31 Oct 2008

October 31, 2008

Digital Railroad’s Web site was displaying only an announcement about the shutdown.

This is no way to run a railroad. Photographers and agencies were left reeling after technology provider Digital Railroad declared it was shutting down.

Digital Railroad-powered Web sites were still functional mid-afternoon on October 28, but the main site had been replaced by a short announcement about the shutdown.

The four-year-old company provided an e-commerce platform for scores of photography Web sites, and offered supposedly secure backup of image archives.

Visitors to the Digital Railroad site were greeted with a message saying, “We deeply regret to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.” A similar message posted on a page only visible to Digital Railroad members added, “The archive may only be accessible for the next 24 hours.”

Agencies and photographers who relied on the DRR service braced for their sites to go offline.

“This could not have happened at a worse time,” says Paul Fitzgerald, whose web site CandidatePhotos.com specializes in images of presidential candidates. Fitzgerald was planning to …

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