at the Union Pacific museum in Omaha. Most of the stuff is insignificant junk that the museums dare not throw away because it was a gift.

I've been to many local museums that have one too many washboards and butter churns, or three gold watches, and seventeen different gold buttons. Obviously, I'm not a fan of local museums, so I'm not the person to ask for an encouraging word. But yet, I visit them at every opportunity.

My interest is the history of industrial development in Utah, with a focus on railroad-related industries. I continue to be hopeful when I do go to a local museum, hoping for old photos of what the world looked like back then. The best have been in Crockett, California, with its great stuff about the C&H sugar factory there, and the museum in Helper, Utah. Both are wonderful places to visit, but I'm sure there are several more. A recent trip through Torrington, Wyoming included another very good local museum.

A Case of Forgotten Users

2008-09-14T16:06:00.022-06:00

... a story of the dangers of proprietary formats.

In July 1998 while visiting the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museum in Salt Lake City, I purchased at their bookstore, a CD-ROM titled "The Pioneer Heritage CD-ROM". The CD-ROM was being offered because it contained all of the text and photos, searchable by keyword, of DUP's extremely useful "lessons", dating back to Kate B. Carter's "Heart Throbs of the West", first published in 1939.

In December 1998 in one of my first on-line purchases, I gave Ancestry $39.95 to "unlock" the CD's full contents, which included the following:

Pioneers and Prominent Men
Pioneer Vital Records
Histories and Early Periodicals
Pioneer Biographies
Pioneer Resources

However, the jewel of the collection was labeled simply as "Daughters of Utah Pioneers." This included the following:

Our Pioneer Heritage, 20 volumes
Heart Throbs of the West, 12 volumes
Treasures of Pioneer History, 6 volumes
An Enduring Legacy, 12 volumes
Daughters of Utah Pioneers and Their Mothers

A total of 51 volumes of primary-sourced and secondary-sourced Utah history.

Six months later, I upgraded my hard drive, which required a new "unlock" code, which Ancestry furnished without problem. A year after that, a new computer forced another unlock code, which was also furnished, with the customer service representative saying that the initial purchase from a year before was a "lifetime" purchase.

Over the ensuing years, I continued to upgrade hard drives, and computers, and as late as August 2006, Ancestry continued to furnish an unlock code. But beginning in 2000-2001, each call for support required a longer and longer hold time as the telephone support person searched for the needed input screen, which in turn would generate a five-digit unlock code. An attempt in July 2004 needed three separate calls to Ancestry customer support to find a knowledgeable person who was able to find the unlock code generator. At that time, I started doing research into the history of Folio, Infobases, and the development of the file format (.NFO) proprietary to Folio.

A bit of on-line research helped me discover that the Folio setup program uses the computer's internal clock for part of the algorithm, along with a generated five-digit "unlock" code, to "unlock" the contents of the CD-ROM. This means that each new installation, due to new computers or replacement hard drives, must be "real time," meaning that the user must to be at the his computer and running the setup at the same time that customer support is called to request a new unlock code.

Then it happened.

In August 2006, after (yet another) hard drive crash in late 2005, I was unable to find anyone at Ancestry who recognized the need for an unlock code, and gave up. In December 2006 I suffered another hard drive failure, and I was again told by telephone support that an unlock code was no longer available.

Repeated calls to telephone support finally put me in the hands of a support person with similar interests, and he helped me identify the location of the DUP collections on Ancestry.com's web site. I immediately subscribed to their service.

Unfortunately, the search function at Ancestry.com assumes I am looking for a person. But they do allow a keyword search, which seems to work properly when searching a single source. I am unable to simply browse through the collections. Gone is the ability to print selected text (and search results) with citations, along with the photos.

Using the DUP collections at Ancestry.com [September 2008]:

Ancestry.com -> Search -> Stories & Publications -> Browse By Location (Utah) -> Utah Stories & Publications -> (search the list of over 8000 entries for the title of the DUP collection, i.e., An Enduring Legacy, Heart Throbs of the West, Our Pioneer Heritage, Treasures of Pioneer History). Save the URL web address as one of your favorite bookmarks.

The research into Folio and Infobases I did in 2004 made me pretty upset about the whole concept of entrepreneurs focusing on easy targets. In this case, it was a group of young entrepreneurs who also happen to be members of the LDS faith. They saw an opportunity of using Utah and LDS history resources as a revenue stream, using a proprietary file format. They then moved on to other opportunities without caring that they are walking away from their customer base.

The Back Story

In 1990, two BYU graduates by the name of Paul Allen and Dan Taggart created Infobases as a company, and began offering LDS publications on computer floppy disks. They chose to use the Folio infobase encryption and compression technology that Allen was familiar with, having worked at Folio Corporation since that company's founding in 1987. Folio was co-founded by Paul Allen's brother Curt Allen, and by his brother-in-law Brad Pelo, and using Folio technology seemed a natural way to offer LDS publications as a business venture.

(I have added some of what I found to the Infobases, and the Folio Corporation articles at Wikipedia.)

Infobases was successful in the small but unfulfilled LDS consumer market with its LDS Collector's Library. By 1996 Allen and Infobases together were gaining national media attention as an up-and-coming company and its young entrepreneur CEO. By 1997, the LDS Collector's Library had been sold to thousands of trusting church members. These new buyers simply wanted to make their use of LDS scriptures and associated publications, using the combined benefits of Folio Bound Views technology, and Infobases' scanning of hundreds of books and documents, and publishing them as CD-ROMs. As a side note, apparently most if not all of the books and documents were obtained from the libraries of nearby Brigham Young University.

Throughout 1995-1997, Infobases continued to sell LDS publications on CDs, and worked with other organizations, such as Daughters of Utah Pioneers and Utah State Historical Society, to make their own unique publications readily available, and searchable, on CD-ROM. These new CDs were a wonderful resource that made the study and use of LDS and Utah history publications much easier. But it all changed in 1997, after a very brief three year span of success.

