Funniest Atlas Forum moment:

[mkulak]

While there were many great announcements over the years by Atlas on the forums the ones that still makes me chuckle are the Trainman videos:

www.atlastrainman.com/tmovie.htm

While not totally horrible it really IMHO did not fit the mood/feel of the current modeler. It was of course followed up by the Christmas one:

www.atlastrainman.com/tmovie2.htm

Another classic to say the least. I would assume neither of these ads really worked out that is why their were never any follow ups to either videos.

While I am not busting on Atlas, these videos and of course the songs will always be a fond memory of the Atlas forum.

[KIM]

I'm not sure that the first one really fits what Sam & Dave first intended. The Christmas one, well he'd better do some serious coal shoveling if he expects to get done on time, 'cause it didn't look like he was going very fast.

[bnsf971]

I think "funny" is a matter of perspective. I watched each one for about 4 seconds before cringing and shutting them off. Maybe more "When Good Trainmen Go Bad"...

[Donnell Wells]

I completely missed that one. A moon-walking Bulldog...? Sorry Atlas, major loss of cool points!

Donnell

[daveplummer]

Years and years ago there was a thread heavily laced with sexual innuendo and several members went bananas. Something to do with trains, women and tunnels as I recall.

Then there was also one about killing a cat that got a bunch of panties in a wad.

That forum was a lot of fun and pretty useful back in the day.

The final years were pretty ugly.

Dave

[mkulak]

Dave,

I remember the one about the cat! LOL! someones cat was peeing and attacking the poster layout and someone recommended using the old smith and wesson control system. The fur flew after that! sorry could not help myself! LOL!! While I love animals especially pooches Mr. Kitty would have been headed for the ASPCA after all the damage that was caused. Good one to add to this post.

[el3637]

My wife's car:


Andy

[hifibri]

Nice Westie plate! My family had one when I was in HS and college, and that was one fantastic dog! Sherlock was his name.

I think the funniest moments in the AMRRF (we need an acronynm) for that place were the pics posted by Running Bear.

Sorry for the cruelty. It's a habit I'm trying to break

[keystonecrossings]

I remember back 6-8 years ago when a ton of members on the A board got spammed from a hobby shop (which I believe was in New England). We quickly determined that the owner of the shop was a member and scavenged the e-mail addresses from the forum. He was confronted.

After some hesitancy, he became adamant that this was a valid use of the information, that once we put it out there it was public info... never mind that you had to log in to get it and there was a certain amount of trust there. The members argued that it was a misuse of privileges, but the dealer would not relent. So....

We looked up the registration of his shop's domain name, got his real name, and posted his home address, phone number, and a link to directions to his house!

We never heard from him again!

[rhpd42002]

May 7, 2012 5:38:10 GMT -8 keystonecrossings said:

I remember back 6-8 years ago when a ton of members on the A board got spammed from a hobby shop (which I believe was in New England). We quickly determined that the owner of the shop was a member and scavenged the e-mail addresses from the forum. He was confronted.

After some hesitancy, he became adamant that this was a valid use of the information, that once we put it out there it was public info... never mind that you had to log in to get it and there was a certain amount of trust there. The members argued that it was a misuse of privileges, but the dealer would not relent. So....

We looked up the registration of his shop's domain name, got his real name, and posted his home address, phone number, and a link to directions to his house!

We never heard from him again!

LOLOL!!! Jerry, that follows one of my several favorite adages...... I can SHOW ya, better than I can TELL ya!

[Paul Cutler III]

To me, the funniest Atlas Forum moment was when a Mike's Train House shill was ID'd and banned by the Atlas Moderator. I mean, that MTH guy was obnoxious as heck, and I laughed so hard when Atlas announced his IP address was from MTH (and yet people wonder why MTH has a bad rep...).

[el3637]

May 5, 2012 16:50:58 GMT -8 hifibri said:

Nice Westie plate! My family had one when I was in HS and college, and that was one fantastic dog! Sherlock was his name.

I never had a dog until I met Annette. She had two elderly dogs - a wirehair fox terrier and a giant Airedale. The wirehair was super smart and well behaved, but I ended up bonding with the big silly Airedale. We lost them both within 18 months. We got our Westie McKinley as a puppy in January of last year, and he's smart as a whip... then we got another Airedale - big but a standard breed so he's topping at about 60 lbs instead of 100 and he's a big fuzzy nutjob. He's almost 10 months old now and over 50 lbs. McKinley is full grown and about 19 lbs. Quincy has the brawn but McKinley has the brains.

Also this:


Andy

[keystonecrossings]

May 8, 2012 19:43:24 GMT -8 Paul Cutler III said:

To me, the funniest Atlas Forum moment was when a Mike's Train House shill was ID'd and banned by the Atlas Moderator. I mean, that MTH guy was obnoxious as heck, and I laughed so hard when Atlas announced his IP address was from MTH (and yet people wonder why MTH has a bad rep...).

That reminds me of when Factory Direct Trains opened for business. Had the appearance of being related to Broadway Limited Imports, but BLI denied.

We revealed that both web sites were from the same IP address! MapQuest, at the time, showed FDT to be at some quarry or something... no where near where it claimed to be.

In the end, I believe the owner of FDT ended up being a brother-in-law or something to someone at BLI.

[riogrande]

May 7, 2012 5:38:10 GMT -8 keystonecrossings said:

I remember back 6-8 years ago when a ton of members on the A board got spammed from a hobby shop (which I believe was in New England). We quickly determined that the owner of the shop was a member and scavenged the e-mail addresses from the forum. He was confronted.

