Now a days, there are more good resources and up-to-date product information available to model railroaders than ever before. There are countless Web sites, forums, personal blogs and manufacturer sites constantly updating with brand new content.  How you personally keep track of everything being published on the Web?  How do you do in an organized way and only see the information you’re interested in?

Really simple.  Really Simple Syndication that is — or RSS for short.

An Introduction to RSS

Most modern Web sites, that update content frequently, provide a service known as RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

In non-technical terms, when a Web site provides RSS, that site’s users may “subscribe” to the site’s RSS feed.  You can think of an RSS feed like the scrolling information at the bottom of a news broadcast — always changing with the latest and greatest information.  An RSS feed is always in-synch with the providing Web site and allows you, the user, to know when the content of a site is updated or new articles are published.

RSS availability is usually noted on a Web site with some form of an RSS icon. The icon is typically followed by a link to the feed (like the RSS links at the top of the N Scale Limited site).

Some Web browsers, like FireFox, will display the RSS icon in browser’s address bar to signify that RSS feeds are available for you to subscribe. Browsers that have built in detection like this will usually allow you to select the feed you’d like to subscribe to by clicking the icon in the browser itself.

How Can Subscribing to RSS Feeds Help a Model Railroader?

To understand the real benefits of subscribing to RSS feeds, let’s say I normally visit Web sites such as:

• NScaleLimited.com
• Four model railroad forums
• A local club site
• Three of my friends personal sites (for layout progress)
• Ebay (looking for new N scale items)
• Several manufacturer sites looking for new products
• Flickr photostreams of other modelers
• YouTube for train videos
• A railroad historic society

Subscribing to RSS feeds from all of those sites gives me constant updates any time they have new information. Not only does that save time — especially when visiting sites that haven’t changed since my last visit — but it allows me to track all of the information in one place, in a consistent way and quickly scan what I’d like to read and what I’ll pass over.

RSS feeds are especially handle for sites like Ebay, where you can set up feeds for specific search terms.  You can even set up feeds for sites that don’t provide RSS or for sites that don’t update frequently, but you want to know what they show up in the news — I’ll cover these types of scenarios later in the article.

How Do I Use RSS Feeds?

There are a number of ways that you can view and manage RSS feeds.  There are various “RSS readers” available that are either in the form of a software program, Web site (refered to as a Web application) or though some browsers or e-mail programs.

For the purposes of this article, I’ll explain how to use Google’s free RSS reader known as Google Reader.  I’d decided to share Google Reader because it’s free, extremely popular, works in any Web browser or mobil phone, can be used from any computer you have access to (even away from home) and just happens to be the one I use and am most familiar with.

Google Reader allows you to take all of the articles from the various sites you are interested in and see them just like scanning your e-mail. But instead of opening like an e-mail would when you click on an article you like, Google Reader will take you to the Web site the article is from. Quite convenient!

Using Google Reader

To get started with Google Reader, you only need to:

1. Create a Google Account. If you already have an account set up with Google, you can skip this step and use your existing username and password for step 3.
2. Go to Google Reader. You can always access the reader at http://www.google.com/reader.
3. Sign in to Google Reader with the account you created in step 1 (or use your existing Google account)

Getting to Know the Reader

Once you’re signed in, you will be looking at the Google Reader itself. When you first sign in, you are given a small number of brief articles.  These are Google’s tip articles and may be helpful to read.

In Google Reader, you’ll see the following menu items and areas:

• Search – At the top of the Reader is a search box. Unlike a standard Google search, this search will only look at the information you are subscribed to (you won’t be subscribed to anything at this point).
• Add a Subscription – On the left side, this button allows you to subscribe to a site’s RSS feed (we’ll do this in a moment).
• Home – Takes you back to your main Google Reader page.
• All Items -  Displays all content from all subscribed RSS feeds in the order the content was published by individual sites. This also allows you to toggle between all items and new (unread) items.
• Your Stuff: Shared Items – Allows you to see specific articles or content you’ve shared with your Google Friends (if you use Google Friends).
• Your Stuff: Notes – Allows you to see any notes you’ve added to specific articles or content (I’ll discuss this later in the article).
• Trends – Allows you to see which articles you’ve read, e-mailed, shared and so on.
• Browse for Stuff – Allows you to find available RSS feeds from sites you aren’t already aware of.
• Subscriptions – Below the left navigation is a Subscriptions area. This is where all of the sites you subscribe to RSS feeds from will be listed.  If you’re following along and haven’t jumped ahead, this area will be blank for now.
• Reader Pane – The large, main area of the page containing the Google tip articles in the above screenshot.  This is the area that all of the articles from sites you subscribe to will be listed.

Adding an RSS Subscription

Let’s add your first subscription. Note: All RSS subscriptions, regardless of source are free, so feel free to add what you like.

On the left side, click the button, Add a Subscription. In the box that pops up, enter www.nscalelimited.com and click Add.

Now, at the bottom of the left column in the Subscriptions area, you should see N Scale Limited (10). This means that you are successfully subscribed to N Scale Limited’s RSS article feed and that you have 10 unread items.  Note: Google Reader only counts items as read if you’ve read them from within the reader itself.  It will list items as new even if you’ve already read them outside of Google Reader on the actual Web site the item is from.

Adding a Subscription from a Web Site (Outside of Google Reader)

Alternatively, you may add a subscription directly on from a Web site while you’re visiting that site.  When you see the RSS icon on a Web site, click it (or the link next to it).  In most modern browser, you may also click the RSS icon in the browser itself.  Depending on the browser, it will appear either in the address bar or in the top tool bar. Clicking any of these locations will load the site’s RSS feed in your browser.

