Admin team at JNSForum

[Darren Jeffries]

Hi all,

 

Did you know that there is a menu option on the left hand side of the front page called "The Team at JNSForum". This will list all the admin members.

 

I thought though it would be a good idea for us to introduce ourselves here as well.

 

The purpose of having multiple members on the admin team was primarily because of the different expertise we bring to the board but also due to the different time zones we live in. Martijn and Myself are on European time and Bernard and CaptO are North American Time.

 

Hopefully this means there will be someone at the end of the admin notification system available to answer your queries at all times.

 

A little History though for you...

 

I am 33 years old with three daughters (3, 9 & 13) and as a child growning up in England I was always fascinated with Model Railways... my grandfather bought me a lot of Hornby OO scale items as a child. I had it running all over the house!!! Along came the internet in the 90's and with it i found out about the Japanese rail system. Being a gadgety kind of guy, i was immediately hooked.

 

I built my first attempt at a layout in 97 however i got divorced and had to move house in 2000. I had to sell off the layout.  remarried in 2002 and my wife this year graciously allowed me to restart my layout.

 

I scoured the net looking for info and came across Trainboard.com. I noted that there were a few users that modelled in Japanese style, but they got a little lost in all the "noise" of the busy Forum. In January 2008 i decided to set up my own board, both to gather like minded Japanese N Scale ethusiasts but also Prototype enthusiasts.

 

On Trainboard i made contact with Bernard, his ongoing layout for me was inspirational and i felt that he had the practical knowledge and experience to benifit the board as an Admin. Bernard became an admin late January.

 

In the last few months after a brilliant subscription to the board I decided that we probably needed a custom look to the site and not a template from a third party. I put the question out there to see if there were any web developers or graphically handy members.

 

Soon after Martijn and CaptO were invited to join the Admin team as techinical Admins but with an overall responsibility to moderation in the same way as Bernard and I.

 

I know that both Martijn and CaptO are beavering away working on  a new look (as time permits) and i am sure that it will be great.

 

So there you have it, to recap... I started the site, Bernard, Martijn and CaptO are co-admins but ultimately it is your site, and you make it what it is.

 

Thanks

[CaptOblivious]

(Looks like errors are ongoing: Took me three tries to get this page without a "server busy" response)

 

Hey everyone!

 

I've already posted an introduction to me personally here: http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,236.msg888.html#msg888

 

But, as this is a "meet the admin" post, perhaps some additional detail is called for.

 

I've only been model railroading for a few months now (my first train arrived in the mail from Japan in October 2007), but I've been modeling generally since I was a kid. I started with plastic airplane kits, and soon found myself drawn into the world of tabletop wargaming (Battletech [the 1989 version, I don't know about this new thing kids play these days], Warhammer 40,000, Warmachine). One of the cool things about wargaming is making terrain to play on, and these skills are translating nicely, if not perfectly, into the world of model railroading.

 

My background is in computer science, and I used to be a programmer by trade (but I had to give that up. My life was surreally close to Office Space, except that I worked for WorldCom. Yeah, you remember WorldCom, don't you? Oh, and I decided on grad school rather than construction. And nothing burned down.) So, playing with DCC has been a natural draw for me. I've devoured just about everything I can find about it, and now have a modest Digitrax setup. I enjoy soldering and modification, and I'm looking forward to a new Tomix DE10, which should be arriving in late July---supposedly one of the great DCC conversion challenges (at least as far as non-steam goes, anyway).

 

You've probably found that there is a dearth of helpful information on the web for model railroaders. Oh sure, there's a million sites that can tell you how to ballast. But there aren't very many good sites on DCC, or making scenery beyond the basic plaster and ground foam. I've had to do a lot of learning for myself, and I want very much to share with others in the same boat. I love how much people enjoy helping each other here. That's why I'm glad this forum exists, and I'm proud to be an admin.

 

In theory I'm helping with the new look for the board, but this has taken back seat for the time being: My wife is due with our first child any day now, and I have to frontload a lot of my dissertation work right now. (A girl, Acadia, for those interested. My maternal grandparents, with whom we're very close, are cajun, you see. I'll let you connect the rest.)

 

So, that's me! Who's next?

[Bernard]

Hi All,

In other posts I've told members how I got interested in Japanese trains when I was working at the Nagano Olympics in 1998, but what I would like to talk about is how I got involved in the JNS forum.

    I have and still am a member of trainboard. We recently purchased a house where I told my wife she can do anything she wants with the rooms in the house but I want the basement. She grabbed the offer and I set out on planned my Shinkansen layout. I went though a lot of modifications on my track plan and finally had the "guts" to post in on trainboard for comments. I got a lot of good input from members there but I was the minority in what I was modeling. My design is for a continuous running layout where the majority of the North American layouts are geared for switching, going from point A to point B. I have to say, I've made a lot of friends over there but I was starting to branch out.

    Darren PM me one day that he had seen photos of my layout and wanted to know if I would be interested in starting a forum on Japanese trains. I jumped at the opportunity. The forum is in it's infancy but is developing at an incredible fast rate. One major concern I've had is with DCC and with the help of discussions from members here I've gotten the correct information I needed.

    Even though we are a small forum, what I like about it is that I've seen members here go out of their way to help other members. Whether it is posting photos of a step by step procedure, helping solve problems, places of interest to travel, etc. the members here just happen to be (as Alpine would say) a nice bunch of "mates"! And if we're all having fun here, the forum is a success.

[Martijn Meerts]

Been into trains since about forever it seems. I have and have had various scales, brands and countries. Other than my fast growing Japanese collection in N-scale, I've been considering getting some Japanese H0 scale as well. I also have various Marklin H0 trains as well as a Marklin Z-scale train. The Z-scale one I bought mainly to prove to myself that I could install a decoder into such a small locomotive, and it worked =)

 

I'm also slowly getting into some 0-scale trains, not really planning any layout as such, but I will be hand laying all the tracks and hand building all the turnouts based on building kits. With building kit I mean I order a set of wooden sleepers, 2 rail profiles, lots of nails and some tiny clamps, and then put everything together. More on that will be on my page later this month hopefully (july 2008).

 

I run a site called JR-Chiisai (which means JR-small), which is really just a way for me to keep track of what I have, what I've done and how I've done it. It'll eventually also have lots of tips and tricks and decoder install step by steps etc. Just like CaptO, I prefer to share what knowledge I have with everyone rather than act like some elitist model railroading snob ;)

 

My work is very varied, and often leaves me with little to no time to do anything other than go home, eat and sleep. On paper I'm a webdeveloper, but in reality I also do system admin, database admin, network admin, as well as program some small utilities when needed and consult others in the company. I also often need to do some quick designing and help others convert their designs to HTML. My current record is working 29 hours straight without going home... The postive side? I can buy LOTS of trains :)