In February 1997, Folio Corporation, co-founded by Brad Pelo and Curt Allen, was sold to Open Market, a Boston-based internet company seeking to take advantage of the growing electronic commerce phenomena taking place on the world wide web.

Open Market struggled to integrate the Folio technology into its business model, and together with a growing sense of reality among investors and businesses of high tech internet-related stocks, the company was soon seeing serious decline in its fortunes. A change in management at Open Market, and a switch in technologies in mid 1999 saw the Folio technology licensed back to Pelo and a group of Utah investors that included Alan Ashton of WordPerfect fame, under the name of ABSB. (Open Market attempted to embrace at least two other content management technologies, but was never able to fully recover. In March 2003, Open Market declared bankruptcy. Its surviving technology is now controlled by FatWire.)

This new company, ABSB, very soon changed its name to NextPage, and embarked on an expanding effort to leverage the benefits of Folio technology into what was variously called Peer-To-Peer Content Network and eContent Network. Where Folio really shined was in its ability to index all document formats on a company's internal network, known as an intra-net, and make those documents readily available to all network users.

During the mid 1990s, Folio had expanded its technology to include indexing web-based documents and products, along with additional formats. NextPage continued to improve on its Folio technology, and in less than two years the technology was being successfully marketed as NextPage's NXT.

The benefit's of NextPage's former Folio technology saw Pelo give testimony before the U.S. Senate in October 2000 on the advantages of server-based peer-to-peer document management, in the Senate's hearings on the negative impact of Napster, a similar peer-to-peer technology that allowed users to share music (illegally) across the internet.

In early September 2004 NextPage, Inc. announced that Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a Norwegian-based leading developer of enterprise search and real-time alerting technologies, had agreed to purchase the technology, product lines, and the over 500 customers and partners of NextPage's publishing applications business unit, including NXT, Folio, LivePublish, and GetSmart. NextPage's document management services, Chrome, was to remain with the company.

In January 2006, FAST announced the release of ProPublish 4.1, "designed specifically for premium content providers whose research-oriented users demand complex search and navigation capabilities." The relationship of the old Folio format, to this newer ProPublish format in not known, but the news release shows that ProPublish included "Enhanced support for Folio and NXT content types."

FAST is now a Microsoft Subsidiary. On April 25, 2008, Microsoft completed its acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer, in what Microsoft called "opening a new chapter in the ongoing evolution of search." They continue to support the Folio technology, but not the Infobases encrytion scheme.

In response to a query to Microsoft's FAST subsidiary, I have learned that the troublesome five-digit unlock code was not a feature of the Folio software. It was solely the choice that the now-defunct Infobases company made to protect its digital publications. Folio and its encryption technology is still fully supported. A Microsoft representative wrote, "The Folio product line continues to be supported through the many acquisitions; we are currently at version 4.7.1. While we are not actively selling the software any longer, we do continue to provide support services, including software patches, as necessary. The current versions of the software can open and read the older formats (back to version 3.1)."

Additional clarification was provided by Microsoft's FAST: "Folio is essentially a CD/DVD publishing platform. Publishers use the software to generate, secure, and distribute infobases (.nfos). They pay a royalty to distribute their publications with the software. The Folio organization (and its successors) have no control over their content nor any way to access their content without the appropriate access keys - which are controlled by the publisher, not by Folio."

So, it appears that the culprit here was Infobases as a publisher. As will be shown later, the rights and interests of Infobases is now owned and controlled by the LDS church's own Deseret Book Company.

Rewind back to Infobases in 1997. Infobases founders Paul Allen and Dan Taggart, saw a need to embrace the growing use of the world wide web for the purposes of genealogy and family history research. They purchased Ancestry Publishing, a 13-year-old publishing house that specialized in family history materials, and converted it to Ancestry.com.

The growing interest in using the internet to research one's family history has seen an explosive growth in the potential market. Allen and Taggart saw this as an opportunity in 1997, and today, Ancestry.com is one of the most successful internet companies in the nation. (After November 1999, Ancestry's parent company was renamed to MyFamily.com, with Ancestry.com remaining as its most popular component company.)

With the success of Ancestry.com as an internet company, the CD-ROM compact disks sold by Infobases soon became just a sideline to the on-line internet products that Ancestry was offering. To provide content and to expand its customer base, in June 1997, Infobases bought Bookcraft Publishing Company, a publishing house that published LDS-related books that had been turned away by the church's own Deseret Book Company.

Bookcraft had developed an impressive catalog of print publications, and Infobases saw a potential source that would greatly expand its own catalog of digital publications published as CD-ROMs for use on personal computers. The two companies merged, retaining the Bookcraft name as the top-level company.

In this same late 1990s time period, the LDS church itself was becoming aware of the advantages of the internet and electronic publishing. Through its Deseret Book brand name, the church had published its own scriptures and related publications on CD-ROM, and soon the Deseret Book versions of the LDS scriptural material, under the GospeLink name, were in direct competition with what Infobases had been doing since 1990.

Rather than to continue to compete, in April 1999, the management arm of the LDS church, Deseret Management, bought Bookcraft, which included all of the electronic publishing efforts of Infobases. Now that the LDS church itself was in the electronic publishing field, in addition to the scriptural materials, it could make available the numerous family history databases under the FamilySearch brand name.

Deseret Book chose to continue using the Folio infobase technology, supplied by NextPage as successor to Folio. Starting in 2002, and still unfulfilled in mid 2004, Deseret Book continued to promise an internet-based version of GospeLink. The kinks were worked out and today the effort is known simply as GospeLink.com. However, this internet-based service still would not address the concerns of owners of Infobases-published works on CD-ROM for the Utah history community.

