While few people have noticed (or cared) that steamlocomotive.info had no listings of Russian steam locomotives in its database, nonetheless, we're in the process of rectifying that. Pages to display Russian locomotives have been added to the site:

http://www.steamlocomotive.info/eurorussia.cfm
http://www.steamlocomotive.info/asiaticrussia.cfm

Three locomotives have been manually entered to insure that the various code elements actually work. Now I'm in the middle of coding a little utility to assist me in translating the information for about 1400 locomotives in Russia into our database format.

Starting tonight, more and more Russian locomotives should appear.

Regards,
Doug

Well....after a couple of hiccups, I finished my little utility and entered 30 locomotives. After a tiny programming error that made Russia a province of China, a quick SQL query fixed my silliness, and a one line edit fixed the program. I've got about 1045 more locomotives to enter. Will work on that tomorrow.

After this is finished I have other surprises for the visitors to steamlocomotive.info

0-6-0T 9P-19489 is at a depot in St. Petersburg. It is in operating condition and is used as the shed pilot

TH

interesting site, but we have to trawl through every Russian province to find the 30 locomotives ? Can you not add a entry counter next to the province or something ?

mike pannell

Excellent idea. Or you could click on search, choose Russia for the country and it'll show you all 30 without the provinces. But yes, I will implement your idea, as well. I have about another 1050 to enter.

Hi Doug,

I had noticed, figured you would do it someday... and now that day has come. your work on the site is much appreciated!

Rob

I haven't used the site for a while now, but in the past I have found it incredably usefull in checking out where locomotives have ended up or even what is still out there. A most wonderful sight. Even if a few things or whereabouts are out of date it makes it easier to locate. Can spend a lot of time on this sight and loose track of where the time goes too! Many thanks, John.

You're most welcome. I've got about 220 of the Russian locomotives entered, and hope to finish up this task before Friday. I have some fun, and I hope interesting new features in development. I'll brag about 'em when I'm sure that they work.

My Brother lives in Russia Nth of St Petersburg, but travels the length and breadth of the country, will get him to look out for more finds.

Mike Pannell
Cheyenne

Well slogged through the data entry for about 500 locomotives so far. Half way there. Hope to finish today. There are some problems with the data I'm working from including locomotives that are in the wrong country, place names that don't exist, etc. The data entry process is semi automated. All I have to do is manually enter the Status, Location, City and Region.

The tool I built to do this doesn't allow for stuff like the above, so I have to enter it incorrectly and go back with the SQL Manager and manually edit the database. I'm dumping all the erroneous data in a province called Adygeya so I can easily find it when I go back to manually edit the database. So if you look in Adygeya, virtually anything in there is wrong.

Sorry about that,
Doug

Good work. FYI I did a search to see if I had missed anything that was under restoration, and noticed NKP 765 still listed as under restoration.

I'll fix that tonight. Sorry 'bout that. Up to 764 Russian locomotives now in the database. The list we were provided (which is about 13 years old) had 1077 in it. Hope to finish the data entry tomorrow evening so I can start cleaning up that part of the database.

One last comment: 1087 locomotives entered for Russia. Some of these are bogus, some duplicates and some in the wrong country, but hey, you work with what you get, I guess. Will now start cleaning up the entries.

Regards,
Doug