~ Early Web Links ~

BJ's Holiday House is a personal site dedicated to holiday themes, likely featuring seasonal decorations, imagery, and festive content based on its title and image-heavy layout. The splash page invites visitors to enter what appears to be a cheerful, holiday-focused personal corner of the old web.

Carole's blog chronicles her miniature wargaming hobby, showcasing painted 15mm figures, resin buildings, and scenic pieces across historical periods from the Nine Years' War to WW2. With hundreds of labeled posts covering specific manufacturers like Gripping Beast, Hovels, and Bad Squiddo, it's a rich visual diary of a dedicated miniature painter and wargamer.

GemWorld, maintained by Jack Slevkoff, offers detailed step-by-step tumbling instructions for polishing rocks and gemstones, covering everything from coarse grinding grits to final polish with cerium oxide. A practical reference for lapidary hobbyists, the site walks through each stage of the tumbling process with specific ratios, grit recommendations, and tips for both rotary and vibratory tumblers.

A personal site themed around trains, featuring flashy colorful visuals and an animated loading screen that warns visitors about flashing lights before entering. The domain name and styling suggest a hobbyist passion project dedicated to trains and rail enthusiasm.

Wamalug is the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area LEGO Users Group, a club for Adult Fans of LEGO that has been meeting continuously since August 1999. The site archives the group's detailed history, documenting over two decades of meetings, events, shows, and displays through painstaking research across Yahoo! Groups archives, Brickshelf, Flickr, and the Wayback Machine.

Alan Silverstein's comprehensive guide to rock tumbling covers everything from quick-start rotary tumbling to building a custom 31-inch truck tire tumbler and hand polishing techniques. The site is organized into detailed subsections addressing vibratory tumblers, miscellaneous Q&A, and a dedicated tumbler shop, making it a thorough reference for both beginners and enthusiasts.

Kestrel's Corner is a personal neocities-style site with a playful, animated entrance page that teases content about trains with looping hypnotic text. The site promises enthusiast content about trains wrapped in a flashy, JavaScript-powered retro-web aesthetic.

GoldMaps.com offers detailed regional maps for gold prospectors, panning enthusiasts, and treasure hunters across states like California, North Carolina, Georgia, and more. Published by H&H Engineering, the site covers prospecting locations, metal detecting resources, ancient gold river information, and outdoor recreation tips for serious hobbyists.

Part of Richard Percy's ESPEE Modelers Archive, this page catalogs all AAR car type codes from the October 1989 Official Railway Equipment Register, covering everything from boxcars to gondolas with detailed classification descriptions. An invaluable reference for Southern Pacific railroad modelers and prototype enthusiasts looking to accurately identify and model freight car types.

Jim Fager's Benchtest.com is a detailed hobbyist site documenting his home workshop projects including milling machines, lathes, surface grinders, and DIY repairs on vehicles like Dodge trucks and John Deere tractors. With years of documented builds and repairs spanning computer cooling hardware to heavy machine shop equipment, this site is a goldmine for hands-on machining and workshop enthusiasts.