It might be a fair assumption that those users who purchased Infobases CD-ROM products, are in many cases people who don't have much more than a beginner's knowledge of computer use, and are likely mystified as to why their Infobases CDs don't work properly on their new computers. Those users who are somewhat familiar with the use of computers, are most assuredly quite frustrated by the lack of upgrade patches and support for the old Infobases CDs. The loss of access to the extensive spiritual and historical CD resources originally published by Infobases is a fine example of the disadvantages of so-called "improving" technology. The customers who helped make the company successful, are simply left behind and technology moves on.

The true travesty of this whole string of events is that these Utah Valley entrepreneurs have abandoned the Folio/Infobases text encryption and compression technology. A technology that was so successfully pushed on the unsuspecting consumer market, and users in the LDS and Utah history communities.

There were many, many books and other source materials made available in the magical 1995-1997 time period; quite literally thousands of books and documents. Several of the businesses started by these guys were voted as the "bright stars" and fine examples of the "new age" Utah business community. They have all espoused the faith and family values of their personal religion, each talking at great length in various interviews about the service they were doing by making all of this spiritual and historical material available to the masses.

But anyone today who tries to use any consumer-marketed Infobases CD-ROM product on a newer technology personal computer such as a PC with Windows XP or Vista, or any Apple computer, soon runs up against a brick wall of non-compatibility.

What is needed is a Folio-compatible viewer for the consumer market that allows the uploading of Infobase .nfo and their associated files from those old CD-ROMs, to today's massive hard drives. There is no need for this viewer to compromise Infobases' proprietary encryption and compression technology, but it must be able to view Infobases' version of the files created under all of the Folio formats after the initial DOS 2.0 version. This would include the earliest 3.1a version that was used so extensively in 1996-1997, and meant to be compatible with Windows 3.1.

These founders and co-founders of Folio and Infobases are all millionaires many times over. I would think that in their entrepreneurial philanthropy, they could at a minimum embrace an implied obligation to produce a viewer for their Infobases products for the consumers who are stuck with all of these encrypted document collections.

I know nothing about encryption and compression technology, but surely, someone knows the details of these old encypted Infobases text and index files to the point that a viewer could be made available. If not a viewer, than at least a conversion tool that reads an old infobase, and saves it as a group of web-enabled files on our hard drives, with full Digital Rights Management. No marketing or customer support required; simply make it available as a free (or low cost) download from the Ancestry.com web site, or because Deseret Book bought the rights to Infobases products, from the GospeLink.com web site.

In 2000 Deseret Book released its GospeLink 2001 product on CD-ROMs, as a suite of church-related publications (a combination of Deseret Book's previous GospeLink suite and Infobases previous LDS Collector's Library), using the then-current NextPage technology. By mid 2004, the program was up to version 2.20, but still with a copyright date of 2000. Apparently, new features have been added, and it does appear to install and operate with Windows. But it cannot be used as a viewer for other Folio infobases.

Deseret Book's decision to make available the GospelLink suite on CD-ROM implies full support of the current Folio standard from then-owner NextPage. For business reasons, this decision is intended to limit the program's usefulness to only the current version of the infobase technology. This seems a bit shortsighted given the overwhelming push that Deseret Book gave to earlier consumer products during the late 1990s. Not everyone can afford this constant push to upgrade-upgrade-upgrade, especially us lowly consumers.

A similar release of historical data on CD took place with Utah State Historical Society's Utah History Suite, but with a better result. Originally available in 1999 as the "Utah History on CD-ROM", and using older Folio encryption, the CD included fully searchable versions of the Utah Historical Quarterly, the History Blazer, the full series of Centennial County Histories, and Beehive History. The version released in 2004 (and still available in 2008) came from a mystery company known as Historical Views, and made full use of changing technology and included updated viewers for both Windows and for Apple Macintosh computers. In its "About" help screen the viewer identifies itself as Folio Bound Views, version 3.11.2, copyright 1992-1996. And yet, even with the old original version, the viewer installs itself, and is fully functional on a new PC computer, running Windows Vista.

One question begs to be asked: If Folio technology can be used convert the earlier infobases internally for release in the latest GospeLink for LDS publications, and for the Utah History Suite, why can't a solution be offered to convert the earlier Infobases CD-ROMs that apply to Utah history, and other historical works.

NextPage offered a single-license version of Folio View, for a mere $149, but only by a direct credit-card-in-hand telephone call to their Lehi headquarters. Unfortunately, a warning was given that this latest incarnation of the Folio viewer may, or may not, be compatible with earlier infobases due to varying levels of encryption and rights management. This would be minimally acceptable if it would at least import the older infobases and offer to convert and save them to the latest format, much like many "improved" programs do for older database formats offered by other software companies.

Am I whining? You bet! Us consumers are more often than not seen merely as overstuffed wallets begging to have these same wallets emptied. We aren't businesses who can easily write off any and all expenses as the cost of doing business, passing along those same costs to our customers.

Technology is moving at a breakneck pace, but no new technology is moving so fast as to not at least give some sort of minimal support, or at least consideration to older versions, especially by the guys who developed the technology in the first place.

Folio Timeline

Infobases Timeline

PC to Mac, and Back Again

2008-08-09T09:52:00.001-06:00

After 18 months of being a Mac guy, the limitations became too much. While still occupying a space on my desktop, it shares that space with a new PC that was placed in service on May 30.

The 20 inch Intel iMac has been relegated to being what is essentially a music server, being the central location for me to manage my 3600+ files of music and audio. I find that iTunes works better on a Mac, plus the fact that there is no longer a simple way to capture audio on a PC. The combination of Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack and Fission make audio a joy to work with on a Mac. I use audio capture to grab dialogue from DVDs and from web sites, and I edit various audio files to get rid of bits and bytes that I dislike in particular songs and sound files. This used to be easy on a PC a couple years ago with CoolEdit and Total Recorder. But CoolEdit went corporate (and expensive; now known as Audition 3) after being bought by Adobe, and Total Recorder is now much too dependent on hardware and driver configuration. I tried the entire Replay suite, and DAK's collection, but none of the three work with my particular combination of PC hardware and software. So the iMac stays for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers.

