Introduction (Oct 2011)
Like many people my hobbies have ended up on a website - which
becomes another hobby in itself. This site started as a basic picture display, but was entirely
handcrafted and very hard (ie. time consuming) to maintain or make additions to. So,in late 2003 it
was transplanted into a gallery format, mostly using a package called Web Picture Creator. Since then
I have been able to add items and sections to the site as projects are completed or hit milestones, or
interests change and evolve. Hence the site is usually more or less up to date with my progress; or
lack of :-)
All of the site is model trains. One section has LargeScale (G or #1) from a previous period of my
modelling. This ended in 2002 when I moved back to HO and sold the LS stuff.
The pictures in the Largescale section were taken with a snapshot camera before I had
any visions of a website or a digital camera. As a result the prints had to be scanned into the computer
and the results are not good. At the time of restarting in HO I acquired a basic digital camera but with
a macro facility which allowed some closeups to be taken, mainly the HO roller pictures. Over the years
I have acquired improved cameras and later pictures are much better.
About the time I went back to HO my
work became something of a "challenge" with lots of overtime and work away from home. This = lots of
money, so I could buy lots of trains. But the downside was that I didn't have time to do anything
significant modelling-wise for nearly a year. As a result I bought a lot of stuff, but it was taking me
a while to work through all the assembly.
At the end of 2004 I took up motorbiking as a pastime, and for a time my bikes featured on
this website (the section was removed in early 2009).
This reduced the time I spent on my trains, but worried me not. My modelling has always been in the
nature of a few years hard at it, then a few years not.
In 2008, due to continuing problems with my
health I gave up the biking. I thought this would increase my time on modelling again, but in fact
it was work, house maintenance, television, this website, messing with the computer/internet, RPG, the
local NMRA club, rollercoasters, etc that 'wasted' most of my precious time. I didn't mind - life was not
bad, so I tried to enjoy it. Then in 2009 I became self-employed in a 24/7/52 pet-care business at which
point all hobbies got put on ice and the website was frozen at that point.
Towards the end of 2011 I gave that business up and with a bit of time on my hands I have begun to get
involved in trains again, initially by visiting some shows. Then I need to get back on those kits I bought
about 8 years ago - we'll see how things go.
I started the website trying to be conscious of download sizes for 'dial-up' users and
that became my standard. So small thumbnails are provided on the overview pages with 'full-size'
pictures a few hundred kB, though the originals are usually many MB nowadays.
The site is non-profit and is built for my amusement and hopefully the entertainment
and/or education of any visitors. There should be no ads - I pay for the hosting on 1&1 servers -
no hit counters and no active content, so you should have fast loading and no surprises. There are
two domain names that will access the site: www.sheridanonline.me.uk or www.sol.me.uk. You can
bookmark either.
All content is copyright Mike Sheridan, 2002-2011
If you have any comments or suggestions please:
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