Railroadforums.com “would” have been a good alternative free site.

It has the update feature, at least “used” to get a decent amount of traffic. The problem with that site is that the owner has WAY too many individual forums. If you had a forum that got excessive traffic or was about completely different topics, then it might make sense to divide them up, like Trainorders divides itself up into 10 different forums, with most readers viewing a selection of maybe 3 or 4 of those 10 forums on any regular basis.

Railroadforums, which once boasted itself as the 2nd largest railfan forum, has 34 different forums. Who has time to wade through 34 different forums in a setting?

As a consequence, if you want to visit the site, you have to visit half a dozen to a dozen different forums, even if your topic of choice is narrow in scope, because the same topic could find itself in any one of a half dozen different forums on that site. Which also makes it difficult to post, because you don't know where to post.

If the owners of Railroadforums are listening...you have an opportunity here to greatly expand your readership and presence on the web by simply condensing your forums. There is absolutely no reason for a pay site like Trainorders to dominate the web, when the VAST majority of the most popular forums about any subject on the planet are FREE.

Trainorders only dominates, because there is no alternative that is easy to navigate or has the traffic with posters that make it worth visiting. Other sites do not have the traffic. Railroadforums is not easy to navigate. Simply change the forum design and Railroadforums could explode in popularity and leave Trainorders in the dust.