The Farish Shed website: What's happened to this historical gem?!

Malcolm Hunt · April 01, 2021, 05:24:02 PM

Something seems amiss with a very useful archive website. Anyone familiar with The Farish Shed site will know what I mean. It was good like that Hornby Minitrix one, with very in-depth historical knowledge of all things Graham Farish. I just went to use it as I needed something and.., it's broken!

Nearly all the pages have nothing on them except for their headings, and the drop down menu titles are often all over each other like a house of cards that's come to grief. Go and check it out for yourselves on the totally unrelated URL... who the heck is Artisania Daisy anyway?! It's like some Hipster woman has just taken over a model railway website but retained the look "because it's cool and sooo retro, yah?"; but will shortly start selling some overpriced coffee or breakfast cereal by the bowl on there for the average price of a studio flat in Hoxton....

- Just look at the state of it..! http://www.artesaniadaisy.com/

I hope someone can shed some light on this, please.

Railwaygun · April 01, 2021, 06:33:12 PM

last post 2019 - perhaps he let the website licence lapse??

Malcolm Hunt · April 01, 2021, 06:40:30 PM

Yup, certainly looks like it. What a shame, as it was a good resource. Has anyone any idea who the owner was?

ntpntpntp · April 01, 2021, 06:47:50 PM

It's demise has been discussed before IIRC - wasn't there even a suggestion to try and obtain and host the content as part of the NGF?

The Internet Archive has a few working snapshots from 2018

https://web.archive.org/web/20181117143834/http://thefarishshed.com/

Malcolm Hunt · April 01, 2021, 07:46:13 PM

Quote from: ntpntpntp on April 01, 2021, 06:47:50 PM
It's demise has been discussed before IIRC - wasn't there even a suggestion to try and obtain and host the content as part of the NGF?

The Internet Archive has a few working snapshots from 2018

https://web.archive.org/web/20181117143834/http://thefarishshed.com/

Ah well, thanks for that.

joe cassidy · April 02, 2021, 11:14:29 AM

I think the guy who started it was an airline pilot based in Dubai.

His forum name was "desert" something ?

mickd247 · April 02, 2021, 11:26:35 AM

Dan is the man with forum name @DesertHound.
I think an issue with the web host's charges lead to Dan knocking the site on the head. Such a shame.

Malcolm Hunt · April 02, 2021, 11:45:44 AM

Quote from: mickd247 on April 02, 2021, 11:26:35 AM

Dan is the man with forum name @DesertHound.
I think an issue with the web host's charges lead to Dan knocking the site on the head. Such a shame.

Yes it is. Not good! I think that's roughly the same time that sites like Etsy suddenly put their vendor charges up as well.

DesertHound · April 02, 2021, 02:51:20 PM

Hello Malcolm

Thank you for raising the subject of thefarishshed.com. This was my project and is one which has not disappeared completely (read on).

As others have suggested, it was taken down a few years ago due to the pricing for hosting it increasing significantly - something which is a shame since the resources on there are valuable to many and should be accessible by all.

It has always been my intention to resurrect the site - thank you to those who have offered words of encouragement, and to those who have offered assistance. In the past six months I have redesigned the site (looks wise it is very similar to the old one) and I have made an attempt to include more history on the company - photos, advertisements etc. - so that this can be preserved for the future. There are still the catalogues, stock images etc. that users may remember from the previous website.

I hope to have the website live in the next three months and Malcolm, if anything, you have strengthened my desire in that respect.

The new site will resemble the old one in many ways and I suspect most people will not notice the difference given the time lapsed between the two. However, I would like this new site to be less "static" and for the users to have a channel by which they can contribute material (photos / documents etc, even if they are scanned) of historical relevance which relate to the days of Poole Graham Farish. I would also be interested in other ideas that users have so please PM me if you have any suggestions.

The stock gallery is restricted to diesels - it always was - but I would like this to be expanded to include the steam locomotives and potentially the coaches and wagons. Such an undertaking would require the assistance of the community, simply because I do not own all of those items and so cannot photograph them all.

One thing the site will not be is competition for NGF. I have considered a forum but I believe there is merit in maintaining the breadth of subjects in one place, and we have an excellent space for that here.

I will do my best to bring this resource back to the community this summer.

Kind regards

Daniel

Note: I have added two attachments below to give you an idea of how the new site will look Those more observant may notice the historical advertisements relate to OO merchandise - there will be an N Gauge historical page also and indeed Poole N Gauge is the primary focus of the site.

Malcolm Hunt · April 02, 2021, 03:39:10 PM

( @DesertHound ) Daniel, I am delighted that I (among others) have encouraged you resurrect your site. It really is a great resource and I look forward to seeing the result which from seeing those PDFs, looks most promising.

Good luck, ever upwards ever onwards!

Ben A · April 02, 2021, 03:43:48 PM

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the update - I am glad that the resource will not be lost.

I have often wondered whether as a collective we modellers could do more to preserve the heritage and history of the hobby, but it's a vast undertaking and hard to know where to start. Your pages look well on the way to achieving this - well done!

cheers

Ben A.

Bealman · April 03, 2021, 12:19:33 AM

Good to hear from you again, Dan!

GlenEglise · April 03, 2021, 12:23:10 AM

Perhaps a fundraiser could assist Daniel in his endeavours?

GE

DesertHound · April 03, 2021, 01:46:59 AM

Thank you again Malcolm for the encouraging comments - I look forward to being able to let you all know when it is back up and running again.

Ben - yes, quite an undertaking if you consider the entire hobby, across all gauges. Here we are just focussing on one manufacturer from a set era and that in itself is quite an undertaking, as you say. I do have on my list to contact the Historical Model Railway Society, as per your earlier suggestion. I think the real challenge is going to be getting access to information through research, whether that be access to individuals or material. This is where I think I will need the assistance of the community.

Gleneglise - thank you kindly for the thought of a fundraiser. After having looked into the costs I believe them to be manageable at this stage and I am hoping for it to stay that way. In order to meet the challenge outlined above to Ben, I believe the most valuable contribution I can hope for is going to be stories, copies of artefacts and material etc. which then allows us to begin the process of archiving as much information as we can.

Best

Daniel

PGN · April 03, 2021, 09:23:51 AM

Quote from: Ben A on April 02, 2021, 03:43:48 PM
I have often wondered whether as a collective we modellers could do more to preserve the heritage and history of the hobby, but it's a vast undertaking and hard to know where to start.

Well ... I think that the starting point HAS to be the invaluable "Monty's Guides", which were a major reference source for my historical pieces in NSpirations and the NGS 50th anniversary supplement. In both of these, however, I was heavily constrained by word limit, and there was much more I could have written.

There is a Dutch fella who has put together an incredible reference work on LoneStar products, and I know that Jerry Clifford is trying to assemble something on the earliest moves into 2mm and circa 2mm scales (he has photographed a couple of models from my collection) so some work along these lines is definitely going on.

For me, a major fascination has always been the sheer inventiveness of those earlier pioneers of N in the 60s and early 70s. You never heard them whingeing "I can't model what I want to because nobody produces such-and-such". If they couldn't produce what they wanted for themselves (and many of them did!), then they took stock of what was available and asked themselves "what CAN I do with this??" And the answer, quite often, was "a surprising amount ... "