Rensselaer Railroad Heritage Site Membership

Last Update: 2008-01-05

In order to set up a membership, we need payment and your email, a valid email. (You can't imagine how frustrating it is for us to sit here trying to respond to someone and their email doesn't go through and they in turn are getting angry because they don't hear from us.)

If you use Paypal, we will get your email from that, so joining is a one-step process.

If sending a check or money order, make sure you include your email, on the check or in a separate letter, or email us and tell us you are sending the payment. And PLEASE make sure your email is correct and legible. (If you don't hear anything from us after a week or so, email us and ask. You don't know how frustrating it is to have a payment and not be able to contact the person.)

Sending A Payment

We give you a couple of options to pay.

You can join for just a given time at the rate of $8 per month (less than 30 cents a day).
Subscribe through the PayPal automatic subscription system at the rate of only $5 per month (17 cents a day).

(The difference between the $8 a month and the Paypal monthly subscription rate of $5 is the amount of processing we have to do at this end.)

(Once we receive your payment, we still have to activate your membership manually, which may take a couple of days - we don't work 24/7!)

And please note, all the following is for membership in this site. For membership in the RPI club, go to this section.

Click on the button below, and send us a subscription via Paypal.

Please note - when you set up the subscription payment with Paypal, you are entering into a contract WITH PAYPAL. Whenever you want to cancel this, you have to go to THEM to do so (and they will send us a notice you have done so). We CAN NOT modify, change and most importantly cancel the contract you have with Paypal. There are "cancel" buttons all over this site to get to Paypal to cancel. But again, WE CAN NOT CANCEL your contract with them.

Subscribe for only $5 a month. Cancel at any time.
OR
Pay for at $8 a month.
(Yes, if you subscribe and then cancel after the first month, it only costs $5, but if you pay for just one month, it costs $8. But we are confident once you see how valuable this information is, you will want to remain a member.)
You must fill out this sign-up form. If you have any problems filling out this form, e-mail us letting us know what the funds are for (membership, renewal) and your desired password. (It can't hurt to e-mail us even if you DO get to the form. Otherwise we may get funds and yet not have a way to contact you.)
Or you can mail us a check or money order at the cost of $8 per month (or $60 for a full year). Fill out the form, print it out and mail it along with the check or money order. If you send us less than $8, we can't activate your membership. Other amounts will be prorated at the 30 cents a day. (Checks should be made out to: "RPI RR". Money orders need to be made payable in U.S. dollars.) These can be mailed to:
Or you can send us your credit card number (along with expiration date and type of card, Visa or MasterCard only) to the above address or fax it to:
If you haven't filled out the form after you did the Paypal transaction, email us and let us know:
- You made the transaction.
- Whether you are a new member or renewing, and how many months for which you subscribed.
- Your e-mail address (sometimes that doesn't come through on an e-mail).
- Desired password. (If you don't tell us what you want as a password, we will assign you the last four digits of your Paypal transaction number. But we can change it at any point to something easy for you to remember.)
I or Will should be able to give you access within three (3) days. (The membership will go from the date we enter your name, not the date you make the payment, so that you don't lose a couple of days while we set you up manually.) We will then e-mail back to you, verifying your address, and letting you know you have access. (PS - You might want to avoid a long, complicated password.)
WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR DELAYS OR FAILURE TO SET UP YOUR ACCOUNT IF WE DON'T HAVE A VALID E-MAIL ADDRESS AND THEREFORE CAN'T GET AHOLD OF YOU.
Once you are signed up, please give us feedback on a regular basis as to what features you like best - in particular, what era - so we know where to direct future efforts. (Contact us.) And welcome aboard!
Please understand this is a small scale operation (in terms of people working on it). We make every effort to make it work, but Rudeness will NOT be tolerated!

How Safe Is PayPal?

Some people have expressed concern about giving their credit card number to PayPal and the number being sent over the web. Will has pointed out that each time you pay with a credit card in a restaurant, department store, etc., the same internet is used to transmit the number so you can be approved. AND there is a hard copy on the merchant's receipt in the store that could be potentially taken and misused. On the other hand, security is PayPal's "bread-n-butter" so you can be sure they have the most state-of-the-art.

Canceling

If you subscribe through the PayPal automatic subscription system, you can cancel at any time by going to your PayPal account. If you encounter any problem with this, please let us know. (We can NOT cancel your contract with Paypal to deduct the $5 amount each month. You HAVE to go to Paypal.)

Renewing

Subscribers - THIS IS IMPORTANT. If Paypal is still charging your account, but your membership has expired on this site, it means we need to simply change the date. (We normally set it for a year from when you first subscribe and then change it if you decide to cancel.) Please contact us regarding this, DON'T start a new Paypal account or you will wind up being charged twice each month. (If you have any doubts, ask us first, go to Paypal second.)

You can send us funds as per above, but use this Paypal button here to pay per month, or use the subscription button above for the automatic subscription system.
No matter how you send the funds, your current user name and password will still be valid, so you don't have to fill out that form again, unless it has been so long we have deleted it. (And it won't let you fill out the form again using the same user name.)
Again, your membership will NOT be renewed until we manually get the payment or the Paypal notification and then manually upgrade the expiration date, so give us a few days.

Why A Membership Subscription System

Due to circumstances beyond our control (i.e., $), we have closed off most of this web site to membership only. This would be membership in the "Rensselaer Railroad Heritage Site" - membership in the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society is a separate entity. The fee is $5 per month (basically cost of a hobby magazine). (Student members of the RMRRS get a free membership in the Site, non-student RMRRS members get membership at only $2.50 a month. Manufacturers and hobby stores, contact us about exchanging hobby goods toward a website membership.)