After some hesitancy, he became adamant that this was a valid use of the information, that once we put it out there it was public info... never mind that you had to log in to get it and there was a certain amount of trust there. The members argued that it was a misuse of privileges, but the dealer would not relent. So....

We looked up the registration of his shop's domain name, got his real name, and posted his home address, phone number, and a link to directions to his house!

We never heard from him again!

It was only last summer or fall we got another guy who joined and unabashedly was advertising his shop and putting links in his siggy. While he may not have been as bad as the above, it was clearly a guy fishing for business.

I suppose similar treatment, posting all that info, surely would have cured him too, but I don't recall it happening. In fact he left his links to his shop in his siggy for at least several weeks and continued to post message and thus got more advetising etc every time he posted.

[Deleted]

Funniest or BEST moment of the Atlas Forum was when Frank(ATSFAN, Sherman Hill, Bowers, etc.) got called out by Atlas in the final days after he made some comments about Atlas. The Atlas moderator even listed his various names and said basically we've been watching you and have had enough.

[loudigrazia]

For me, I think the funniest moment/post was a few years ago when a former Kalmbach employee (I believe it was Paul Schmidt) related the "behind the scenes" story of when MR's Clinchfield layout was delivered to the person who won it in a sweepstakes. Seems the individual's wife and mother-in-law had no idea such a "prize" would be arriving and were pretty wound up over it. The two delivery men (Jim Kelly and Jim Hediger) got it set up as fast as possible and then got out of Dodge! Thankfully the classic layout survived relatively intact, so that Kalmbach was able to re-acquire it years later. Here's the link:

forum.atlasrr.com/discussion/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=46286&whichpage=2

Lou DiGrazia

[el3637]

May 11, 2012 4:45:20 GMT -8 @australianterrier said:

Funniest or BEST moment of the Atlas Forum was when Frank(ATSFAN, Sherman Hill, Bowers, etc.) got called out by Atlas in the final days after he made some comments about Atlas. The Atlas moderator even listed his various names and said basically we've been watching you and have had enough.

What is not common knowledge is that this was a conscious decision on the part of Atlas. I had a private conversation with Rob about this and suggested rather than booting him yet again, only to have him come back under another alias, that he should be just left under the same name where everybody already knows who he is. Well not who as in who really, but who as in who came before.

He did become better behaved if you follow the entire 8 year history.

BTW the real Frank - who is probably not Shermbowersfan - posted to the STMFC list recently. Under his real name. He trolled usenet in the 90s using a variety of fake names, being outed every time. There were a few similarities in the personality with Sherm, so it was fun to call him Frank....

Andy

[el3637]

May 11, 2012 9:16:09 GMT -8 loudigrazia said:

For me, I think the funniest moment/post was a few years ago when a former Kalmbach employee (I believe it was Paul Schmidt) related the "behind the scenes" story of when MR's Clinchfield layout was delivered to the person who won it in a sweepstakes.

Going back to the early 1970s, maybe even earlier, there was a local club here with a portable layout. It was an oval with yards and a trolley line that cross the main (twice). For its time it was highly advanced in that it was operated off a card order system. Very well constructed for mobility and durability. Track was all hand laid. I attempted to join that club - its president at the time is currently president of something bigger. But it was too far away and not a good fit for a 16 year old kid at the time. They had rented space in a basement where they held meetings and work/op sessions, and they took it to the NMRA shows and perhaps others.

Anyway at some point the club lost their space and disbanded. The layout was stripped of its structures and much of the scenery, and apparently languished in one of the former members' garages. A friend of mine acquired it for next to nothing... and it then sat in HIS garage a few years. Then in 1993, he got together with another guy who had room in his basement (living w/parents at the time) and a small group of us got together. I don't even remember how we all knew each other, but I met several long term friends in that deal. At some point most of the original complex wiring had been cut, and we wanted to simplify it a bit.

Over the course of 6 months or so, the layout gradually came back to life. The original hand-laid track was remarkably solid and only required a few repairs. The wiring was another story - I ended up doing a lot of that since I wasn't particularly good at making trees. At the NMRA show that fall, we brought the layout out and it was quite a hit. It had much more "woodsy" scenery than it had originally, all new structures, everything freshened up.

The guy who had instigated all of this - I think he was 16 at the time - told me later he wanted to know where the other 2.75 layouts were that went with it. Because he said at least 5 different people walked up at the show, recognized the layout, and claimed to have "laid 75% of that track myself" :-)

As a final insult, the NMRA newsletter after the show mentioned the layout having come back from the dead, and naming a bunch of people who had originally built it 20+ years earlier (deservedly so) without mentioning the name of a SINGLE person responsible for it's restoration. A couple of the guys were pretty PO'd about that but I figured it was par for the course.

Shortly after that the then-16 year old purchased - against my advice - an analog CC system, installed it, and ripped out most of the wiring I had put in saying it was not necessary. Not that it would have hurt to leave it. After a month or so, he returned the CC system as a total fail, and I got to at least partially rewire it. He now has his own substantial layout - which I believe was featured in the 2005 NMRA national tour, although I haven't seen it. Dunno what the fate was of the old portable, if it has been lost or if it's still sitting in somebody's garage awaiting discovery by a third generation.

I did take a few pics of the layout... mostly B&W but I have them somewhere. I even got one of the industries named after me... but I don't know what became of that either. The guy who did much of the structure and scenery work has dropped off the face of the earth, although he wasn't easy to get hold of even back then.

Andy