Wiki Status Archived

March 28, 2011

This month has been busy. I am still trying to upload and keep very organized the John A. MacIntosh photo collection as well as scan and upload all my JAM purchases. I estimate I still have another 100 at least to go until it is finally all organized.

Additional uploads this last quarter made by Dan Conlin on behalf of Jim O'Donnell are much appreciated. Jim always seems to have the detail no one else does. A real fine addition thanks to Jim are the Truro Roundhouse Dispatch logs.

Still more more images from 1966 have arrived unannounced from Edward S. Gray that wonderfully details the docking sequence at Digby wharf and other shots from the summer of 1966 around the Digby waterfront. These are much appreciated as well!

This month also brought an upgrade to the Wiki (and Forum too) software. There are quite a few more features that can now be used and I added in an extension as well to make Footnoting a lot easier. Click on help for more details on that.

And finally, I started up a new Wiki for sister railway the Halifax & Southwestern Railway. As the two Railways shared 3 interchange points, it was a bit of a natural. As a result, those odd bits and pieces from the H&SW that everyone ended up with have somewhere to go now. I will also completely moved the Springfield Railway over to the H&SW as well being that it branched off the H&SW and not the DAR.

June 13, 2010

The DARDPI.ca site is now being hosted on my new Windows 2008 server. It's been a learning curve getting it running but I am very pleased with the performance of the server and the operating system. I also upgraded my routers and firewall to a professional level and this should also make a big difference. We are now only allowing the top 5 search engines to index the site so that will lead to better access times and less traffic. Now it's time to get back to the real focus. I am reveiwing and cross checking all the John A. MacIntosh photos and at least getting them uploaded even if they haven't been linked to any pages yet. You can see them all in the JAM Upload Section and one by one as I can link them to their proper pages and categories they will leave here.

If you have JAM photos please help me identify which ones are yours so I can also put them in your collection page. You see, in 2009 eBay no longer allowed us to see who bought items and so I have lost track of whose photos are whose after 2009.

And finally, when the JAM slides are out of the way, I have an entire photo album of B&W steam engines to scan and get on board too. Hopefully I can get a start on that by the end of the summer after I get all the JAM Photos out of the way.

October 19, 2009

Another amazing collection has come to us through Mr Ken McIlvoy. Thanks to Ken the wiki now has all the topographical maps from the 60's for all the areas that the DAR lines ran. Ken has also let the wiki have the track diagram charts that he was given by Canadian Pacific as well as some select photos and other personal memorabilia from his personal collection.

Our most sincere thanks!

Technically speaking though I was unable to put these images on the wiki in any decent detail using legacy graphic formats. The topographicals are so large and the the resolution required to decipher the track diagrams requires the use of advanced graphic formats to best show the detail required. Thankfully, multiple resolution technology is available in the public domain as a JPG 2000 (.jp2) format that will be our format of choice from now on for all super high resolution image files.

September 14, 2009

Our community and it's collective knowledge continue to grow an amazing rate. Thanks to all who have come on board over the last year and increased our image and knowledge base. An especially big thank you as well to those who spend hours, like I find myself all too often, editing pages and pouring over photo details trying to squeeze every last piece of information out of them.

Special note should be made of our increased coverage of DAR vessels, DAR colours, DAR logos, much more detail about and many additional steam locos, and on our forum side the Microsoft Train Simulator DAR layout got underway with the Wolfville to Kentville and Aldershot legs.

All I can say is thank you to all for keeping the DAR running forever!

November 18, 2008

I guess I should acknowledge that the wiki, as of October, has been up for a year. It's our first birthday! And what a great first year. Our statistics page reports that there are 446 pages that are legitimate content pages. I am particularly happy to see that as of this moment there are listed 72 steam locomotives, 18 diesels and 11 Dayliners not to mention all the passenger, freight and MOW equipment! I had always hoped it would be one of the first things that would happen and obviously you all felt the same way and made it happen.

Our stats also report that 581 files have been uploaded and there have been a total of 95,284 page views, and 9,183 page edits since DARwiki was setup. The file upload number when you thing about it is incredible that that many photos of the D.A.R. have been uploaded. I know in the next year we'll have that many again because there are almost that many that have been contributed and are waiting to be put on by yours truly!

We are still hoping to find one or two more brave individuals to help edit the wiki on various specialty subjects. With just 2 or three of us right now, we'll only continue to progress at a rather slow rate.

And with that, I shall close out this update and wish us all another fun D.A.R. year.

December 22, 2008

A Special Thanks

As the image contributions continue to come in from people's personal collections by uploads and CDs in the mail, I feel a special thanks is in order. Without these contributions the DAR Wiki would just be empty space but as the image database continues to grow, so does the history of the railroad continue to unfold. A special thanks to eBay people who outbid me but shared their winning images with the DAR Wiki as well.

John A. MacIntosh Photographer

This photographer's exceptional collection began selling in January of 2008 on eBay, being sold by his son. There may not exist another collection so broad that defines the 1950's and 60's, the period during the transition from wood and steam to metal and diesel. What is even more exceptional is that it is all in colour. Please enjoy the contributions of many eBay members who have made scans of their purchases available for all to enjoy. I can't thank you enough.

While we are still uploading sales slides of the MacIntosh photos, due to a change in eBay policy since September 2008 of hiding the winner's name, we no longer know which photos to put in who's collection anymore. Please help us to identify which photos belong in who's collection if you know.

October 27, 2008:

Passwords and usernames for the wiki are now the same as the forum. If you change your password there, it will change here too. However, registering on the forum DOES NOT automatically give you edit access to the wiki. You still must drop a line to the admininstrator and he will enable your access for the asking. See the very last paragraph on this page for more info.

NOTE: The underlining of links in this wiki is a User Preference for registered users. Please turn it on if you prefer your links always underlined. [Click here.] and select the "Misc" tab.