You will be able to sign up for a single month at a time (or any number of months or a full year) and then use the site as much as you can during that period. Then you can hold off rejoining for awhile until you feel you need more information.

Yes, we are a non-profit organization, but we need to cover our costs, including labor costs, for this site. (We are under the RPI umbrella, and you should see what tutition costs! And each student pays a large chunk of money as an Activity Fee which, when the railroad club goes in the red, covers the cost. They shouldn't have to pay to provide a resource for YOUR hobby, so don't gripe about having to share the costs of this.)

We feel that information about the hobby should be available to everyone, but we need to cover our operating costs of a researcher and web-master. (Posting so much information here already has seriously cut into our book sales, which were our major source of income.) And if we got significantly many more site memberships than we planned, we would cut the cost of each membership accordingly, sort of like a co-op. ALL FUNDS RAISED FROM SITE MEMBERSHIPS WILL BE USED TO FURTHER DEVELOPE THIS HISTORICAL & EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE. (Nobody is going to get rich off this.)

We will also be trying to raise money from businesses and individuals, who can donate $100 for the entire web site to be open to everyone for one full day. (Which would generate publicity and good will for them, since we would announce the date and their sponsorship in advance.) On the other hand, having this sponsored by a single manufacturer will put a damper on making critical comments about their products. If the site is supported by membership, it is sort of a "people's forum". (I remember a few decades ago an editor who was fired, presumably because he allowed criticsm of the scale dimensions of one of the magazine's leading advertisers. Sponsorship may undermine the whole idea of a site for consumers, by consumers, where we are free to "tell it like it is".)

These decisions were made by the student membership of the club, after long deliberation, as the only viable way to raise enough income to meet our budget.

We understand that many of you will be upset, but the choice of keeping this free is not an option. We feel we bent over backwards to give you a six month advance warning, so that you could use our site as much as possible before then, for absolutely nothing.

We can set up this membership system and/or raise the funds through sponsorships, or close the site down completely - take your pick!

Public Access Sections

The following sections of this site are open to the general public:

General information about the layout;
- Layout Photo Gallery - lots of prototype and model photos.
- Visitors' Guide - mostly explanation.
Clark Propst Photo Album
Soph Marty Freight Car Photo Album
Table of contents sections (so you can get a feel for what information we cover - and what we don't).
The first part of a major section, as a sampler or "free tour", including:
- The A section of the Glossary.
- The A section of the "Shorty" Wood Box Car Roster.
- The A section of the 1937 AAR 40 Foot Box Car Roster.
- The A section of the 1944 AAR 40 Foot Box Car Roster.
- The A section of the "Shorty" Reefer Roster.
- The A section of the General Freight Car Paint Schemes.
- The A section of the Specific 96.1 Freight Car Paint Schemes.

CD Versions Of Our Books

A number of people have suggested we offer our books on a CD. The club membership thoroughly discussed this idea and rejected for the following reasons:

A CD presents the worst of both ideas. We still have to reformat the information and gather all the information together at once, just like getting all the material together to publish it as a conventional book. (The first 6 Guides had the pictures physically pasted in and they would all need to be found again - an enormous job considering my filing system, and scanned in.)
We would still have to process orders and ship out the CD's.
The biggest cost of the books is not the reproduction, but the research, writing, laying out the material, etc. Some have suggested a single CD of all 7 books at too low a price, compared to the cost of buying all 7 in hard copy. Nor can we charge accordingly an equivalent price, as no one would buy that. (Remember this specialized material only appeals to a small number of people and lowing the price does not increase sales accordingly.)
It is easy to copy CD's.
I have used Westerfield's Equipment Registers on CD's quite extensively, as well as my own hard copies, and reference material that I have posted on our own site just so I can get to it readily. You are tied to a monitor, but also, a CD is very inconvenient, as it doesn't have the links that jump you around easily on a web site.
CD's still have to be updated and re-issued. And I can already people saying why don't I put out a CD of just the revised material to bring THEIR release up to date. (I found I couldn't do this with the books and the CD's would be no different.
The web site is dynamic. It will probably get updated just about every day. (In case you haven't noticed, I like writing for the web site, much more than for the books.) So the information is always very current.

Submitting Your Corrections, Etc.

Please send information in small chunks, such as an addition to a single entry or at most, a single page, per e-mail, even if it means lots of e-mail messages rather than one very long one.

If you are writing about our comments on kits, please be clear as to what kit. The kit number is essential, but also the type of kit (say, not just "Accurail kit no. so and so", but "Accurail single-sheathed box car" or a steel plug door, or whatever). The easiest you make it for us, the more likely the comments will go in right away.

You might also want to write in exactly as it would go in. Put quotes around it, and write it in the third person (i.e., instead of "I think this", write "he thinks this"), so we just can cut and paste the comment and add "According to . . ." in front.

You can email me at: nehrij @ rpi.edu (remove the space on each side of the @ symbol).

If you want to send hard copy, you can mail it to:

If you are sending it via UPS, change the street address to: 15th & Sage.

Thanks. - John

PS - I am beginning to get over my head in responses. Sometimes I'm not working on our site, so I put the message aside and forget about it, or just haven't gotten to it yet. I should acknowledge any comments you send, either by letting you know when I've used it, or maybe reply back to you with more questions. If you haven't heard in awhile, try again. Meanwhile, I apologize in advance if something you sent has gotten lost. - JN