Hello and welcome to Hintock Branch, or welcome again if you are coming back to see the recent changes. I am excited about how Hintock Branch is looking now. When I first thought about putting the story of one of my most enduring and precious model layouts on the web, I didn’t really see how to mesh all I wanted to say with with the structure of a website or the popular content management systems for them like WordPress. After we first got up all the information about Hintock, from its genesis as an idea in my mind that harkens back to my childhood experiences with trains and Dorset, through a formal description of all references and articles, I rather thought we had dumped out a series of pages about aspects of Hintock on to the web. Everything I wanted to say was there, but you had to rummage around to find things. It seemed clear to me that what was needed was order and an organizing principle. This came while I worked on a second passion of mine, the story of my time in the National Service in Hong Kong.
A screen shot showing the new design of Hintock Branch as an online book
In creating GunnerFlann.com, and bringing my story to the web in an organized fashion, we hit upon the idea of creating an online book. WordPress, the content management system used by this website and GunnerFlann.com lends itself to the creation of online books, and we found a thorough online tutorial on the process. With the ability to impose order on the material, I’ve reorganized Hintock Branch into Chapters that deal with the various aspects of the layout. Now a sequential read will take you through my vision of how the story of Hintock is organized. Moreover, the structure permits a way to introduce new material after the chapters are finished, a Blog. I’ve also resolved to add new material to the Blog via new posts, and also to put short articles about topics of interest about the railway that don’t fit elsewhere; for example, where do you put a short article about shunting poles?
The revision to the Hintock Branch website has also given me the chance to look at how I present my story within posts or chapters. Of course each chapter’s theme was illustrated with pictures of the railway, but when I first started creating these posts, I didn’t really understand what I could do with the pictures. I’ve made many of them bigger, after all, isn’t that what most model railway enthusiasts want if not reading about a railway, a look at it too.
I hope you enjoy the changes. You should feel free to leave me a comment on a chapter if you like. You can always contact me too.
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