The database which lies behind this site derives from a number of sources. It began from a locomotive list maintained by a man named Tim Bosshardt in the late 1980's and early 1990's and was added to based upon a list published by the Tourist Railroad Assocation. Additional input came from thousands of miles of travel by Dale Brown and Doug Bailey, and from other sources too numerous to record or remember. Ownership histories, where we have them at all, came mostly from a text file "ownership guide" submitted by Mark Halford.

As we've said elsewhere, the site is under development. There are decisions we haven't made yet. For example: Wes Barris lists "sunken" locomotives, i.e. locomotives that have departed the rails and are underwater somewhere. We aren't quite sure that we want to do that, and would welcome your comments or suggestions. Another issue we don't have resolved is that of park locomotives, such as Crown Metal Products locomotives. We're inclined to include them but have not yet begun to do so. They are, after all, steam locomotives. We do list locomotives as small as 15" gauge (the Anacortes, WA locomotive).

The green "light" next to the word Notes in the image above indicates that the system holds one or more notes pertaining to the locomotive, in this case Soo Line 1011 in Ladysmith, WI. Clicking on the thumbnail image of the locomotive will get you a locomotive display, like this:

The Notes button at the bottom of the locomotive display will allow you to read any notes posted for the locomotive displayed, as well as add a note of your own if you wish.

This website is an intensely visual creation. First and foremost we need photos of the locomotives we list. There are a number of ways you can contribute photos to our database. To begin with, when you see a panel that says "Click here to Contribute Photo" when viewing a locomotive's display page, you can click on that panel and you'll be prompted to upload a digital photo of the locomotive in question. Fill in the blanks and click submit. The picture won't appear instantly. Instead, an e-mail will be sent to our administrators notifying them of your submission and they'll check the photo, and load it into the system. Please submit JPEG images only, and at least 640 pixels wide.

But what if we already have a photo of a locomotive, and you have a better one you'd like to see displayed? You can e-mail contributions to: contributors@steamlocomotive.info as an attachment. Be sure to mention what locomotive the photo is of, and let us have your name (or the name of the photographer) so we can give proper credit.

When browsing or searching you've probably already seen a display that looks like the image below:

You can contribute photos for an existing Photo Album, or to create a new one for a locomotive that doesn't have them. E-mail your photos along with photographer and caption information to: albums@steamlocomotive.info

As this is being written, we have video clips for at total of 52 locomotives, and plan to add clips for as many more locomotives as possible. We prefer to do our own digitization, and can accept video on standard 8mm, VHS, VHS-C or Mini-DV format. If you have a video you'd like us to consider, e-mail us at videos@steamlocomotive.info and describe the video. We'll be happy to pay the shipping in both directions.