Should be a simple puzzle train for you veterans.... [SOLUTION ADDED IN MAIN POST - ENDED]

SOLUTION!

It was amazing how many people hated this first puzzle of mine. If you peek through the comments, you'll seem a chain of deleted comments. Their frustration must have been great. In any case... On to telling you how to deal with my puzzles.

Start Date: August 12th, 11:59pm PST
End Date: August 18th, 11:59pm PST
Was this too long?

1. Discussion Post

I told you to find the door.
The door was a hidden link http://w ww.steamgifts.co m/giveaway/MJKUSVK2/ and most people found this part, but then were frustrated when it didn't lead to an ITH puzzle. The puzzle was in the car, not somewhere else.
Careful reading of the story (which is all true but for one part) should have had two parts stand out which I hinted at.

I'm was very careful with capitalization: "I have no regular Base pay"

My second hint was that it had actually been longer than 32 days since I'd quit smoking. This number was further highlighted in that I never used digits anywhere else in the paragraph though numbers were used a lot toward the end. I wanted this number to stand out: "On another note, I also quit vaping about 32 days ago"

The link was hidden directly between these two paragraphs, which you could find by looking at the source code of the page. Base32 is a type of encryption. People hinted to other people to use zelgh's guide... This type of encryption is listed in the first section. If you put MJKUSVK2 into a Base32 decrypter, out popped: bUIUZ

Five characters to lead you into the 1st Car.

2. The Luggage Car

The luggage car had a jammed door. This was probably the easiest of the puzzles. I figured once you found your way in, you deserved to get some GAs fairly easily. This car just had a hidden link. If you looked at the source code, you could easily find the link: http://w ww.steamgifts.c om/giveaway/meB2H/motorama

This led you to the chain of five linked cars that stumped most people who entered the puzzle train.

3. The 5 Linked Cars

This was a particularly difficult set of cars that required you to look at the whole set of cars, not just the last car in the set. Most people upon reaching the fifth car in the set, wanted to know what Audrey Hepburn was telling them with that little straw arrow flick.

She wanted you to look at source code again. And if you looked at the source code on her page, you'd see Alt text for "5".
If you backtracked the train (which I made easy by adding in Previous Car links) you'd be able to look at the others which starting from the beginning showed 1, 2, 3, 4 consecutively. This still caused some people consternation and when I finally added the 3rd and final hint, five beginnings (google translate sucks? gave you early) make key. As I said the door was locked you needed the key to the 7th car.

This was achieved by taking the five beginnings of the gif names, and stringing them together. pDsrT
This led you to the Clock Car.

4. The Clock Car

This car had a very simple solution that required you be familiar with ciphers. Seeing as I encouraged people telling other people about zelgh's guide... There must have been a reason for this.

The first thing that was different about this car, was I put the url in plain sight (I figured you'd found enough things, and were going to have to look anyways, so why not just leave it in the open this time.) It just didn't lead anywhere. It was encrypted.

I used a simple Caesarian Shift cipher, but the one difference was that I made it a -3 cipher instead of a positive cipher?
If you read carefully, I gave you multiple hints. "rotated maintenance shifts 3 days ago"

I included a picture of a backwards clock. The backwards clock had alt text (if you viewed the source code) of -3.

And finally, the game up for grabs was Reversi

If you managed to apply the ROT(-3) cipher (AND apply it to the numbers) you obtained 6sy5E

This led you to the Scary Attack Dogs car.

5. Scary Attack Dogs Car

As I'd said in the beginning, everything you needed to find was in the train, and this was no exception (Well, I guess a Base32 decoder wasn't in the train, but merf.)

Again you came to a place where the door was locked again. One of the first hints was "Get those tumbler's in the right place,"
Tumbler's refer to the inner workings of a lock. Typical tumblers have many states from fully UP to all the way down. But seeing as my lock is a URL, they can only have two states, up or down.

If you made it this far, you knew I was hiding things using images, not in them, but using the actual images themselves.
The Alt text on this image was: l U U l U

You then needed to find some 5 character reference to apply that code to.
If you looked at the page, the only thing left, was the image name: KKDCt

If you tried that by itself, it led you... actually I have no idea if it led you anywhere, I never checked (Oops!)
But essentially these tumblers were not in the right place.

The cipher was in the alt text l U U l U
l = lowercase
U = Uppercase

If applied the *tumblers in the lock you received: kKDcT

This led to the final car: The Engine Room.

Not everyone who made it here entered. But those who did make it here without the 3rd hint, left a note (which admittedly I didn't ask for till the 2nd day) were added to my whitelist.

Thanks for playing and I hope everyone tries whatever my next one is, especially as now you have some insight into how at least part of my mind works.

-Keo
P.S. Was it too hard?

So here is my first puzzle train for SG. Unfortunately, it's all bundle games, because I didn't discover SG till summer time and I'm a substitute teacher...

I have no regular Base pay. Just the little I saved, so I've been going on bundle binges and well, that's caused a ton of issues... My library has expanded greatly and my wallet hates me... but...

On another note, I also quit vaping about 32 days ago ... I'd started to quit smoking, and with that succeeded, I just needed to quit vaping... and that happened so this is partially my celebration for that as well. Plus I saved money from quitting vaping and so that sort of balances out with the bundles, yes?

And my birthday is coming up... so there are many reasons obviously to have this train. Oh, and I figured I should make an easy one to begin with anyways... before I do something else.

Anyways, now that I've created a fairly simple puzzle train for you all, i can go back to working on the rest of the puzzles you've all created.

Your ticket has been handed to you, you just have to find the door. Train reaches its destination August eighteenth at eleven fifty nine pm pacific standard time. The entire train is level one... Once I start working regularly again, I'll actually have the ability to not just do bundle GAs.

View attached image.