Thank you. Love you too

Get a room, you two.

The way I understand it is...It is first and foremost Russell and Neils Trainset. They are more than happy to share and let us all bring our Trains and Play, and for that I thank them.
However I dont feel it is my Place to say "Lets move the Tracks about a bit"
Member totals aint the be all and end all on a forum to be Frank. It is nice to have the popularity but with Popularity comes Bandwidth Issues and Bandwidth costs money.
This would leave the Guys open to a sticky situation Fill it chock full of Adverts for random objects and Tampon Ads?... start charging Membership? Or take a hefty Bandwidth charge on the nose themselves?

Growth is enevitable If it is a good thing (which I think this Forum is) but Casual Browsers off google take bandwidth too.
This Forum was recommended to me and thats why I joined since I couldn't see In It made it even more interesting... Ooh what are they talking about in there?
Keeping the Flea market inside also stops random People dipping in Via Google grabbing what they need and dissappearing again.
Or even worse chancers Buying stuff just to fire it back out at a profit on E bay etc.

We all like a bargain dont we, without Randoms Killing our Hobby with Scene tax.

Well thats the way I see it?

I checked the other day all the members and how many have submitted posts and if you look there are over 500 old or new members that have not issued a single post. What I am trying to say is people may join but not all are interested in staying.

That is just not right. Look at some Australian forums available to everybody to see, no conditioned attached except if you want to post.
This is about sharing the passion and the knowledge too, not hiding behind a curtain. Many other forums around world share the same spirit, free to watch but posting requires registation

It's a country mile from hitting the limits of the current bandwidth. B'sides, even if there ARE ads, and I'm sure any money raised would actually be in the form of sponsorship from 2cv businesses who also post here, it's very very easy to block them. Firefox with the AdBlockPlus add-on is the way I choose to never see ads. Plenty of other solutions are available.

"Casual browsers off google" might easily be perfectly normal 2cv people like you. Or, god forbid, me.

I've just joined a 205 forum with a few questions. I found it through google, and could have a good look through before I joined. There's others which were hidden - I didn't even bother registering, just kept looking, since I felt unwelcome.

Who cares wether you're new or old, posting or not, registred or not. Some folks like reading some of our nonesense and never post anything. Nothing wrong with that. If free and more openminded surely this forum would grow

I see what you are saying but that happens on Most Forums.
Think of a Forum as an Online Pub, Have you ever walked into a Pub you dont know? Then had a look around only to think "Fuck that, not my sort of place" and then walk back out again

Many times !!!!

Would you even go in and look around if you had to fill in a membership form to get past the front door?