One severe limitation for the iMac was that I have several PC-only programs that I use regularly, including the NoteTab text editor (BBEdit isn't even close), and IrfanView as an image viewer/converter (again, no Mac equivalent). I tried Parallels right from the iMac's first day, but dumped it when VM Fusion became available seven months later. Fusion is a lot better than Parallels, but I grew weary of the back-and-forth program usage.

Although I upgraded the iMac's performance with more memory, the final straw came when I outgrew the 250GB internal hard drive. All scanning projects came to a halt until a solution could be found. I gave much thought and consideration to keeping some files solely on external hard drives, but previous experience with hard drive failure, points to the need for all files to be on the computer's internal hard drive, with backups being simple mirrors of everything on the internal drive. SyncBackSE works great as a centralized backup solution. Having all files immediately available is a big plus. Everything gets backed up every night to at least two external drives, via either Firewire 800 or eSATA connections. The lack of these high-speed connections is another iMac limitation.

As for the new PC, it's an Intel processor on an Asus motherboard, with 4GB of RAM, all inside an Antec P182 case, and running Vista Business. Lots of expansion space, and lots of cooling capacity, the two biggest limitations of the iMac. The cost was definitely not low, but was also half of what a comparable Mac Pro would have cost.

After running both programs on the iMac, Dreamweaver and Photoshop both run faster on the PC. All the scanners have PC drivers, and all is working well. All, that is, except that the iMac couldn't talk to the PC over the wired network, or vice versa. I gave up briefly and used a USB drive to transfer the few files that I need to. A very successful solution came with the discovery of a program called Network Magic, which fixed the iMac to PC problem, and a separate problem of an XP box talking to two Vista boxes.

Railfans

2008-07-26T16:53:00.018-06:00

In response to several comments in a railroading forum about railroaders and drugs, a fellow railroad enthusiast named "Wadsworth" wrote on July 8, 2006:

The only reason Jerry Garcia used train & cocaine in that song is because it rhymed. It's not an anthem to professional railroaders. Your feeble attempt to connect the two is a slap in the face to professional railroaders. And you guys wonder why railroaders can't stand foamers.....sheesh!!

I've been banging around this hobby for over 40 years, including working for Union Pacific for ten of those. I've come to know numerous professional railroaders who have a deep appreciation of their industry, well beyond it simply being a job to them. Many take photos, lots of photos, and read all the various railfan publications.

But, I have yet to meet a railroader who respects railfans as a group. Over the years I've known a couple national railfan magazine editors, who often meet professional railroaders at various symposiums and conferences. They tell of similar experiences in the battle between railfans and railroaders.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that while at UP (almost thirty years ago), on one or two occasions I mentioned to a visiting "railfan", a couple bits a really silly information, just for the entertainment value. I recall one instance back in the early 1970s when I mentioned that I had just seen a Big Boy pass though town. The response was a bit frantic as the guy promptly set out on the grand chase. I know of other professional railroaders who admit to the same thing. Railfans can be, at times, amazingly gullible.

On the other side of the coin, professional railroaders can be amazingly dense about anything other than their own immediate job activities.

Some of the worst are the few railfans who are also professional railroaders. These guys want to be seen as some sort of expert; a big fish in a small pond. They share information that they have access to through their jobs, and get all upset and defensive when someone applies common sense to the information's validity. I have learned on many occasions that, unfortunately, not every bit of information from a railroad is pure, or totally complete and accurate. This is free country, and you can say almost anything that tickles your fancy, but these guys should give consideration to the shrill and silly nature of their defensive responses. They likely want to be seen as professionals, not realizing that their responses prove otherwise.

Railroaders and railfans do not mix very well. Mostly because railroaders think railfans are a bunch of idiots. Unfortunately, there are a few railfans who continue to prove that statement. I know one railroader who calls them "fidiots". And another who calls them "vesties".

The worst example of a railfan is the guy who uses only "gossip" from fellow railfans, including today's internet newsgroups, as his only source of information, without applying any sense of real-world logic, or business sense to what he may hear or read. I've seen guys who get tears in their eyes when they talk about UP 844. Like Wadsworth said, "Sheesh!" I always try to remember that this is just a hobby. It's what I do in my spare time.

Back before the internet, many professional railroaders used to call themselves "foamers", but now that railfans use that name, railroaders use a different name to describe themselves.

As for myself, I like trains, I like railroads, and I like Union Pacific. I know enough to respect their business decisions, but I also like to simply watch their trains. And I like to research and write about railroad locomotives, UP history, and my local railroads and their history. But I describe myself as a railroad historian, not as a railfan, and definitely not as a rail buff.

End of the D&RGW

2008-07-26T16:00:00.004-06:00

Steve Seguine wrote on March 8, 2002:

I find 1988 a convenient end of the Rio Grande, because it was then that it officially became the SP. It has taken years for the SP and UP to erase the spirit of the D&RGW and soon that will be all gone.

The spirit of the Rio Grande will continue to live as long as people remember it. That's the purpose of a historical society. The equipment that was painted in D&RGW colors may be long-painted to another paint scheme, but we can all remember what underneath it all, next to bare metal. Don't get sappy about it, but don't forget either. One benchmark most fallen flag historical societies use for their coverage of any particular railroad, is if the property still exists, i.e., the roadbed and trackage where the trains ran. I suspect that UP will be using former D&RGW trackage for quite some time.

