I don’t know if I haven’t seen this before because it’s new, or because I’m so out of the loop. Bob Gray’s V&T Railroad up in Virginia City had an official website a few years ago, but it kind of disappeared at some point. Or I lost track of it. And recently when I was trying to find it, I wasn’t having any luck.
But just today, when I was Googling around, I rediscovered it, and found that it looks like it’s been completely redesigned and rebuilt for the 2008 season. You can see it at virginiatruckee.com. And not only does it look good, but by glimpsing under the hood I was able to tell it has a good engine too. It may just be a static brochure site, but it’s running on top of the WordPress content management system. Which won’t mean much unless you’re a blogger or a web developer, but building a site on a CMS means you can easily make changes to the site through a control panel, instead of editing the HTML files directly. It’s the smart way to build a site if you’re looking towards the future. And what it really means is that the V&T hired somebody who really knew what they were doing to build the site. Somebody who, from what I can tell, has remained anonymous. And using WordPress as the CMS? That’s pretty cutting edge. I’m impressed.
They still need to flesh out the content some more, but the site’s built on a good solid foundation so it will be easy for them to do. And aside from the fact that steam rides cost $1 more than diesel rides, I didn’t find any kind of confirmation that their steam locomotive will in fact be back on the rails this year, or what kind of steam/diesel schedule they’re going to have. This is exactly the kind of stuff that should be on their website, so hopefully they’ll hop to.
