Bill,
you have three different problems going on.
1. You cant just link directly to someone else's photo.
that is called "hotlinking" and its illegal and immoral.
(I know you didnt know that..many people dont)
hotlinking to some websites can cost the site owner real money, because suddenly the amount of traffic on his site will increase, and his ISP might charge him more..or his site might be cancelled if it exceeds its bandwidth limit. hotlinking is a real problem..
2. That geocities page has been temporalily taken down, for exceeding its bandwitdh, probably because you tried to hotlink to it.
Geocities sucks as a webpage host, exceeding bandwidth will happen if more than two people a day try to look at a geocities site!

It will come back up in a few hours, no permamant damage done, (and that sites owner doesnt pay anything anyway, since geocities sites are free)
3. even if you wanted to, you cant hotlink to an image on a geocities page anyway, because they (geocities) dont allow it.so even if the site wasnt down, you would STILL get the Red-X.
what you have to do is find a logo you like, resize it to 65 X 65 pixels, then upload it to YOUR own webspace..either webspace provided by your ISP,
or you can create an account on
www.photobucket.com and then upload the image there...photobucket is one of the very few free hosting sites that allow hotlinking into forums.
yes, technically one could argue that copying the logo and uploading to your space is ALSO immoral..and it could be... but for the most part, railroad logos on-line are public domain and available for anyone to use..
I have created a few logos from scratch, and I dont mind if people "take" them for use elsewhere, (as long as they dont hotlink directly to my actual logos!)...since I didnt invent the logo in the first place I cant really claim its "mine"....
(the exception would be a logo for someone's freelance railroad..)
and in the case of my LV diamond, I would prefer no one uses it on *this* forum, only because its part of my profile identity..even though I personally didnt invent the LV diamond logo..
Its always best to ask if you can copy and use a logo, try to find a email contact for the webmaster of the page you find the logo on.
99 times out of 100 THAT person copied the logo from somewhere else anyway!

and they wont mind if you take it. but finding the ACTUAL owner of a logo is next to impossible anyway...when it comes to historic railroad logos, most of them (except for existing railroads) are in the public domain and can be used by anyone...
If that geocities page comes back on-line soon I will grab the logo and resize it for you, then you can create a photobucket account and upload there..THEN your new avatar will work!

Scot