It is time for us as an industry to come together and find a host for an online repository of information to perpetuate the knowledge of operating and maintaining historic locomotives and rail equipment. Matt Austin was kind enough to post a link to the Flannery volume on staybolts in the ASME post. Keep the ball rolling. How is the younger generation of restorationists to find this valuable information in the future? Ebay and other online auctions have raised the price of rare information above what is affordable to the person who is already donating his time to his passionate restoration. If the information were made readily available instead of hidden on someone's bookshelf perhaps a better decision could be made at a critical juncture of a future restoration project that would prevent a future accident or injury and/or costly legislation from being created. Remember the old heads who lived this information are no longer able to be questioned. Would TRAIN or ARM be willing to host this information for a nominal subscription fee, would you as an individual be willing to add to the documentation. I would be willing to invest some time and money towards achieving the goal of an online repository of locomotive and rail equipment information how about you???

Mike Tillger

I would be happy to supply server space, bandwidth, backups and UPS for such a venture.

I think that is a subject several people have on their mind.

During the Engineering Standards Committee Mtg this past Nov., there was much discussion. I got to the point of raising my hand and volunteering to spearhead a small committee to look into a repository of scanned information. I committed to provide a report to the committee at the April 2010 ESC mtg. Our little group had a quick 5 minute meeting to discuss and my notes are enclosed below.

I have been lack in working on this project and need to get moving.

So if someone was any more ideas or suggestions, I am open to listening.

In my notes below, I mention Google books. Here are a couple links to information about this program.
http://books.google.com/intl/en/googleb ... brary.html
http://books.google.com/support/bin/ans ... swer=43752
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html

I am partial to the books.google option. First, there is no one server, I believe. It is fully public domain. Second, and more importantly, books.google has negotiated copyright permissions for items still in copyright

Dale


Notes:
How to disseminate? Googlebooks? ESC website? Partner Library such as Barranger Library? Kalmbach? NMRA? Other means?

Copyright Issues?

How to scan? outside or inside organization? Costs?

What to scan Publisher
Railway & Mechanical Engineering Simmons Boardman
Boilermaker magazine
Railway Club; Western, etc.
Stokers, Lubricator, etc. manuals

ICS

Standard Practices – already done.

OK, what we need now is an archivist / webmaster. A retired librarian who speaks railroad and knows the hard to master language would be ideal.

It would be very fine to have a sponsoring organization whose credibility as an industry center or leader would lend the credibility necessary to encourage existing technical libraries and private collectors to make their documents available - or active links available - to researchers. Having the server stuff free makes it a very low budget consideration for a sponsor. I'd personally love to see TRAIN or ARM run with this ball,but I'm not on the BOD of either of them, or even a member any more.

I wonder if it would be useful to have anybody experienced in the ins and outs of copywright law to consult about any questionable documents?

I'll gladly step up and offer access to any of my documentary collection for scanning and inclusion if it would be useful to anybody and we can pull this together.

dave

I'll bet Kurt Bell would jump at the chance if somebody can raise enough money to pay him. That's the kind of guy you need for this, and it should be a joint project of TRAIN and ARM and maybe others.

Just one instance alone - locomotive operations and maintenance manuals - benefits everyone. I stumbled on a GE 25-tonner set and that's been pretty well circulated, but that's the kind of stuff I think should be out there.

In a perfect world you also archive video of the living masters documenting how they do stuff; everything from properly blowing down a water glass to doing wheel measurements.

Unfortunately I can see where this would be an absolute bonanza for the "pirated information" sellers working eBay who would have everything repackaged on their own CD's with their own copyright notices within hours after you made it available, just like the ones who are now selling Jack Delano prints on eBay to unsuspecting buyers who do not realize you can download enormous electronic files of the same images for free from the National Archives.

PC

Railroad Passenger Car Alliance has started a online Resource Library for items pertaining to passenger equipment. www.rpca.com

I bet you're right, but I don't think that'd make it not worth doing.

The goal is to make it available to people who will need it. Hopefully they'll find it before they find the ebayers, but if the goal is to make the info available, I don't think this is that much of a stumbling block.

I wish I could have the time to put into supporting this, but if anyone has questions about various web publishing platforms, I'd be glad to do some free consulting, since that's what I do by trade.

People in the equipment building industry have been providing this support for many decades to the respected organizations in the preservation community quietly and out of public view. Many retirees and former employees help with information from their personal collections. Taking what they provide and posting it on a public website will shut down much of that support overnight.

PC

three words, Railway Preservation Wiki

I try my best to share all that I have learned working on CNR 6167 and CNR 6213 through my website. http://www.trainweb.org/j.dimech/

I think I still own railwaypreservation.org. I will turn it in to a wiki if anyone is interested and let y'all play with it.

Yes please. Except instead, 2 wiki's, one dealing with technology and preservation, one with history. We all know so much about so many obscure things, lets create a way for us all to easily and interactively share this information.

if such a site were set up, I have a few of manuals and bulletins for steam locomotive appliances I could scan.

There is a lot of on google books already:

http://books.google.com/books

type in: railway locomotive engineering

have lots of time to spend reading really cool old books