It appears that the near-constant insults, bickering, name-calling, and personal insults levied at the Union Pacific's steam program by a certain few members has finally (albeit far too late) gotten on the nerves of the owner of the TrainOrders website:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/ ... 10,4559648



This could be a case of closing the barn door after the horse got out and jumped the fence. I know any number of folks that have refused to pay attention to TrainOrders' "Steam Railroading" forum, let alone pay to participate, simply because of that negative tone, and it certainly hasn't done any favors for the credibility of the website in general to leave such juvenile behavior unmoderated.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether the couple major instigators in question will comply, or get locked out of their favorite pastime.......

They better not decide to come this way and start bashing anyone over here.

Given one of the bashers’ rather public run-in with the legal system a while ago, I quit giving them the credibility others do.

Not a member over there.

How can you be angry at UP? To me it seems they are doing everything right.

Only issue I have is they aren't releasing as many updates as I'd like. We try to release pictures after every workday.

Van Johnson: “Hey, Gabby , can you see him yet?”
Gabby Johnson: “The sheriff’s coming!”
Rev. Johnson: “Blow the train whistle.”
Howard Johnson: “Strike up the band!”
Band plays. Train whistle is blowing.
Gabby Johnson: “Hey, the Sheriff is a n…”
“Woooo, Woo, Wooo” - train whistle blows
Van Johnson: “What did he say?”
Olson Johnson: “The Sheriff is NEAR.”
Train whistle continues to blow, and band keeps playing.
Gabby Johnson: “No, goshblammit, dangblammit! The Sheriff is a n…”
“Woooo, Wooooo, Woo, Wooooo” - train whistle blows
Crowd: “Hoooray, Hooray, Hoooray!”
Band and train whistle stop suddenly.
Howard Johnson: “As chairman of the welcoming committee, it is my privilege to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to our new…. Narrow gauge railroader.”

My apologies to the genius of Mel Brooks.

The easiest way to unite people is to get them to hate someone or something.

Some of the bigger personalities on TO like having followers. Others like being groupees to the bigger personalities.

Many if not most of the people doing the bashing have never met or had any other contact with the man they are running down, they just want to "belong".

The biggest hoot for me is despite many vows on TO to boycott the UP Steam Program, is the certanty that most if not all of those participants will be trackside when #4014 rolls by, getting in other peoples photos, constantly complaining, and otherwise being jerks.

"Harboring resentment against someone else is like you drinking poison, and expecting the other person to die." Not sure where I read that, but it is very true.

Nah, they'll head over to OGR..... Oh wait they have a similar moderation policy as RYPN does and have shut down threads where bashing happens. Well I'm sure the bashers will find some site to keep it up.

If I remember correctly, we have had our share UP bashing right here, maybe not as much as the 1361 bashing, but enough. However, the mods here do seem to be willing to tackle these issues. Thank goodness for that!

The issues involved apparently, allegedly stemmed from several former members of the UP "Steam Crew" who repeatedly, behind pseudonyms, attacked not simply decisions made by the program and its overseers, but engaged in a personal vendetta against Ed Dickens and other individuals in the program, laden at times with mockery for Dickens who was portrayed as some petty tyrant and labeled "The Dear Leader" or "DL" repeatedly.

"Protecting" the presence of the instigators was the apparent open secret among TO members that the instigators had been "celebrity" names among the railfan community, with a degree of "fanboy" "they can do no wrong" adulation by younger generations in much the same manner as that enjoyed by Doyle McCormack, Ross Rowland, J.J. Jacobson, Andy Muller, and others in the industry.

It has been rather convincingly shown to me, back-channel by other members of this forum, that the former UP steam crew members in question--assuming that they are, indeed, the ones using said pen names on TO--were dismissed from UP with due cause, allegedly due to matters relating to either their work as UP employees or criminal matters outside their UP employ which impacted their ability to work at their positions.

Whether the accusations of wrongdoing by these alleged ex-employees are/were warranted or not is immaterial to the broader picture: By providing a wide-open forum for near-libel to be repeatedly posted for years, and admittedly ignoring the very forum under his management where the attacks were allowed to continue unabated, the owner of TrainOrders has no doubt damaged not only his standing with Union Pacific, but the reputation of the website itself. The garbage that TO allowed to fester unmolested is all the cause the UP steam program needed to cut itself off from ALL "railfan" involvement and publicity.

If we had disgruntled former Strasburg staff posting negative comments and insults behind a "handle" every time Kelly Anderson did a "Latest From Strasburg Shops" posts, and nobody moderated them for common-sense civility and libel, how often do you think Mr. Anderson would post?

TrainOrders: "No More Bashing the UP Steam Program!"

Well, THANK HEAVEN for THAT!!

Policeman : Do you have any disgruntled employees?
Nathan Arizona Sr. : Hell, they're all disgruntled. I ain't running no damn daisy farm. My motto is "Do it my way or watch your butt!"
Policeman : Well, do you think any of them could've done it?
Nathan Arizona Sr. : Oh, don't make me laugh. Without my say-so they wouldn't piss with their pants on fire.

I see. Since all ex-UP Steam Crew members either are still working at UP today, resigned from UP, exrcised their seniority to other jobs on UP, or retired, I wonder where your convincing "source" got his info. Then again, I think I know.

Did you know that 4 ex-Steam crew members are still actively employed by UP?

From the posts I have seen by Mr. Anderson and his colleagues at Strasburg RR, my take is that the employees at Strasburg are extremely gruntled.

This thread appears to me to be, as you say, a back-channel way of bringing the TO garbage into the RYPN house.

So the owner/operator/moderator of a railfanning website has finally announced that he intends to perform a long-overdue diaper change over on his site. And this is preservation-related how?

The foam is getting rather thick here regarding the admittedly checkered history of the UP steam program. It would appear that the UP program of today is certainly not the program of 5 years ago, so let's put down the bashing tools and allow the foam to settle, please. After all the final product will be an operational Big Boy coming out of this in another year!

I was an "Ed basher" on Trainorders (there's no upper case "O" in the website name) in solidarity with former UP steam program employees, until recently when I decided online name-calling said more about MY character than it did Ed's, so I stopped. I can't refute or deny any claims against him, but since I don't know him personally, I should at least give him the benefit of a civil tongue-- and an apology. I'm glad the TO webmaster is putting a stop to the bashing.

I suspect there are one or more participants on TO that regularly post here under different user names as well.