This is addressed to folks here interested in model railroading, not to the trolls and other recent usurpers.
I'm sure by now everyone knows the sad state of affairs here. What seemed to start with a single troll ("Curt") has morphed into a full-blown attack by a bunch of Usenet Visigoths. These worthless specimens of humanity consider it their duty to infect and infest any newsgroup they choose, to sprawl around and conduct their "conversations" wherever and however they please.
And guess what, folks? There really isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it. No "sheriff" who'll kick their asses. No way to get them "banned", kicked off. No way to delete their messages. No "moderator" here. The only thing that might work, as has been suggested by several posters, is to ignore them.
And here's what's going to happen. For a while, it will *appear* as if this forum is a smoking ruin. There will be many, many threads you won't want to even bother looking at. I predict that certainly this thread will be hijacked by these vermin and will likewise become worthless.
"Curt" is probably one of these creatures; certainly not the god-sucking, brain-damaged goober he pretends to be, along with all his sockpuppets.
But here's the good news: it won't last forever. About a week or so from now, certainly a month, the Visigoths will be gone, moved on to greener pastures to pillage and plunder. They get easily bored. And this forum will return to (more or less) normal. So don't give up.
By the way, since I invoked the "Chicken Little" comparison to folks here yelling about the sky falling in, it's true that the far greater danger to this newsgroup--indeed, *all* newsgroups--is the fact that more and more ISPs are not providing any Usenet service at all. And that has much less to do with trolls and invaders than it does with simple economics, with the fact that in the age of the Web, this quaint, (mostly) text-based communication medium is no longer sexy and is, in their view, antiquated and obsolete. Pity. But still, many ISPs *do* provide Usenet access, and will for the forseeable future.