Home Page Forums MPHS Official Communications Web site and Bulletin Board Bulletin Board link on Mopac.org

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    Charles Duckworth
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    Kevin
    Just let me know when you get the link to the bulletin board on web site. Here’s the email I plan to send to the membership after you have it posted..

    On July 3, 2015 a new bulletin board was launched for Missouri Pacific Historical Society (MPHS) members and non-members to ask questions or post information about the Mopac, Texas & Pacific and their subsidiaries. As of today, the bulletin board has 158 members, 122 topics and over 380 posts. If you are already a member of the new bulletin board – thanks for joining. For those who haven’t joined here’s a short overview.

    The board is divided into four sections; the first is ‘how to use this forum’ for new members. The second is for MPHS business; membership information or questions, company store news (what’s new and what’s coming), upcoming Eagle articles where information or photos are needed, annual convention discussions and what’s new at the MPHS archives or what’s needed to fill gaps in the collection. Its an easy way to get information out quickly on the MPHS. The third area is for MP/T&P prototype and history discussions. This area is divided into locomotives and other motive power, passenger operations/equipment, freight operations/equipment, cabooses, business cars, maintenance of way equipment, building & structures, collecting MP/T&P memorabilia (which includes identifying fakes), MP/T&P documents and employees.

    The fourth section is devoted to modeling. This has areas on MP/T&P layouts, modeling tips, separate discussions for N, HO, O, S and G scale discussions. The HO section is very active with 13 topics and 61 posts.

    How to get started
    You’ll first need to registered on Mopac.org with a userid and password. All MPHS members and non-members must go through this initial step. Once you’ve done this your userid and password are automatically bridged over to the forum so you can log just into the forum. To access the forum go to http://mopac.org/bb/ you can book mark it in your computer favorites or just go to mopac.org and its on the right column. Any problems, contact the webmaster at webmaster (at) mopac (dot) org. Questions, just email me back.

    The reasoning for a bulletin board is the information is stored on a MPHS server and discussions and photos posted on the board are maintained by the MPHS. It’s also the ‘official’ board for MPHS business whereas the Yahoo groups were never designed for that purpose. While the Yahoo groups store posts and photos there is no insurance this data would not be lost. To be clear, at some point, the two Yahoo Groups will need to be sunsetted and the forum be the focal point for MP/T&P related topics. There are no ads to contend with on the bulletin board and posting attachments searching for information is much easier than what was design in the Yahoo groups. It’s search ability is better than Yahoo, topics you are interested in are easy to read and you can subscribe to any topic and get an email update when someone has replied to a post. The bulletin board is better designed to work on a mobile device which was a problem when Yahoo launched their NEO software (at least my iPad locks up at times when I look at photos in the Yahoo groups).

    If there’s some subjects you feel we need a forum topic to be added let me know or if there’s something you’d like to see on the forum let me know.

    Charlie Duckworth

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