(rshsdepot) Missouri Depots

[jdent1_@_optonline.net]

Forbes depot collection passes 1,000 
http://www.therolladailynews.com/articles/2005/11/13/news/doc437514e97e6c3667683639.txt

Sunday, November 13, 2005 8:04 AM CST
Josh Hester
Staff Writer

Jack Forbes stumbled into his hobby by accident. 

During a motorcycle ride in 1975 in Rhineland, Mo., Forbes was looking at the railroad infrastructure in the town and began exploring behind the grain bins and found what he felt was a treasure.

?I saw the old Rhineland train depot,? he said. ?I really started looking and, noticing the condition it was in and saw that it was deteriorating.?

He felt that someone needed to take a picture of that depot before it was completely gone.

So Forbes climbed back on his motorcycle, rode home and later returned with his camera and took the pictures of that depot, the first depot pictures he took of what has grown into a collection of over one thousand of the old stations.

Today, Forbes operates the website missouridepots.com where he boasts a collection of over 1,000 depots throughout Missouri.

With the help of 43 contributors, Forbes has been able to grow his website to the 1,000 mark.

?When I started the website in July of 2004, my goal was to have more than the guy who has the New York depot website n 897,? he said. ?My next goal was 1,000.?

Today, Forbes? hobby has grown into what could be a full-time job if he allowed it.

?I have to force myself to have other hobbies or I could work on the website eight hours per day.?

After photographing the Rhineland depot, Forbes continued his passion of biking, railroad and photography by visiting every county in Missouri and photographing 179 depots.

?I had 817 images from those depots,? he said. ?When I took the photos, I had model railroaders in mind.

?Many of the photos that I took showed the detail so the modelers could replicate the depots.?

After showing the images a few times, Forbes put them back into their slide carousels and put them in a closet.

About two years ago n 15 years after last having them out n Forbes was cleaning out a closet and rediscovered his little treasures and wanted to put them on display.

?I decided I was going to take some classes to learn HTML and how to write webpages and post my slides online,? he said. ?After about halfway through my third class, I decided to go ahead and start designing my webpage.?

After he launched his site, it didn?t take long for him to exhaust all of his resources, posting all 179 depots that he had photographed.

Then came Bill Bunch.

?As I continued to scan and post new depots I would tell people and keep the webgroups updated,? he said. ?Bill Bunch came along and really helped me out.?

According to Forbes, Bunch and Richard Napper are the only two contributors who have more depots posted on the site than he does.

?Bill Bunch has about two times the amount of depots that I have,? he said.

Today, Forbes is beginning to get what he calls ?interesting material.?

?The first five to six hundred depots were what everyone had,? he said. ?Now I?m starting to get images that are rare, like this 1907 photo of the Tucker Station depot that is built into the side of a bluff.

?Some of the new ones have never been published or posted on line, like the old Rosati depot.?

Other than serving as a hobby, Forbes sees his compilation of information as a way to share information with others.

?It is my own way of preserving history,? he said. ?I want to preserve and display images of Missouri depots past and present - here and gone.?

According to his own estimation, missouridepots.com has the largest database of depots for a single state than any other.

On the web: www.missouridepots.com

 Copyright ? 2005 Rolla Daily News. All rights reserved. 

 
=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

------------------------------