Newsletter
Friday, February 05, 1999

by Robert A. Chant

Welcome to the Railways of Canada Archives. I would like to use our first newsletter to explain how this site came to be, to thank the people responsible for its existence and talk about its future direction.

The Past

I want to start by introducing myself. My name is Robert (Rob) Chant, and I live in the small town of Glace Bay, on Cape Breton Island, in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. I could not be more removed from the "main-stream" rail scene if I tried!

I have always had an interest in railways, and I guess like most other rail fans, I used my first contact with the Internet to seek out rail-related sites that would provide details of local rail lines on the island. To say my search was disappointing would be an understatement; I could not find a single site dedicated to such a worthwhile topic.

I expanded my search to cover the entire province. I had better luck, but found just two sites dedicated to railways in Nova Scotia. One was David Othen's Canadian Trains Photographs; the other was Dara Legere's original Maritime Railway site.

By this time, I had been designing web pages professionally for a few months. Although I knew the quality of the material on Mr. Othen's site was exceptional; I thought the way it was presented left something to be desired. The Reader's Digest version of this story has me contacting Mr. Othen and eventually redesigning his site.

I then turned to Mr. Legere's, and made the same offer. He was experiencing access problems with his server at the time and could not take me up on the proposal. I then asked about hosting his Maritime Railway material on my server. His response: "My main concern is that the history of Nova Scotia railways is shared with as many people as possible," and agreed to my suggestion. His willingness to furnish this and other information was the starting point of what ultimately became the Railways of Nova Scotia site.

It may not sound like much, but it made me wonder how many others people were thinking the same way. That is when the idea of a single site covering all railways in Nova Scotia started to form.

I knew this would be a huge undertaking; one that could never be reach, or even attempted alone. So I turned to the rail fans in Nova Scotia, at least the ones I knew, and discussed the idea. The response was overwhelming and the Railways of Nova Scotia Historical Society was born. And for that, I would like to extend a sincere thanks to Mr. Legere. Without his initial willingness to allow me to use his information, none of this would have been possible.

The Present

During the life of the Nova Scotia Web site, I encountered other rail enthusiasts with material that would not be suitable for the site in its present form. The thought of expanding the Nova Scotia page to encompass this additional information was an overwhelming thought. Up to this point I had handled all updating on the site alone, and at times this was neglected in the wake of much more important work (read paying clients). I knew I could not handle much more than was already on my plate, so I abandoned the expansion idea.

However, I was never one to turn my back on a good notion for very long. There had to be a way to expand the site to host more information on Canadian railways. The solution became apparent to me when my company outgrew its Internet server. We acquired new space on a server that allowed the set-up of multiple FTP accounts. This had been a problem up to this point, because if I wanted other people to help with the Nova Scotia web site, I would have to supply our credentials to others, a very bad security risk. On the new server, this would not be a problem; I could allow restricted access to the site and I could therefore enlist the help of others.

I thought about expanding the site to include just the railways in Atlantic Canada. I had already made contact with an interested party in Newfoundland and tried to find interested people in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. David Othen ultimately volunteered to oversee the New Brunswick section and then used his connections to secure a great source of information. I was also able to uncover a knowledgeable source on Prince Edward Island.

With Eastern Canada covered, I decided to assess the possibility of widening the site to include all of Canada. I turned to the various rail lists to recruited additional interest in the project. I received many e-mails encouraging my efforts, but was only able to expand the site to cover one other province. Doug Cameron was willing to take on the challenge and manage material in Ontario.

Although I was a little disappointed that not all provinces were represented, I felt the project should go ahead. I started working on a layout and design for the new expanded site. I only had one more hurdle to overcome; our new business server never did come online as planned. At this point I was receiving material for the site on a daily basis, and I wanted to get the information online as quickly as possible. I turned to the people at TrainWeb and asked about their free web space offer for rail-related sites. Several days later the space was made available and the Railways of Canada Archive found its new home!

The Future

So what does the future hold for our site? Well, over the next few months we will be very busy adding the information we already have on hand. Once that is completed, we will be seeking new material for inclusion on the site. We would also like to see more site administrators volunteer their services to cover the provinces not currently represented.

Sincerely, Robert A. Chant

[ DEPARTMENTS ]