In most browsers there will be a Subscribe Now or Subscribe With list of available readers.  Since you’ve set up Google Reader, Google should be an option in the list.  Once you select Google and select Subscribe, you should be taken to Google Reader where the RSS feed will be added.

Reading Items Once You’re Subscribed

Click Home from the top of the left nav. Now that you have a subscription set up, this is the view you will see when you return and sign in to Google Reader in the future.  It gives you an overview of all of your subscribed sites and what’s new on each.  Clicking any link under your subscribed sites from the Home view will take you to the site’s individual feed so you can view its items.  This is the same as clicking the name of the site in the left side under Subscriptions. Go ahead and click the name N Scale Limited from either the Reader Pane or the Subscription list.

As you scroll down this list, Google Reader will automatically mark items as “read” once you scroll past the item.  That’s because it assumes that if you’ve scrolled past it, you’re not interested in reading it.  The item will stay in your list, but will no longer be counted in the new unread item count.

Clicking on the title of any article will bring you to the article on the original Web site. So in the example, clicking the highlighted article above, “The End of the Third Avenue El” would take you to the N Scale Limited page that displays that article.

If you prefer an even simplified view of new items in your subscriptions, on the right side you should see Show: Expanded | List.  By default, Expanded should be selected.  That’s what I’ve show you above. Clicking the List option will toggle your article listing to a condensed e-mail-like view that shows the article title, description and date published. Note: Scrolling down through items in List view will not mark them as read.  You must expand items in this view by clicking on the title to have them marked as read.

Options for Individual Articles

From this listing of an individual site’s RSS feed, under each article you can also:

• Add a Star – Allows you to highlight articles you are interested in so you can return to them later.
• Share – Allows you to share the article with your Google Friends (if you use Google Friends).
• Share with Notes – This option is a little misleading because you don’t actually need to share.  This will allow you to add your own notes to an article (and share it with Google Friends if you like).
• E-mail – Allows you to e-mail the article to someone.
• Keep Unread – Prevents the article from being marked as read.
• Add Tags – This function allows you to add your tags to an article.  For example, let’s say your are following Chris Brimley’s Hudson Life Building scratch build project.  You could add the tag “Hudson Life” (without quotes) to those articles when they show up in the feed.  Google reader will then create an entry under Subscriptions for Hudson Life and any articles you’ve tagged with that phrase will be treated like their own subscription. This is really just a handy way for you to index and file items away for future reference.

Managing Subsciptions

From within Google Reader, at the very bottom of the left column is a Manage Subscriptions link. From within the subscription management area, you may set preferences, rename feeds or unsubscribe from a feed.  I won’t go in depth into all of these functions as they are not key to subscribing to and reading items in a feed.  Most of the options in these areas are self explanatory and you should be able to make your way through this area.

More Advanced Uses for Google Reader

It’s certainly convenient and easy when a Web site provides an RSS feed of its content. But what do you do if the site doesn’t provide RSS?

There are a few different options.

Setting Up a Google Alert

The next easiest way to feed content into Google Reader is with Google Alerts.  Alerts are another free service from Google that trigger an “alert” to notify you when search terms you specify show up on the Web.

For example, even though I feed NScaleLimited.com articles into my Google Reader, I do a Google Alert for the phrase “N Scale Limited”.  By setting up an alert for this phrase, I can immediately know if someone else is discussing the site or linking to it.

For the typical model railroader, you can set up Alerts for a specific new product, manufacturer or more generic “catch-all” phrases like “N Scale” or “N Gauge”.

To set up a Google Alert:

1. Go to Google Alerts. You can always access Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts/
2. Enter the search terms you’d like to trigger your Alert.
3. In the Type dropdown list, selecting Comprehensive will search everything on the Web.  If you’d prefer, you can limit the Alert to Video, News, Blogs, etc.
4. Next set how often you’d like the Alert to trigger.  When using a Alerts with a feed reader, it will automatically change this option to As-It-Happens.
5. Specify that you would like the Alert delivered as a Feed.
6. Finally, click Create Alert.

Once your Google Alert is created, it will be in your subscription list the next time you return to Google Reader.

Tracking Items on Ebay

For those of you that use Ebay to search for specific items, you can also use RSS feeds from Ebay to make this much easier.  Like any other feed, you can have Ebay feed you your specific searches so you know as soon as the search results are updated.

To set up a custom Ebay search feed, first make sure you are NOT using Ebay’s “new search experience”.  Ebay is testing a new user interface and if you’ve previously opted into the new “experience”, RSS feeds from searches are not available (if they are and I’m missing it, please let me know.) To check if you are using the new search experience, do a search (any terms) in Ebay and scroll to the bottom of the search results. Look for a sentence at the bottom of the page that says you are using the new experience with an “Opt Out” link.  Clicking the link will return you to the standard Ebay interface.

From that point, you can set up custom search feeds:

1. Go to Ebay.
2. Conduct an Ebay search for the search terms you’d like an up-to-date feed for.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the search results and look for the orange “RSS” button. Click that button.
4. The feed for the search terms will be loaded into your browser and you may subscribe to the feed the same way I outlined above under “Adding a Subscriptions from a Web Site (Outside of Google Reader)”.

Give RSS Feeds a Try

Hopefully, this article sheds some light on today’s technology and tools that can help the average railroader find useful and personalized information — with the huge benefit of saving time for even more modeling.