Gen Submission - Some Helpful Hints

This is a pretty boring Page, for which I apologise - but if you can spare a few minutes to read it through and can stick to the "rules" given below I can assure you it will be very much appreciated. The popularity of this Website of late has almost left me breathless - almost, but not quite as I know it is a very useful "service" and is helping many people reconstruct old hazy or lost records etc. One thing it is however doing currently is leaving me swamped with incoming gen for uploading - as such that is not a complaint but I do get a little frustrated that I cannot always upload it as quickly as I'd like, and occasionally I have even received e-mails from people who are essentially complaining about the lack of updates or slowness of uploading provided gen!

Sorry but I am basically one person trying to do my best to keep up....someone with a pretty demanding life away from the 'Net too (and which is also currently taking up more of my free time with little sign of change in the near or medium term future). I do have a small band of helpers (with all due credit and thanks to them) who html gen ready for uploading, manage the discussion board etc but that still leaves the volume of incoming gen outstripping the available resource. That's not a hint to stop sending it, far from it, the more the better!

You can however help greatly to cut down the "processing" time...

When it comes to uploading received gen, I do not keep to a strict "first in, first uploaded order" - rather I tend to concentrate on that which is EASIEST to comprehend or convert to html and thus is usually the quickest to be appear uploaded into a tour Page - thus allowing me to upload the most gen in a given available time. If you are submitting gen then, if it is at all possible, please try to adhere to the following "template"/order;

• date (MOST important...it's amazing how many times I have to search, and sometimes fail to find this, in the submissions!)

• tour promoter

• locos used

• stock used

• headcode(s) used

• traction/route summary

• notes/comments

• review

• timings (PLEASE be clear whether they are booked, actual or both - in which case which is which).

Obviously, where there is no gen available the information can be left out.

• If there is some common data (e.g. "I joined/left all the trains at xxx") please put this at the START of the listing, not end (otherwise I can get to the last one only then to discover this common information).

Though I may be pushing my luck, sticking to the common format as used throughout the Website would also be very much appreciated i.e.;

• Jn for junction (Junction only in the case of a station i.e. Clapham Junction)

• separate places in the route by a dash rather than a comma or space

• do not put it all in capitals or heavily abbreviated (COV, BNS, DERBY, SHEFFIELD etc may be fine and quick for you, but I have to type in from scratch rather than simply cut-n-paste across e.g. Coventry - Birmingham New Street - Derby - Sheffield)
  In timings, use 'a' & 'd' for arrival and departure times and '/' for a passing time.

As always, I can accept basically any sensible media in which the gen exists or has been created e.g. e-mail, word, txt, excel, tiff, pdf, jpeg, bmp, hard copy (address can be provided upon request), fax (see Page about fax submissions) - even voice (see same Page as fax submissions). If submitting a lot of gen at once then please also try and stick to the following "rules";

• list tours in chronological order, earliest to latest

• if covering multiple years, send each year as a separate submission, else very clearly segregated by year

Timings are always an issue - here I am happier to accept them in whatever format you have them as I know typing them up is very time consuming, I'd rather have them in a format that needs me to copy them across into electronic format than never receiving them because you don't have time yourself to do it. If you are providing them pre-copied into an electronic format then please, if you can, no capitals or very heavy abbreviations.

I would also very much appreciate if you could be particularly careful to get dates correct - moving a tour by a whole year, month or day because of a simple typo is one of the most time consuming tasks I have to do when making corrections.

Ditto, when sending in additions or corrections to an existing tour Page or appeal for gen, please try and stick to the order as given above....particularly providing the DATE as early in the communication as possible - with almost 8,500 tour Pages now uploaded trying to find "the Hertfordshire tour to xyz with loco 12345" is pretty difficult even for me!

Stuff sent in in the way described above often has a habit of getting uploaded much quicker. Oh, and if you have html skills and want to volunteer to assist then I am sure I can easily fill a few evenings of your time....

A couple of other requests - please do not simply "rip off" information from other Websites (e.g. timings) and forward it to me. A big aim of mine is to try as far as possible to ensure the details on SBJ are as accurate as practically possible - I do not want the accuracy of SBJ potentially compromised by duplicating what may be inaccurate and/or unverified data from other sources. This Website is not about quantity, it's about accuracy. Referring me to other Websites or their Webmasters is something else I have a small issue with - I have received plenty of information from people who have put in quite a lot of time and effort to provide useful gen in an appropriate format to keep me (and any helpers) busy for a long time. Spare time to go trawling through other Websites for snippets of new of information, or photographs, or similar is basically a luxury I don't have.

Thanks for your understanding - here's to quickly hitting 10,000 Pages of gen!

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