As to dates, the DRGW reporting mark was transferred to UP on June 30, 1997. This is the same date that all existing equipment ownership and leases were also transferred to UP. The D&RGW corporate existence went away also on the same day. D&RGW never merged with SP, it was only controlled by SP on October 13, 1988 (actually, D&RGW's parent company is the one that took control of SP, and SP, in-turn, took control of D&RGW). The same goes for UP and D&RGW. September 11, 1996 was the day that UP controlled D&RGW, along with SP, SSW, and SPCSL.

But, don't worry about the dates, or the company. It's the railroad we want to remember. The spirit of the Rio Grande is different for everyone, and we really should not be arguing amongst ourselves about when D&RGW ended.

I personally caught the spirit in 1964, when I spent an afternoon riding my bike along side a yellow stripe Geep on the Sugarhouse Local as it switched all the various spurs between Roper and Sugarhouse. The crew was very nice to a bike-riding 13-year-old kid, and explained all sorts of things about railroad operations. I was hooked, and as they say, the rest is history.

(The other memory is that I completely filled my bike's tires with sticker weeds, and had to walk it five miles home on two very flat tires.)

Don Strack

Railroad Records

2008-02-05T20:27:00.002-07:00

While Union Pacific's records for its cabooses and other rolling equipment show retirement dates up to about 1975 (with some sales), the records after that time are spotty and mostly incomplete, especially for sales. It was at about this time that Union Pacific began using a central computer for all record keeping. Most of the caboose donations were recorded, at least up to about 1995. After that time, records are mostly nonexistent.

The fact that UP's own equipment records are so incomplete is sad but true. In these days of no government regulation, and focus on increasing shareholder value, costs at headquarters have been severely cut, and the most expensive cost is labor, especially having clerks record and maintain information that the government no longer requires (car ownership and usage). Cars and locomotives are merely assets to be bought and disposed of, kind of like the little car that the guy at the pizza place drives; when he needs a new one, he simply goes and gets the cheapest one he can get, and does not need to answer to anybody.

The Federal Railroad Administration still requires the air brake information to be recorded on the blue card in the locomotives, but only for the most minimal of safety reasons. The original blue card is in the locomotive cab, and a copy of the blue card is kept in Omaha, but there really is no hard emphasis to get the previous ownership right, or to get the date information correct. There is no penalty from the FRA if the information is found to be wrong, except for a minor slap-on-the-wrist of a one-time $250 fine. It's easy on the new stuff, but the leased stuff and stuff from merger partners generally falls by the wayside. And there is none of this safety requirement on cabooses after the 1989 decision by the Supreme Court that found that states could no longer require cabooses on all trains.

Getting information about railroad equipment is very hard these days. It is amazing how many records have simply been destroyed. They take up space (that needs to be paid for), and there is only the most minimal government requirement for them in the first place.

Almost everything we know about Union Pacific from 1914 to about 1995 comes from the railroad's records that it kept to fulfill the ICC requirement for valuation of its assets. The ICC went away in January 1996, and with it went the history of railroading after that date. UP has disposed of almost everything prior to the magic seven years of required records retention, and they are very focused on that constantly moving date. Now, seven years later, anything before 1996 is gone. I have seen many, many boxes with this notation: "Throw away after [some date]" with the exact date being seven years after the record was initially boxed up and kept.

To return to the subject of cabooses; I have copies of records up to 1995 (retirements and donations, but sadly, no sales). After 1995, there are simply no records available, other than whatever some individual clerk may have kept at their own desk, or in their own files, to make their own everyday job easier. As these people have retired (and many have, with several buyouts having been offered), either the person themselves threw the stuff away as they left, or the railroad disposed of it to clean out the person's desk and files. I have gotten to know several clerks over the years, and they all have horror stories about missing records since 1995.

What does this all mean? It means that current and future historians are in for a rough haul.

Publishing, Other Options

2008-01-12T19:59:00.002-07:00

Like others, I have been contacted by Arcadia, and after a couple phone calls, they sent me their author guidelines. A review of the guidelines made it obvious that I wouldn't be making anything more than a good meal at a fast food restaurant. They make all the money, but...

...maybe making money isn't my purpose. In most cases my motivation has always been to simply share my research. Having my own web site works great for that. In other cases, the subject requires photographs, so I've had to pimp myself to a publisher so that they can add the needed photos, but the costs of that (both real and emotional) have nearly undone me several times.

In my case, the subject of Arcadia's interest is my work concerning the railroads of Bingham Canyon here in Utah. I've got hundreds of photos (most are 8x10 negatives), and have access to lots more. Their guidelines show that I provide all the scans, and all the words, in their format.

This means that, as others have said, I do all the work and they get the money. But the benefit is that my book will get promoted and distributed. A friend in the railfan publishing field has mentioned that I should look at this like "chumming the waters," hoping that doing an Arcadia book could lead to more photos and "memories" that could end up in a much bigger (and more scholarly) book later, with larger photos and good maps.

With my current skills, I could easily write all the words, and scan all the photos. From comments I have seen on a couple forums, it would be best to provide Arcadia with minimal words and clearly identified photo locations, due to Arcadia's editing methods. Since all the work is then done, I'm thinking, why not simply do a web page, with an associated photo album?

The difference is distribution and market. An Arcadia book would be put into people's hands via local bookstores and gift shops, and would likely reach an audience that a web page never would. But a web page has a potential worldwide audience. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection, and a web search site, will likely find my web page (as they do today, with over 1500 hits per day). I guess it all depends on which market we are chasing. And I still can't decide what to do. I'll wait until all the photos are scanned, maybe sometime this year, to make that decision.

In response to the above words, a suggestion was made that I look into on-demand, self-publishing, via something like Amazon's Kindle. In response I say that they were assuming that everyone interested has a computer, or worse, that they even know how to use one.

