1chan is an English bulletin board website that was opened by “thatdog” on November 20, 2003. It's mostly known for its focus on railways and trains, and housing the Futabally imageboard script which was later forked into 4chan's Yotsuba script.¹⁾ Outside of that, it's not that important.

On November 20, 2003, “thatdog” launched 1chan with a total of four boards: “japan” (/j/),²⁾ “monorail” (/c/), “usa” (/u/),³⁾ and “crash” (/c/).⁴⁾ 1chan used the Futabally script and it was later made public on December 22, 2003. Around July 2004, after 4chan's fourth shutdown, 1chan was closed and the Futabally script would no longer be in development.

There would be an announcement that 1chan would return in Spring 2005,⁵⁾ then it came back on June 27, 2005 with a /rail/ board and a feedback board that used Wakaba and Kareha respectively.⁶⁾ As a result, 1chan was now apart of the Wakachan coalition. There were plans for 1chan to house more boards, though it seems like the plans ended up being abandoned in favor of a single /rail/ board.

After several years online, 1chan disabled posting on May 4, 2016.⁷⁾ Behind the scenes, “thatdog” was tired of running 1chan and planned to sell it, but there was a bid war between “Tex”, “Mike”, and “Ham549”.⁸⁾ A refuge was opened on the infamously unstable “8chan.pl” website, but the news about the closure and refuge didn't come out until July 1, 2016 and July 4, 2016 respectively.⁹⁾

On July 23, 2016, 1chan linked to “Railchan”, meaning “Tex” and “Mike” won the bid,¹⁰⁾ and the new website later took over the original “1chan.net” domain on October 2, 2016.¹¹⁾ They replaced Wakaba with Vichan, but ran into issues around July 2019 and temporarily used Lainchan,¹²⁾ then switched to TinyIB on August 27, 2019 and reset the post count once more, giving up on plans to import old threads over.¹³⁾

• In archived pages of 1chan's boards from 2003, you may notice that the board footer shows Yotsuba instead of Futabally. The reason should obvious be considering 1chan's involvement with 4chan.
• 1chan's /rail/ board under Wakaba had reached 133,089 posts over the course of 11 years or so. This was reset twice when they switched over to Vichan and TinyIB.
• Their current administrators appear to be “Mike !SHO3I1wLbc” and “Tex !S0C7KLz8n.”.

• 1chan - The front page of 1chan.