Indian Railways Fan Club

Last updated July 13, 2019

The Indian Railways Fan Club (IRFCA) is a fan website devoted to the Rail transport in India. The IRFCA is a discussion group connecting many fans particularly interested in railways in India. Forum traffic is moderate to heavy, and runs around hundred and fifty to two hundred posts a day most of the time.

Rail transport is an important mode of transport in India.

India, official name, the Republic of India,, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

The Indian subcontinent, is a southern region and peninsula of Asia, mostly situated on the Indian Plate and projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geologically, the Indian subcontinent is related to the land mass that rifted from Gondwana and merged with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago. Geographically, it is the peninsular region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east. Politically, the Indian subcontinent includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

History

IRFCA started with a group of rail fans discussing Indian trains in the Usenet newsgroup , who later decided to set up an electronic mailing list for themselves. The list was operational on 1989-08-29. The first incarnation of the list had just nine members exchanging e-mail directly. The list was then hosted on various US university list-servers (University of Maryland, College Park, Yale University, University of California, Santa Barbara) for many years, mainly because many of the members in those days were graduate students in U.S. universities.

Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially. The name comes from the term "users network".

{{Selfref|For information about the Wikipedia mailing lists, see [[Wikipedia:Mailing l

The University of Maryland, College Park is a public research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland, and is the largest university in both the state and the Washington metropolitan area, with more than 41,000 students representing all fifty states and 123 countries, and a global alumni network of over 360,000. Its twelve schools and colleges together offer over 200 degree-granting programs, including 92 undergraduate majors, 107 master's programs, and 83 doctoral programs. UMD is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes in intercollegiate athletics as a member of the Big Ten Conference.

The list was later transferred to ONElist in 1999. ONElist later merged with eGroups, which was subsequently acquired by Yahoo! Groups. During the first ten years or so (1989–1999) the membership remained small, at 50 to 100 members, and predominantly consisted of persons in the US, with some members in the UK.

eGroups.com was an email list management web site. The site allowed users to create their own mailing lists and allowed others to sign up for membership on the list. The web site provided archives of the messages as well as list management functionality. Each group also had a shared calendar, file space, group chat, and a simple way to communicate. It was bought by Yahoo! and now a part of Yahoo! Groups.

Yahoo! Groups is one of the world's largest collections of online discussion boards. The term Groups refers to Internet communication which is a hybrid between an electronic mailing list and a threaded Internet forum, in other words, Group messages can be read and posted by e-mail or on the Group's webpage like a web forum. In addition, members can choose whether to receive individual, daily digest or Special Delivery e-mails, or simply read Group posts on the Group's Web site. Groups can be created with public or member-only access. Some Groups are simply announcement bulletin boards, to which only the Group moderators can post, while others are discussion forums.

As of April 2008 the list had more than 5,900 members from several countries. The two biggest groups on the basis of members' locations are from India and the US. The next leading contingent is probably from the UK.

In 2010, the group moved on from the mailing list format to an online forum, which allowed better searchability and grouping of topics. It also allowed a faster and easier mode of interaction than a mailing list. As in early 2013, more than 6000 users were registered on the forum.

The IRFCA server was originally not a single web site. The FAQ was maintained on a GeoCities web site, and the irfca.org domain had some Indian railfan material. Several other IRFCA members had their own web sites scattered across the net. Later the domain irfca.org and all IRFCA-related material was consolidated on it.

A railfan, rail buff, or train buff, railway enthusiast or railway buff, trainspotter or anorak is a person interested, recreationally, in rail transport. Railfans of many ages can be found worldwide. Railfans often combine their interest with other hobbies, especially photography and videography, radio scanning, model railroading, studying railroad history and participating in railway station and rolling stock preservation efforts. Magazines dedicated to railfanning include Trains and Railfan & Railroad.

The list's original name was "Indian Railways Fan Club of America" which was appropriate when the list began, as all the members were in the USA. When its membership grew and went global, the original name became less accurate, but it was decided to keep the acronym for nostalgic purposes.

Annual conventions

Members of the group, meet once a year for the "IRFCA Convention". These conventions are a way to meet new members, participate in discussions, give presentations and exchange notes about rail transport in India.

Convention I IRFCA Convention '06 The first ever convention of rail fans, was held on 26 February 2006 at Hotel Regency, Pune.

Pune, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Maharashtra, after Mumbai. It is the ninth most populous city in the country with an estimated population of 3.13 million. Along with its extended city limits Pimpri Chinchwad and the three cantonment towns of Pune, Khadki and Dehu Road, Pune forms the urban core of the eponymous Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR). According to the 2011 census, the urban area has a combined population of 5.05 million while the population of the metropolitan region is estimated at 7.27 million.

Convention II MAS2007 was held at the Hotel Metro Manor, Chennai on 27 January 2007.

Convention III CNB2008 was held at IIT Kanpur on the 9 and 10 February 2008.

Convention IV BNC2009 Blog of the event Was held at The UTC Campus, near Bangalore Cantonment station, on the 24 and 25 January 2009.

Convention V NRM2010 was held at the prestigious National Railway Museum at New Delhi, on the 6 and 7 February 2010.

Convention VI BSL2011 was held at the Zonal Railway Training Training Institute at Bhusaval, on the 5 and 6 February 2011.

Convention VII The 7th Convention was held in Rotary Sadan, Kolkata on 28 & 29 January 2012. About 112 delegates for all over the country and abroad attended the convention.

Convention VIII MGS2013 was held in Mughalsarai on 9 & 10 February 2013.

Convention IX UAM2014 was held in Ooty on 1st and 2 February 2014. This year marked the Silver Jubilee of IRFCA.

Convention X AaoHYB was held in the city of Hyderabad. About 140 delegates from India and abroad participated in the twoday convention.

Convention XI It was held in the city of Bikaner. About 85 delegates from India and abroad participated in the unique two day convention.

Convention XII AaboBhilai 2017 was held in Hotel Amit Park International, Bhilai on 27 & 28 February 2017, About 125 Delegates Attended the convention.

Convention XIII 2018, Held in Vadodara in 2018 The venue was selected from a Online Poll. Attended by ~150 participants.

Convention XIV Was held in Hubli, Karnataka (15-16 Feb, 2019).

Convention XV Will be held in Chennai (ICF (Integral Coach Factory), ) on 31 Jand & 1 Feb 2020 .

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References

External links

Official website

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