I have found that a surprising percentage of people interested in the history of industrial technology (railroads, mining, etc.) tend to shun using a computer for little else other than email, if that. That fact may be changing, as those persons either die, or become more technically savvy, but they are a significant part of the market, whether I make any money off of them, or not.

Michael Seitz writes that "the bigger hazard of a purely on-line distribution is the obsolescence factor and archival longevity of digital data. What if the device is damaged or lost? If you want your research to remain accessible to a larger portion of the reading public, then you really should consider hard-copy publication. How many folks can access 3.5" floppies, or documents stored on old hard drives of obsolete computers?

He adds that when his "local newsletter went from hard copy to digital distribution, I found I hardly looked at the thing after initial receipt. There are other things I have downloaded that I do refer to, but all are one hard drive crash away from oblivion, or I will need to burn back up copies of the information on the media of the day.

"Why not both? Web for control and continual updating, and the book for long term information preservation?"

I agree completely, Michael.

As for the long-term reliability of digital technology, I can certainly attest that your hard drive *will* fail. Make your backups now!

Historical Vandalism

2007-10-25T19:24:00.000-06:00

Blair Kooistra wrote on September 28, 2005:

. . . where it can sit in boxes on a concrete floor and rot away. OR it can be sent to a large museum or library, where it will likely also sit in a box until it crumbles into dust. Just donating the material someplace doesn't guarantee that it will be 'saved." Lord knows there isn't enough money out there for museums and such to take care of what they've got, let alone process the piles of new stuff donated to them.

I find the bigger issue of "historical vandalism" is the destruction of large amounts of valuable (to me at least!) paper material and computer data by railroads in this country over the past couple of decades. Containers of shredded documents sent overseas for recycling; the reliance (can't blame em, really) of putting all the information on computers to save space, cost, money and improve accessibility to the information. None of which bodes well for the historically minded.

Like many other railroad historians, I've certainly done my share of dumpster diving. How about the time, during a light drizzle on a Saturday morning many Aprils ago, I was ass-deep in Union Pacific's South-Central (old LA&SL) superintendent records, at the wrong end of a 24-inch cardboard tube that hung outside of the top floor of the Salt Lake depot. The stuff I was finding from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s makes me almost weepy-eyed today. Everyday stuff, like tearing down this roundhouse, or building that new spur. It was an unplanned opportunity, so all I had was a (dumped-out) grocery sack, which was soon filled to the brim. I was already late to get someplace else, and by the time I got back to the dumpster, a new one was in place. Whatever was in the first dumpster was gone. Gone forever.

My recent Ogden book gave me several more chances to see other people's stuff, and where they were keeping it. Like Blair said, in a box, rotting on a concrete floor. When I think of all the stuff the kids have thrown out after the old man died, oh my! Here's the scenario: Dad's been in the hospital for three weeks, and he passes on. In about a week, the kids go into his train room and say, "Now what?" They all know how important this all was to Dad, but none of them have the faintest idea of what to do with it. Depending on whatever else is going on in their lives, the photos, books, magazines, and other odd paper items, may or may not get to the local historical society. More than likely, for want of time or desire, it all goes to the dump.

On a couple occasions, I've helped the Union Pacific Historical Society go through boxes and boxes of stuff that gets donated to them every year. Most of it from the old railroaders in the Cheyenne area. By far, most of it is junk, like drink coasters or match books, but in almost every box there is a gem that truly adds to the documentary evidence of the Union Pacific Railroad. One recent example is in a box full of UP calendars from the 1990s. Among the rolled-up calendars, there was a calendar from 1953 and another from 1958. In the same box were some mimeographed sheets meant as a guide for dignitaries on board a business car. The sheets described the Wyoming Division in mind boggling detail, with full history and intelligent commentary about the business and traffic of the division at the time, in this case, 1963. Great stuff.

Of course, we are all free to do whatever we want with our stuff, and this IS just a hobby. But any historian (of any subject) can tell you a story of how he or she found something that really told the story better, simply because someone kept that photo, or piece of paper. We should all be giving some thought to what happens to our stuff after we leave this earthly existence.

Lucin, A Boat [Book Review]

2007-10-20T16:06:00.001-06:00

Tale of the Lucin: A Boat, a Railroad and the Great Salt Lake. By David Peterson. (Trinidad, California: Old Waterfront Publishing, 2001. 158 pp. Paper, $16.95)

Reviewed by Don Strack

Whether we admit it or not, all of our lives are touched by the history of America’s railroads, and it can be an unusual involvement with railroads and railroading that makes us each aware of that association. In the case of author David Peterson, who spent some of his formative years on the Pacific Ocean at Eureka, California, his story began with a boat, the oldest boat in the fleet at Eureka’s dockside.

This wonderful 158-page book tells the story of small boat that started its life in 1893 as a passenger launch on San Francisco Bay. Along the way, this book also tells the story of boats and shipping on Utah’s Great Salt Lake, and the story of the completion of one of the greatest engineering feats of the Twentieth Century, the construction of Southern Pacific’s Lucin Cutoff across this famous inland sea. In 1902 the boat was moved by Southern Pacific to the Great Salt Lake to help build the earth-fill and wooden trestle across the lake, becoming the first of a fleet of both large and small boats operated by the railroad on the lake.

For anyone interested in the Great Salt Lake, or railroads in Utah, this book is a must read. It begins with full review of the boats and shipping on Great Salt Lake, including the early explorers, and early attempts by Patrick Connor to use his steamer Corrine to ship mineral ores from Stockton on the south shore to Corrine on the newly completed railroad line on the north shore. Included is a review of the resorts and their excursion boats. The book makes excellent use of maps and photographs as visual aids.

