Greg Braun - Hoslotcarracing.com

[nulife]

I had often looked at this Website (hoslotracing) for HO information....really a nice site to research and learn. I ordered some track from him a couple of weeks ago using Paypal. The charge went through but I never go any notifications about the purchase and shipping. Calls and emails went unanswered. And then I was doing some googling on him and found this sorrowful news posted on facebook.

Sad news about Greg Braun. He did a lot for the hobby.
Greg Braun - Hoslotcarracing.com Update.
For those of you who have visited hoslotcarracing.com, the site run by Greg Braun, for either general info, track layouts or to order, I found out today that Greg Braun has passed away.
According to a neighbor, his body was found 2 weeks ago. He apparently took his own life it's estimated about 3 weeks before that.
He was 65
I believe he lived alone. The neighbor said he had few friends. There is a sister in Minnesota who has been down here since his death to take care of immediate concerns.
There is no obituary. I'm not sure if there was a funeral. The neighbor said he was a very private person.
There is another neighbor who took care of lawn care for Greg. I'm going to try to connect with this person to see if I can get more details.
When I went to the house today, there were 2 cars in the driveway and both had plates that expired in 2018. I'm guessing he didn't go out much.
I never met Greg. I just knew him as a great resource in the hobby.
He will be sorely missed.
Please feel free to share this to other FB pages to spread the word.


May his soul rest in peace.

[chrisguyw]

I am sorry to hear this........I met Greg a couple of times many years ago, and have not had any personal contact since.....while I was not significantly involved in HO, I always loved looking at his work.

RIP Greg !!

Cheers
Chris Walker

[Just_Steve]

Sad news - it's been many, many years since I last spoke to Gregg. Greg was very helpful and his website was a wealth of information.

RIP

[Aloha]

Very sad to hear - he was a great resource for the hobby. May we all take a moment to reflect and be thankful for what we have.
RIP

[chappyman66]

Very sad indeed.
He was a nice guy and a great resource.

RIP.

[bdsharp]

Very sad news. His site was one of the best for organization and presentation, with lots of good info for track-building.

[noddaz]

That is very sad news. I never met him but his website has been a resource for years.

That being said, is there anyway to save the information from Gregg's website?

[RichD]

I am working on saving the information on the site, it will be a big job however. I can highlight a part of a page and copy and paste it into a Word document. Once I have captured everything I can convert the Word document into a PDF and put that on Google Drive so anyone with a link can see it and save their own copy.

[noddaz]

Great! Thank you! It is a shame you just can't save it as multiple web pages including the pictures.

Hey Rich, I just found a program called Cyotek Web copy. It's free, what can go wrong? lol

[PetesLightKits]

A better(?) way might be to right click on an open space on any given web page and select "Save as" a web page, which will download everything associated with that web page. Of course, you will have to click through to other pages and repeat the "Save as" in order to "rebuild" the website on your computer. This is kind of slightly, maybe, nefarious, but I am sure in this case it is ok. I am at work at the moment so really can't test this, but if I have some time over the weekend I will see how it goes.

UPDATE:
Well that didn't work too well because the site uses frames. There are freeware software programs available that can download a complete website "automagically".

[RichD]

The document that I am working on will include pictures and since it will be spread over many pages there will be hyperlinks to make it easier to navigate from one section to the next. There is a practical limit to how much I can copy at one time, it takes a long time if I select too much. I could also do screen grabs of the pages, I use a program called SnagIt to do that. The selections are saved as picture files that can assembled into a document and then saved as a PDF. I have found that when I do that the picture quality suffers. If I save as a web page I may not be able to edit what I get, I may give that method a shot however.
There are lots of programs out there that I might use to simplify this task, but those all include the risk of also including some sort of malware. There are sites with links to apps that are supposed to have been checked for malware, don't bet your life on that.

[Bfuqua91]

So I know this may not exactly be the most appropriate time or place to ask this, but does anyone know how to get into touch with someone that can access his website and/or order history?

I made a rather large purchase from his website(about $350), and now hearing this news, it seems I probably won't be receiving that item.

If anyone could provide me with a way contact someone that could arrange to either ship the order, or refund the purchase, I'd greatly appreciate it.

EDIT: for those looking to preserve his website, you shouldn't need to do anything. The website in its entirety should be preserved on the internet way back machine.

[RichD]

It is my understanding that Greg Braun had a sister. She may not be aware that there may have been orders that were never filled. It is likely that some people are unaware of Greg's passing and are still trying to place orders. Thus far I have done a little looking to see if I could turn up an obituary or death notice, there was nothing in the local paper or on a funeral home website. Contacting the Brookfield WI police might yield some information.
If you charged your order you could contact your bank and get the charge removed.
I have completed the PDF version of the HO Slot Car Racing site. Not all of the material from the site has been included in the PDF version. Part of the site is actually a catalog that I chose to omit. There are hyperlinks to the various sections and ones at the end of the individual sections to navigate back to the home page. Hyperlinks included in the text itself may no longer work. Because of the way the original site was formatted it was difficult to get everything to line up, but at least everything is readable. I did do some minor editing to correct some grammar or spacing issues, but I resisted the temptation to make substantial changes.
Since the material included in the document is subject to copyright I have decided not to make it available on the Internet at this time.

[wrangler#3]

Geez, wow, sad. Great job preserving his work. I have scoured that site for weeks recently, even was looking into making some additions to my setup. He made great resources available and certainly knew his stuff.

[nulife]

Great job Rich D of preserving the pages from Greg's site. I started this post....and wanted to report that Paypal today did refund my payment to hoslotracing.com for track I had ordered from his site but never received. I had included in my correspondence with Paypal the notice that I had discovered on Facebook. Stay well everyone!

[MikeB]

I found out this sad news today and I had already started to fear something had happened.,I had a small order thru PayPal which I’m not worried about as they will sort it out. When I saw the site down I googled some more and found this forum. He seemed like a really nice guy. His site was awesome and he also was a computer scientist based on his other site. Of course I didn’t know him but I have been looking at the site for several years. With all of this uncertainty now this is another tragic story . I also lost another friend in my car hobby circle today. May they rest in piece.

[RichD]

The original site has been suspended, but an archived version is available via the WaybackMachine site. https://web.archive.org/web/20190110...carracing.com/