Yes, my idea is that the albums would guarantee the photos remain viewable, not to separate them from the threads at all. Hopefully, once in the on-site hosted album, they could be placed in a post, the image linked to album upload and being viewable in the post, but so you would be able to have text above or below as necessary. I'm not an IT/Web Designer, so I can't guarantee this is do-able with the whatever is used to power the forum, but it may well be.
And thanks for the pointer on multiple photos. I never got that successive offer of to attach a second file, so it may be that my computer was pouting or being obstinate at the moment. I will try to adopt that feature in future posts, such as our Number Two Attempt with the Weber/PizzaKettle which will take place as soon as I send this post.