Web Pages & Lost Assets

[cascaderailroad]

What has happened to lost, assets that are no longer available ?

I have found that Josef Pav, HP Trainz, West Coast Trainz, East Coast Trainz, USLW, Erecting Hall ... etc ... etc ... and dozens of other once great web pages, have changed dramatically over the years ... and now only contain a choice few assets that they once displayed. Some web pages are there ... but they contain no downloads at all. This is very saddening !

Realizing that some people have a life outsde of Trainz, and or decide to move on, or webpage expences are too great ... I can see how things can change.

 

[pware]

This is an issue that has been seen all over the web - not just in Trainz. Many/most of the "great" web sites (non-Trainz) that I used to frequent in my "Internet youth" (the 1990s and 2000s) have gone. In other cases I was the one who changed my allegiances.

The reasons are much as you say - the site operators have moved on. Changing interests, competition from better run sites (some of those early web sites were low quality but full of enthusiasm), etc, etc, can be blamed.

Some asset creators have probably discovered the pitfalls of offering assets, freeware or payware, for others to download and have cut back or moved out of that area completely. If some of the complaints you see in these forums about the free assets from the DLS are any guide then I don't blame them. My one and only freeware offering to the world - a program to analyse Internet traffic - received some very abusive responses from a few downloaders.

Personally I very rarely download Trainz assets from third party sites partly because of the "here today - gone tomorrow" nature of many web sites. At least with the DLS it will always be there unless Auran/N3V falls over completely and then we could all be in trouble.

Peter Ware