PENN CENTRAL MAILING LIST INFO SHEET -- PLEASE SAVE THIS FILE (Last revised 12/18/98) This is the Penn Central Railroad mailing list. This mailing list is for discussing all aspects of the Penn Central Railroad, including but not limited to: operations, motive power, track arrangements, predecessors, etc. Feel free to ask questions on this list--it's what I created it for! General Guidelines ------------------ The following are the "rules of the rails" for this list. There aren't too many, but all members of the list are asked to and are required to abide by these guidlines. 1. While the subject of the list is the Penn Central railroad, which existed from 1968 to 1976, there is room for overlap to predecessor and succesor railroad topics. Items from the predecessor railroads which were around during the PC era are allowed to be discussed, as long as they reasonably relate to the PC. For example, NYC GP40s and PRR SD45s are OK discussion topics, but NYC Niagaras and PRR Sharknose diesels are considered off-topic, and would be better discussed in a different forum. 2. Any SPAM, unsolicited commercial emails, or other disruptive and abusive behavior will NOT BE TOLERATED. Offenders will be removed, and their ISP's will notified. This mailing list is conducted in a "family atmosphere." Yes, there are children who read this list. So foul language, name calling, etc., will not be tolerated. Just because children read this list doesn't mean that you have to act like one. Fortunately, this has not been a problem in the past, and I don't expect it to become one. 2a. "For sale" type postings of Penn Central-related items are permissible for individuals only. If you are trying to sell a spare timetable or china plate and want to post an annoucement about it, that is permissable, provided that followups to the message are through private e-mail. On the other hand, no dealers or companies are permitted to advertise their PC wares here. If you want to mention products of companies that you are not affiliated with, fine. If in doubt, ask the list owner. 3. Do not cross-post messages to the PC list to other individuals or mailing lists. The PC list is a closed list--only subscribers can post to it. When a message is crossposted to a number of addresses and a non-subscriber replies to all recepients of the message, it bounces and I get an error message in my mailbox. I try to keep this list from being a burden on my time, and fixing errors like this doesn't help. Therefore, crossposting messages is forbidden on the PC mailing list. 4. When replying to a message, if you quote the previous message, edit it down to remove parts of the message that don't correspond to what you a replying to. If you aren't quoting the original message, please delete it. In other words, always edit out any unnecessary text from your messges. Quoting a 25 line message and adding a 2 line reply at the end wastes bandwidth on the Internet (it's slow enough as it is) and it bogs down my list server (which is overworked and underpowered as it is), not to mention it's one of my major pet peeves..... 5. By default, all messages sent to the list are automatically set to reply back to the list. Therefore, if you want to mail a personal reply to a post, be sure you change the address on the To: line of your message. Sending personal replies to the mailing list can be quite embarassing. Subscribe/Unsubscribe Instructions ---------------------------------- Please READ the following instructions. They will help you when unsubscribing or subscribing to the PC mailing list. Unless you are having difficulty, please do not mail me and ask me to add or remove you--if you can read this, you can follow the directions below: To subscribe send a message to majordomo@smellycat.com, and in the body include only the words: "subscribe penn-central" (without the quotes) To unsubscribe send a message to majordomo@smellycat.com, and in the body include only the words: "unsubscribe penn-central" (without the quotes) To send a message to the mailing list, send the message to penn-central@smellycat.com For help, send a message to majordomo@smellycat.com In the body include the line: help Remember that you may only send mail to the list from the address you used to subscribe. For example, if you subscribe from your home account, you can't post to the list from your work account unless you have also subscribed from your work account. Also if you change mail providers, please unsubscribe from your former address and subscribe using your new address. If you need help with this or are unable to do so, please mail me and I can help you out. I will remove any subscribers whose mail starts bouncing back with "User Unknown", "Mailbox Full", or other similar errors. I realize that sometimes there are intermittent problems on the net which can cause mail to bounce back, but if it happens multiple times, I will remove addresses when I am tired of seeing bounce messages.... Thank you, and enjoy! If you have any other questions, feel free to e-mail me. Jerry Jordak Penn Central Mailing List list owner and administrator jer@smellycat.com