Top Posts

 No tl;dr summary for this post.   Just that I was using Google tools to see which of my posts from 10 years ago got the most views.  "Most" here being a relative term.   None of my posts are aimed at a wide audience, but nevertheless a few posts got far more views than any of the others.

Tier 1:

1. A Degree in Curves.   (1/2010) Admit that this was my personal favorite.  Okay model railroading is a niche hobby.  Yes, it made the top 10 US hobbies list in the 1940s, but, well, 80 years ago, you know?   Amongst model railroaders a dissertation on curve radii is would appeal to only a small niche within that small niche.  But there's a lot to this topic, it's not covered well anywhere else, and I liked researching and writing this one.
   
2. Choosing N scale track: Flex Track and Switches.   (2/2010) I can see this being "popular" simply because it's one of the most common questions that keeps coming up amongst N scalers.  Amazingly most of this post is still accurate, despite it being from 2009.  But the prices - Peco is no longer crazy expensive.  I've added an update to the post explaining that.
3. Design influences 3rd layout.  (4/2009) I do NOT get why this was so high on the list.  None of the other "design influences" posts came close.  I did a search on web sites referencing my blog and came up with very few, so that didn't explain it.  My guess is that the fact that the layout was Märklin caused it to come up in a lot of searches.

Tier 2:

1. Switch Machine Standards.  (4/2010) The top post in this group received about 1/3 of the views of the posts in Tier 1, so consider that when comparing the two groups.  To me this post being "popular" makes sense - a lot of good detail in how to install a switch machine vertically.  Yes, a niche interest, but there is nothing else on-line that covers it.  The article I referenced in this post is no longer available on the internet.
2. Choosing N Scale Track: Overview.  (4/2009) This is the companion post, the prequel if you will, to #2 in Tier 1.  If that one attracted that many people then it's not a surprise that about one third of those people would click over to this one.
3. Frogs: Dead or Alive.  (4/2009) I actually thought this one might have been higher on the list.  At some point most N scale railroaders have to tackle this question (the exceptions being those N scalers who stick with Kato Unitrack or similar - which honestly is not a bad choice but is still the minority of N scale).  And so I thought this might come up a lot in searches.  But there are many web pages that hit this topic, so this post didn't come up that often.

Interestingly in the Blogspot history all of these posts in both tiers have shown interest in them steadily throughout the 10 years with occasional bursts of extra traffic.

None of these posts are about my outdoor layout.  But if I was to add a 3rd tier of posts to this list most of the 3rd tier posts would be about the outdoor layout.  However, the average views for the 3rd tier is about 1/5th the average view for Tier 2.