Paul Bartlett on Zenfolio

[hmrspaul]

Dear all

 

Since the failure of Fotopic I realise many of you have already found your way to my new Zenfolio site. I have recovered most (but not quite all) of the earlier rail collections. At least half of the photographs are of higher resolution than previously posted.

 

Some Advice

 

This rebuild has permitted both a lot of rationalisation, and very useful cross referencing. So far there are three distinct areas –

- the wagons and coaches http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/paulbartlettsrailwaywagons

Wagons are divided according to the way that BR kept its stock records (and thus not TOPs. Departmental – engineers wagons and coaches are separate as is the On track plant. Brake vans, runners, brake tenders are a separate group. Wagons suitable for working to continental Europe are separate (apart from BR owned wagons) as all the private owners – divided between the older ones without power brake and those mostly introduced from 1958 with power brake.

 

- general railways of Britain related http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/paulbartlettsotherrailwayphotographs

This is where to find locomotives, buildings, industrial sites etc.

 

- international railways and trams. http://PaulBartlett.zenfolio.com/paulbartlettinternationalrail

As it says a few of the photographs of railways I have taken when abroad, including trams.

 

I hope that users find it easy to trace up and down the groups to find collections which are of interest. But there is also a search facility.

 

Searching – I have put quite a lot of effort into keywording. It works for me! Where wagons have TOPS codes I have included them in the collection keywords, trying to include as many as possible (many TOPS codes altered down the years – all the international ones, some private owner, all steel carrying wagons etc – and anything used by the engineers is a mess!). I have only used codes which are to be seen on at least one wagon within the collection - so a lot of recent codes are absent! The aquatic animal codes used by the engineers are also keyworded. Note that searching for a phrase (say open merchandise) is done using quotation marks around the phrase eg “open merchandiseâ€. When searching three headings come up – ignore Galleries , Collections is the main source – but photographs may also be useful.

 

A great advantage of Zenfolio is that it is easy to put a photograph in more than one collection – so I am building up collections of photographs from single locations. Most of these are internally at private sidings that I visited. These are far from complete at the moment.

 

Using Zenfolio is straightforward, but note that there are three ways of displaying photographs – selecting a photograph brings up a reasonable size, but hovering over the left hand shows “Dim the lights†a strange way of saying a bigger photograph will show. Or slide show will show a picture which fills the screen (if of suitable resolution). Hovering over the right hand side of a picture shows details such as size. Those which are 1060 wide (or greater) are the higher resolution scans. Those which are a lot smaller are from the old fotopic site (the file title ends with [m]) and are low resolution - these will not print at anything other than the smallest size.

 

Printing

The print service I have chosen is based in the UK, paid for with sterling and I’ll admit, gives me some profit. I think the prices are quite reasonable, and the very little feedback I have had suggests they are delivered quickly (so long as I am around to release them for printing). I will have to turn printing off when I am on holidays. When I understand how I should be able to permit paid for digital down loading.

 

Finally, if you buy yourself a Zenfolio site then please quote my referral code YDA-98Z-BBZ during sign up to save 10% off your own subscription.

 

Thank you to all who have posted good wishes in various places. I hope you enjoy using the site. Any feedback would be welcomed, not least on whether I should simply post full size scans - it saves one process but I am concerned about download time.

 

Paul Bartlett

[i'll be at the York show on Sunday and Monday, on Stanmore Edge on the top floor - please call by]

[Ramblin Rich]

Thanks for that guide Paul - and big thanks for taking the effort to rebuild the site. As I've said before, merely pressing the "+1" button doesn't do you justice. Here's hoping Zenfolio lasts a good while.

[Re6/6]

At the risk of a 'me too' post, many thanks Paul for the 'resurrection'. Looks very good.

 

regards

 

John

[hmrspaul]

Thanks for the couple of comments.

 

Something I had not realised was how good it would be on an I-phone. My son got into it remarkably easily. I think it would be helpful to look at on a computer first, to understand how it the site is put together - but with the easy way zooming works with the I phone I'm not sure it may not be better than the fixed sizes that Zenfolio is limited to on a computer screen.

 

Paul Bartlett