It seems like only yesterday. I was sitting at the computer ten years ago working on something, when Frank sent me an email referencing a recent RyPN thread about using the Web to further railroad preservation, and suggesting we could start our own blog. That hadn't occurred to me before. I was familiar with political blogs, and from reading them I knew what I liked and didn't like in terms of content and formatting, and had also read several recommendations on various ways of hosting a blog. Google's Blogger had gotten good reviews for something that's relatively easy to use if you don't demand a format that's unique and splashy, and moreover it was free. If you're a cheapskate, that's important.
Next, we needed a name. "Hicks Locomotive and Car Works" was the obvious choice, but it's too complicated, and we gave up working on steam locomotives a hundred years ago, so I quickly simplified it. The user instructions were pretty easy to follow, and by the end of the day, we had a working platform. In a couple of days, the blog appeared to working fine, and we started to publicize it a little. There's been little change to the format since then, and the rest is history.
We keep going because we like to toot our own horn, because we hope it helps the Museum to some extent, and because we get feedback. The comments we get from readers, and from visitors we meet out at the Museum, make it all worthwhile. Of course, this is very much a niche interest. We appear to have between 200 and 300 regular readers. It's a lot of fun, and for us it's part of the hobby. I still don't quite understand why we've been able to do this for ten years with an out-of-pocket cost of exactly zero. I have no stock in Google, and Blogger certainly has its limitations, but on the whole we've been very satisfied. And I guess if you're reading this, you must be too. Thanks!
