Creating a worldwide locomotive database - loco-info.com

I am Kay Friebertshäuser, the creator, programmer and sole editor of the website www.loco-info.com.

What is loco-info.com and why did I start this project?

When I started to get more and more interested in locomotives which were not from my home country, I found out that there was a huge number of different sources to look at.

Of course, books only include locomotives of one country, of one type, from one period of time or just a selection of some locomotives. Most websites also contain only one of these areas. One fine example is lner.info, where you can find in-depth information about locomotives of the London & North Eastern Railway.

Another excellent and extensive website is steamlocomotive.com that contains an enormous number of locomotives from all over the world, but without images and often with only a short descriptive text.

Then there is a number of magazines. But it's impossible to collect all of them in physical form and furthermore it's very hard to search for a certain locomotive.

And then there is of course Wikipedia. But there are lots of locomotives which can't be found in the English Wikipedia. Some can only be found in the language of the country where they were used. Furthermore, many Wikipedia articles are either too short or too long with much information which are not of interest for someone who just wants to know the most important things about a locomotive.

Then I found another problem when I wanted to compare the technical data of two locomotives:

When these could be found in different sources, it could be hard to bring these face to face. Additionally, the specs of one locomotive could be given in metric units, while the others are given in imperial units so I'd have to convert the units of one.

So there was the idea to create some kind of "database" that holds all locomotives in a common format and that can be put onto the internet for everyone to use. Since there was no ready-to-use toolbox that allows to search and compare and that can convert different units, I used my knowledge as a web developer to program my own website.

Next I spent countless days working through magazines like "Locomotive Magazine", "Die Lokomotive" and "Railway and Locomotive Engineering" while taking notes of the locomotive classes shown on each page. Same with books from O.S. Nock, Ron Ziel etc. or class lists on Wikipedia.

The next (and biggest) task was to write texts, search photos and collect technical data. When writing the texts I don't do research myself, but only collect information from other sources and write them down in my own words.

Virtually all photos have been taken from others or are official builder's photos. Of course I always try to give credit to the photographer or owner. Special thanks go to Taylor Rush who allowed me to use his extensive collection of photos of mostly American locomotives. If someone finds his own photo and doesn't want it to be shown on my website, just write me a message.

After years with thousands of hours of work I decided to start a campaign for people who want to support me. This may help me to pay for the running costs of the website, to buy books - or simply gives you the opportunity to appreciate my hard work.