Chapter Two relates the story of the construction of the railroad’s Lucin Cutoff, beginning with the early engineering studies, and the 1900 decision to begin construction. The Lucin Cutoff was completed in 1904, and the author was able to complete extensive research, and successfully relates many aspects of the cutoff’s difficult construction features. Intertwined are bits of how Southern Pacific’s fleet of boats, specifically, the Lucin, did their part in the cutoff’s construction. Especially well done are examples of the challenges of using earth fill to cross what was, and still is, a lake that has at its bottom a thin salt crust layer atop “10,000 feet of mud.” The delicate balance between the weight of the fill material, and the ability of the lake bottom to support the load is a battle that continues today.

Additional subchapters tell the stories of how the same construction crew, and their boats, built Southern Pacific’s Dumbarton Cutoff across the southern part of San Francisco Bay, which was completed 1910. Under the heading of “What’s Next,” the author presents material about the maintenance of the Lucin Cutoff, and its complete replacement in 1959 with an all-earth fill. This new fill also used a fleet of boats, and these later subchapters relate the modern methods of moving massive amounts of fill through the use of large tugs and barges. Later subchapters bring the reader up to date with the subsequent removal-from-service of the original wooden trestle, and the reclamation of its virgin-growth redwood lumber.

An interlude chapter does an excellent job at what the author calls biographies of all the San Francisco Bay launches that served on Great Salt Lake. In it are histories of the individual boats that Southern Pacific moved to and from the bay area to Utah.

A final chapter returns to the later history of the boat Lucin, the survivor. This little boat was returned to San Francisco Bay with the completion of its namesake cutoff in 1904. The chapter contains numerous details of how the boat was converted from its original passenger launch configuration to a more utilitarian tug configuration. Its use on the bay ended with its sale, and movement in 1917 to Portland, Oregon, for service at the mouth of the Columbia River. In 1937, the tug was sold for its powerful gasoline engine, and in 1939 the hull was sold and converted from a medium-draft tug to a deep-draft fishing boat. This reviewer will leave the story of the boat’s final years to prospective readers to discover with their own reading of this most enjoyable book. The book ends with a note from the author seeking additional information, and a full bibliography that relates the author’s journey for research for anyone who might want to follow in his path. A full index is also included.

In his prologue, the author states, “History does not neatly divide into separate topics and periods; it is a complex weave of all that has ever passed.” Nothing confirms this statement better than this book. While it is the story, or rather a tale, of a boat, it is also the story a railroad and the Great Salt Lake, and of man’s crossing of the lake. There is no better history than history placed in context, which this book does very well.

Book Reviews

2007-09-24T16:55:00.000-06:00

Originally posted to The Streamliner at YahooGroups, on May 10, 2001

One of the many valuable lessons I have learned by being part of the publishing community is that no one gives a negative review. It's okay to give a positive review, but you will never see a negative review in any publication that has any advertisers to keep happy, or any kind of standing in the publishing field. It's okay to say what's right about a subject, but unless you truly feel that the item is a rip-off (and not merely as good as you think it should be), and that the producer is a con-man simply trying to separate people from their money, I would stay away from a negative review.

If you read an neutral review, it could mean that the reviewer did not care for the product, but had enough courtesy to not say so. Case in point is the recent review of my Diesels of the UP, 1934-1982, Volume 1 in Trains magazine. It is a neutral review in that the reviewer simply told what the book was about, and did not include any positive remarks, such as "This is the best book ever written!" A neutral review could also mean that the reviewer has no background at all in the subject of the book, so really could not do an in-depth review.

I have seen several exchanges recently about whether or not someone is qualified to publish a review, meaning does the reviewer have a background in the subject being reviewed, giving credibility to his opinion. Simply being a consumer of the product does not make one qualified to publish a review. Such a thing would be akin to me doing a review of a book about the steam locomotives of the Florida East Coast simply because I decided to buy a copy of the book for its pretty pictures. I have no background whatsoever in FEC steam locomotives, so why would anyone care what Don Strack thinks about such a book. If I went ahead and did a review anyway, it would show an embarrassing level of arrogance on my part. But hey, that's just me. Back in my apprenticeship days at UP, many, many years ago, a very wise old boilermaker once told me, "It's best to stay quiet and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Believing The Written Word

2007-09-22T12:56:00.000-06:00

Joe Brugger wrote on August 20, 2005:

At any rate, in a world of $50 - $100 books, it's [Wikipedia] a useful tool for the researcher.

Like all sources; some Wikipedia articles are good and some are bad. It's up to the reader to figure out the difference. That's what a "scholar" is, someone who has wasted enough time going down alleys to see if they are blind, and can call the bullshit factor right away when reading something.

I have known people who quote the Bible regularly to prove or disprove whatever point is under discussion, and obviously believe whatever they read that is printed to paper. This true belief is like many others who think that if they read it, it must be gospel, either on paper or on a computer screen. Bad idea!

This attitude scares the yikes out of me. As a railroad author, I am haunted by this way of thinking, as in, "Will this story be quoted forever as the definitive source?" Lordy, I hope not. I sincerely hope that anything I write gets someone either curious enough, or mad enough, to do his or her own research; either to add to what I write, or to prove me wrong. Please do. My favorite phrase is, "As always, comment or correction is most welcome." And I truly mean it when I say it. Not that I'm on some sort of crusade, but that's what I like about Wikipedia: it's open source nature so that anyone can add to, or correct what is published on any particular subject.

Roster Style and Format

2007-09-22T12:34:00.000-06:00

All my rosters started out back in the mid 1980s as tab-delimited columns in Wordperfect files. The first ones were what was used in Cockle's UP 1990 book. Next came the UP 1992 book from Hyrail, with the same file structure. By the time of the C&NW book in 1995, I had switched to Word and soon discovered that tables worked better than columns. For the files that were used for publication, I converted the tables to tab-delimited columns, but the actual roster files remained as tables.

