Introducing the MRH Online Index

In June 2013 I created a spreadhseet based Table of Contents index for MRH.

5 years and 38,000 views later, I decided it was time to bring it into the future. To that end, I have created this new fully searchable online index.

The new MRH Online Index is hosted on my servers (PDC.CA) and we have invested about 16 hours of staff time into custom programming so fat, to bring it online. Many more hours will be spent to update it with direct links to articles and more new content, as we add TMTV and other MRH publications to the index in the near future.

If you find the index useful, Please consider donating to help cover some of the costs of developing and hosting it. A paypal donate button found on the index homepage.

Cheers!

Inventory 4 EMRI & YARD OFFICE

Hi, Bill:- Do U know who is looking after Bob Langers' EMRI Inventory? or has it gone by the way of the DoDo Bird?

Also, Same ?? regarding YARD OFFICE?

Thanks, Bill

Boxcar Willy

CEO -BUZZARD BUTTE RR.

heyjud60@syban.net

A question?

There hasn't been a question for months regarding EMRI. Do you have one?

index/s

I am a huge fan of excel. I find it easy to use and easy to search. I have the old indexes on my HD. I can input a search for "shelf" for example. And it comes up with a lot of stuff. On this new index, I input the word "shelf" and it came up with NADA.

Since I am not any kind of expert with this stuff, I must ask "How do I find all the articles in MRH that refer to shelf, as in shelf layouts or such?

Consider this constructive criticism. Not to be negative or such.

shelf = 4

I put in shelf and came up with 4 articles using Bills index

shelf = 4

Morgan,

I went back to the original xls index and looked for shelf. There are 6 results. They are found on 4 rows. (2 rows find shelf in the Title and the Description)

The online index finds the same 4 rows:

MRH 12-11 November 2012, Features
N - Shelf layout project in N scale - M.C. FUJIWARA - 12" x 75" portable shelf layout

MRH 12-05 May 2012, Features
HO - Trona Railway track plan - BRUCE PETTY - Build this 9 x 11 shelf layout

MRH 11-08 August 2011, Columns
Reverse Running - JOE FUGATE - Table vs Shelf

MRH 4 October 2009, Features
N, HO, O - FIRST LOOK - MRH STAFF - Shelftrax Deluxe Shelving

Looking at the stats for the Online Index, I see that there have been 7 searches for the word "Shelf".

I'm not sure how you got no results. Do you get results if you search for "mike" ?

MRH Index

Thanks Bill for the Googlesheet. Hopefully there are no plans to abandon it.

Googlesheet

The googlesheet is in fact the principal method of adding new data to the index, so it's not going anywhere.

Cheers!

Wondering

In your web based index on your server I do not see a Description field; however, I find it in your spreadsheet file. Is there a reason for not being able to search on description?

Description Field

The description is searched as part of the general keywords, as are all of the other fields.

There is no sense in searching in the description and ignoring the other fields, so we have not included a specific search of description only, whereas if you are looking for a specific author, you can search via keyword, or select the author from the list of repeating names that actually exist in the data.

Do a search for Allagash and you'll see what I mean. You'll see records returned for "allagash" in the titles and in the descriptions.

The results are displayed as follows:

Category
Scale, Title, Author, Description
Scale, Title, Author, Description
Scale, Title, Author, Description

Next Category
Scale, Title, Author, Description
etc.

Running Extra...

The index has been updated with the first issue of MRH Running Extra!

I have included the Free MRH columns in the listing for MRH-RE so that you can see everything that is included in both together,

Enjoy!

UP TO DATE!

I finished adding direct links to all of the article pages in the MRH Index today (Yay!)
so the index is now fully up to date!

Thank you to those who have donated to this project, it's been a lot of work and your support is appreciated!!

Now on to indexing the TMTV and YouTube Videos...

Man-O-Man!

You guys absolutely rock the house!  Free magazine, downloads, AND the excel INDEX I just DL'ed and added filters to search my own (by now awesome) library of MRH issues starting with 2009 Q1 .  I just finished DL-ing every issue to my PC.  Now I can copy to phone, thumbnail, iPad and catch up on my reading anywhere I go, any time with or w/o web connect. 

