Welcome to our new website!
Nearly a year in the conception, design and programming, the new site includes pretty much every word, picture and drawing from the old website. Nearly 5000 items in the archive, over 50,000 images uploaded (yes, it surprised us too!)
All the functionality of the old website has been included, a key design consideration was to retain the speed and simplicity of the old whilst adding new features. These include:
- Search facility - this works throughout the site, including new build locomotives, the parts shop and both current and archived second hand stock. It will return all matches in both title and description of an item - if you know the engine you're interested in, just type it in the search box - try "LNER B1". If you can remember some words from an old description - it will find those too - "George Woodcock" will bring you up the Great Eastern engine we had by that man.
- Filters - letting you refine searches throughout the site. If you just want to see 3 1/2 inch gauge locomotives, or 4 inch scale traction engines, simply tick the box shown.
- A departure from our old way of listing engines sees a new "details" tab in the item listing. Starting from engines we list now, we intend this to pull together all the information we have about a given engine; from its dimensions and weight through to type of valve gear, boiler number through to date of last test. The hope is that it will provide more information in an easier to see form.
- A new blog platform has, for the first time in some years, allowed us to put all the news pages, short features and railway building diary back on line. You can look through the goings on at Station Road Steam going back to 2001, in the future expect to see more frequent updates with items about the workshop, visits to railways, interesting people we meet and developments at the new 15 inch gauge railway we're currently building.
- Automatic update notifications, replacing the old mailing list. Use the "register" link at the top of the home page to set up an account, allowing you to specifiy what you're interested in and how often you'd like to be kept updated. Just interested in stationary engines and would like a single daily email if we list any on the site? No problem. If you're an SRS website junkie and would like to see everything we list, the second it's listed - you can get that too.
- Our online shop is open! For now a limited range of our stock is available to buy online - more will be added over the coming weeks. Payment is handled through SagePay for security - you can read more about that on the terms page, linked at the bottom of the page.
- The site features currency conversion for our overseas visitors - click on the icon at the top of the home page to select your country, the site will automatically convert all prices to your local currency.
Whilst many hours have been spent reading and re-reading pages, testing links and sorting out images there are, doubtless, things that have slipped through the net. Anything you find missing, wrong, broken or simply irritating, let us know - we'll try to fix it! Any suggestions to make it even better will be gratefully received and carefully considered.
We hope you like the new site.
