| URL | railpage.com.au |
|---|---|
| Type of site | Railway enthusiast website |
| Owner | Interactive Omnimedia |
| Created by | Railpage Development Team |
| Launched | Circa 1992 |
| Current status | online |
Railpage Australia is a private owned and run website focusing on railways within Australia and Oceania. The site was run by volunteers, and provided free or reduced-cost internet services to not-for-profit railway organisations and preservation groups.[1] It has been quoted as a source in major state and national newspapers, as well as in government and private research publications.
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Railpage is the largest railway-oriented web-site in Australia[2] and was among the first 100 web sites to be hosted in Australia.[3]
The site allowsrailway enthusiasts to find and exchange picture, news and information relating to mainly Australian trains and railway infrastructure. The site includes a user photo database, discussion forums, a chat room and a railway news section.
The discussion forums are divided into separate sections, such as Australian based discussions, heritage interest groups, and overseas discussions.
Although around 50 percent[4] of forum users were under 26 years of age, nearly a quarter of contributors were involved in the rail industry.[5]
Railpage started in 1992 as a cfingerd service on David Bromage's account on Monash University's general access Unix server. Anybody could finger the account and view the indexpage, and further view the railpage. The name lives on.
The content of the finger service was translated to an experimental web site in July 1994. Early content included a repository of Australian railway timetables,[6] inspired by a contemporary project in the United States.
In January 1995, Brian Evans suggested to David Bromage that Railpage (which at that point comprised static web pages) could be further developed. The two began to develop the site further, and later transferred it to a dedicated server.
The site gained its own domain name (railpage.org.au) in January 1997.
On 11 January 2003, Railpage introduced an on-line forums service using the open source PhpBB forum software.
Assuming the role of Project Director and site owner, (which he still maintains today), Brian Evans proposed the website enter a new development phase, involving the introduction of a Content Management System (CMS). The site had accumulated a significant number of unique URLs and was becoming increasingly harder to maintain. A solution to provide content owners with an ability to create and maintain content at the site became a priority.
Late in 2003, after several months of development and with the help of several developers and testers; RP2 was launched on Saturday 10 April 2004 at approximately 5pm. While at the time the portal structure was primitive and contained a number of bugs present in all Nuke releases - the portal offered a number of new services to users including an image gallery and news feeds.
As of January 2008, the site receives in excess of 1000 posts per day, and over 62,000 unique visitors and 13,000,000 hits per month. The domain www.railpage.com.au alone serves in excess of 30 gigabytes of data per month.[7] As of April 2008, the site had reached 16,000 registered users and 1,000,000 posts.[8]
The site had been offline since 22 January 2010, but has now been reconnected as of 14 May, that year. It was down due to a fall out at Digital River's headquarters.
Railpage is used as a reference source for railway information in Australia, in particular with the Federal and State governments.
In December 2003, Railpage and the Australasian Railway Association helped the then Australian Geological Survey Organisation (now Geoscience Australia) produce the Railways of Australia thematic map.[9]
Railpage was used as a secondary source of information by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2004.[10]
Railpage was used as a source by the Museum of Victoria in preparing its Victorian Railways history portal.[11]
It was sole source of reference in the Wyndham City Council's Tram Investigation Study.[12]
In recognition of its educational merit, Railpage is included in Education Network Australia (edna): a list of approved school resources as a directory of resources on Australian railways.[13]
In February 2007, the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics used information posted in a Railpage hosted site, "Gheringhap Loop", to produce an information paper on rail freight activity data.[14] In the forward, the Executive Director of BTRE states (in part) "Following the growth in private train operations...rail freight activity data became increasingly scarce. The lack of data can be a challenge for the BTRE in providing the government with timely and accurate information about trends in Australian freight transport....In the meantime, the BTRE has investigated other potential data sources, including information from railway enthusiasts."
As of July 2007, Railpage has 5 citations on Google Scholar.[15]
The Parliament of Australia lists Railpage as a key internet link on transport economics and transport law for Members and Senators.[16][17] Railpage is also used as a resource by senior State Government Members of Parliament and Officials.[18]
Those who have contributed in an official capacity have included the president of the Public Transport Users Association Daniel Bowen,[19] the Victorian Director of Public Transport Jim Betts[20] and the Victorian Department of Infrastructure's Fare Policy Manager Adrian Webb.[21] Television presenter Scott McGregor has participated in a live chat on the web site.[22]
Its co-founder, David Bromage, has been featured in media articles and interviews including by ABC radio on the history of the XPT[23] and trainspotting[24] with Railpage cited as a source for further information. Other staff including Michael Greenhill and James Morgan have participated in media coverage about Railpage.[2]
Railpage, is hosted by SISgroup in Sydney, Australia. From 1999 to 2004, Railpage hosted the popular Vicsig web site,[25] and continues to provide internet services to the Seymour Railway Heritage Centre. Other hosting includes the Diamond Valley Railway at Eltham,[26] the Australian Association of TimeTable Collectors,[27] and the Australian Society of Section Car Operators[28]amongst others.
Railpage Australia was based on PHP-Nuke,[29] however as times wears on it bears less and less resemblance to the original release. Its code base was PHP and the back end database runs MySQL.
A new server was sourced in late June 2007 to take over the task of handling both Railpage and the other websites hosted by Railpage. The migration of the main Railpage website to the new server was completed on 3 July 2007, and launched on 5 July 2007.[30]
The Railpage codebase was the collaborative work of a number of users. Early code contributors were David Bromage (dbromage) and Brian Evans (bevans), who were later joined by James Morgan (webslave), Michael Greenhill (michaelgreenhill), Lionel Camilleri (loco), and James Holt (jholt). All site staff were volunteers who undertake all management and development tasks including server configuration and maintenance(as the site is self-hosted).
During the period of 2010-2011 Railpage embarked on a bold project to design, install and maintain a number of IP Webcams or "Railcams" at key locations across the Victorian Railway Freight Network. The first location chosen as the initial IP Webcam site is located at Bunbury Street with discussions on Railpage at Railpage - Bunbury Street Railcam Project