I joined the MRH here just to post up a blog of my first railroad hobbying activity since the '90's after re-joining the MRRing community again in Feb 2018.

If ya give a mouse a cookie...or a moose a muffin...I got interested in low-cost turnout motors which led to> servos> controllers> Arduino> wifi/BT> circuitry> Geoff Bunza> MRH back issues> here. 

At 65 I am blown away, and realize I will not live long enough to do everything I NOW want to do with train control, animations (thanks, Geoff), scenery, layout construction, block signaling, sensor feedback stuff, sound and customizing bits and tracks...unless I really do retire and devote more time to this hobby.  If anyone ever gets tired of life they should just get into this NEW era style of model railroading, and get in touch with the folks on this website who make the info READILY available!  A huge THANK YOU! 

Greg in Columbia (that's SC, not SA)

http://www.MohawkAero.com

Thanks!

Bill, this is a great resource.  I just tried it for the first time today, and I'm hooked.  I'm using it to browse articles I've never read.  But I'm also using it to see if people have already written articles for article ideas I have.  If not, it goes on my list of articles to write.  Thanks!!

Thanks!

I'm glad you find this resource useful!

Resources we provide

Good thing I just found this

I already had a Google doc opened and ready to start entering information! The only suggestion I would consider is adding a column for keywords that people can associate with an article. 

Keywords

Yes, I have thought about adding a keywords column. I'll give this some more thought. If anybody wants to volunteer to help creating the keywords, please let me know.

I will

I can't promise how fast I will be but as I read through them (I have just found this wonderful magazine!), I can update keywords. Would you like to give me edit access to the document or would you prefer I copy your columns and add to mine and share with you so you can take them as I go along?

@arvanlaar

arvanlaar (name?),

I suggest starting a new public spreadsheet where anyone can contrubute.

Add a new column at the end and enter keywords there. No need to include commas or tabs. Just the keywords with a space in between.

Then once I have updated the index tool to use it, I'll merge in the keywords column when I update the index each month. I'll also add the new MRH data to the public sheet at the same time.

The important thing will be to prevent the sheet from being resorted.

Cheers!

Perfect

My name is Andrew

OK sure that works. Once I get it started I will post the sheet here and whoever wants to contribute can add keywords they think are relevant. 

Thanks Bill!

tarps on Flatbeds?

I'm looking for the making of bubble shells, useing tissue paper to cover the bubble shell then paint it to look like a covered item under the tarp.  

adding keywords

I am a retired software engineer who spent a decade at a large research library developing information retrieval software applications. Did a lot of work with keywords and keyword searching.

Bill, approach this with caution.  You've done an amazing job with your index so far, a true labour of love. To add a keyword-search function that is truly useful will take a lot of planning and effort.

To start, you should first develop a taxonomy of terms. This is so searching, for example, for either "shelf", or "shelving" returns the same results.  A good taxonomy would even allow a search on "wall mount" to return the same set of results regardless of whether anyone had added the keyword "wall mount" to all "shelving" articles. Another example: should a search on "switch" or "points" include articles that are tagged with "turnout"?  You can do all that with a taxonomy.

You can also build a hierarchy of terms with a taxonomy.  For example, "super-elevation", "turnout number", "inter-track spacing" are all subcategories of "track design", which is itself a subcategory of "layout design". You can then do stuff such as: 'You searched for "turnout number", would you like to see all articles on "track design"?'

A taxonomy can offer suggestions to users: "You searched for 'switch': did you mean 'toggle' or 'turnout'?"

At a minimum, I'd suggest you start with a list of allowed keywords (which can always be added-to) and restrict the keywords field to those terms.

I'm sure there are those who will read this and say "The heck with all that nonsense, lyncher,  We just want to add keywords!"  I'll just say, there's a reason that Dewey invented that Decimal System.

And, having opened my mouth - yes, I volunteer to help.

-lyncher

Keywords

Tim, if this were a professional project with a budget, I would agree with you. Since it's a google spreadsheet with a fancy front end applied, with no budget at all, and very little in the way of donations...

(A BIG THANKS to those who have donated! It's much appreciated!!)

...I'm going to say a simple keywords list will suffice and will improve the functionality 10 fold.

Note: I haven't heard that anybody has started anything on this yet.