When I did my first web rosters, it was by direct conversion of the tabled Word files, into tabled HTML files, although Word back then (and still to some degree today) tended to produce really bloated HTML files. I have since gained quite a bit of experience in manipulating HTML tables, especially using styles for the actual on-line presentation. Today, the actual roster data is in simple HTML rows and cells, with CSS styles governing how the data looks.

I have tried using formal databases on several occasions (including Access and FileMaker), starting way back in the late 1980s with DBASE II. But getting the reports to generate in a format usable in publishing was always the limiting factor. I always ended up exporting the report to a delimited text file and fixing it in either Wordperfect or Word. I have used Excel spreadsheets with some success, but always ended up exporting them into Word tables to be able to format the rosters into a usable format.

For anyone looking to start compiling rosters, I would recommend using tables in Word (or any other word processor). Using a database to too complex for the simple data we use in rail equipment rosters.

All my rosters today are done in HTML using Dreamweaver as the editor of choice. Editing a roster is very easy in Dreamweaver because it displays the HTML code as What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) tables, and I simply edit the data in the tables. Take a look at the source code for any of the rosters at UtahRails.net and you will see "the man behind the curtain". Using this combination of software makes immediate publishing very easy, and I don't have to hassle with page-count as a limiting factor. Publishing to the web removes all of the limitations that publishing to paper brings with it, such as lack of promotion, lack of distribution, and limited press runs. Of course, I have never seen my railroad interests as a potential revenue stream, which is good since there really isn't any money in it, except for about five guys nationwide. And for those guys, money is always their number one concern; money coming in and money going out.

What To Do With It All

2007-05-27T07:28:00.000-06:00

Originally posted to Trainorders.com on December 11, 2005.

I have also been giving lots of thought about what to do with what's in my basement. I have one advantage of a family member being an employee of my state's archive department. By far, most of what they preserve is mandated by either federal law or state law. Items such as birth and death records, military records, and communications and correspondence concerning the state's lawmakers. The advantage here is that they are not rail-centered, and everything that comes into their hands is treated with equal importance. They have a nice new high-tech storage facility, and everything at least gets its own archive box, with proper indexing in their multi-layered computer database, which is also accessible by way of an internet connection.

My state (Utah) is small enough that there are three state entities that are equally capable of preserving my stuff: the state archives themselves, the state university (University of Utah), and the state historical society. all are tied together by virtue of shrinking state budgets, and management of all three communicate closely to make best use of those limited funds, meaning they want to avoid duplicate efforts.

My major concern is that the stuff be accessible from a public entity, funded by public monies. This will ensure that at least the stuff is accessible, although the trend lately with all archives nationwide makes it hard for anyone to simply drop by to do some same-day research. Planning ahead is essential.

The point of this is that my stuff will likely be donated to the University of Utah's Special Collections. But before I die, I am getting good, professional advice as to the best ways to organize all that I have, and to get the stuff as fully indexed as possible, including good summaries that non-rail people (namely archives employees) can readily understand. What it is and why it's important. Also, I am making the time and financial commitment to get the photos scanned and preserved to CDs and DVDs. I've spent the past 30 years researching various aspects of Union Pacific history, and the history of railroads in Utah, and among the stuff are the only copies of numerous paper items and photographic prints and negatives and color slides, and I really don't want any of that to be lost to some random dumpster.

Trying To Write Right

2007-05-21T11:35:00.000-06:00

Joe Brugger wrote on November 25, 2005:

The word for that process is "gathering string," picking up bits and pieces of a story until it finally gels into some kind of coherent picture. For the writer, it's research, observation and interviews.

This is my experience also. Before an article takes shape, or text for a book starts to firm up on the computer screen, I have always done the digital equivalent of 3x5 note cards, i.e., a Word file that is arranged in chronological order to help me understand my subject. Then, I make a trip. My most vivid was a couple years ago when I wrote about UP's Shay locomotives, and the mining district here in Utah where they ran (see UPHS, The Streamliner, Vol. 19-3, summer 2005) (Text is here).

I had looked at what seems to be a hundred maps and photos of the area, and there I was, standing on the abandoned grade between Eureka and Mammoth, where the UP uphill line crossed the D&RGW downhill line. The crossing is a flat patch of cinder covered sagebrush hillside, and suddenly I could hear the offbeat exhaust of UP 61 as it climbed the 3 percent up to Mammoth. The view out across the Tintic Valley is still astounding, and the ghosts of Shay locomotives were so vivid that the memory is deeply embedded forever. I had the complete attention of 10 or so whitefaced cattle, but they will never understand.

Other times, I've been working on Utah coal mining areas in Carbon County. Although the mines are long gone, as well as the rail spurs and branches that served them, I have stood among the pucker bushes and listened to the ghosts of Utah Railway and D&RGW coal jobs as they shove their empties up the canyons. Malleys and Alcos, oh my!

And of course, there's the magic spot on the curve at Echo as UP super power charges up the 1.14 percent, whether the power is a Challenger, a Big Blow, a Centennial, or today's SD70Ms, raw horsepower is raw horsepower. I've told my wife that she should spread my ashes on the ties of Number 2 track at Echo. She thinks I'm joking, but the thought of what's left of me mingling with the traction sand of upbound trains headed east, brings a grin to my face every time.

As to the process of notes becoming something more final, I have come to realize that many of my projects will never come to final form, with maps and photos. So I made the decision a couple years ago to share my research notes with the world on my UtahRails web site. There they are, warts and all. The worst wart is the number of times that I have had to add (Source?) or (Source not recorded) to the end of an entry. They are the result of 20-year-old research, back before I realized that I would not be able to remember where I got the information from. Oh well. At least the poor schmuck who follows me will at least have the barest of leads, so they can do better research.

Day One

2005-01-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

It all has to start someplace, and this is my starting point.