Let us begin with a simple premise: I would like steamlocomotive.info to survive well beyond me. I am 74 years old, and have some chronic medical issues. My doctors say there's no reason I cannot drag this out for another ten years, but you never really know. So...

1. The first thing you should know is that my financial circumstances changed dramatically for the better just recently. I set up a fund that will automatically pay steamlocomotive.info's hosting bills for at least another ten years, possibly more.

2. The site's database is now backed up nightly to the cloud, as well as to local storage at the hosting company. The site's imagery directories are also backed up to the cloud nightly. Any time there is a change to the source code that comprises the website, it also automatically triggers a backup to cloud storage.

3. Currently there are two active editors who have nearly complete control over the site's content via its admin interface. Code has been created, and will be deployed this week that will allow the editors to create additional editors to insure that the site can be adequately maintained if one or more of us shuffle off this mortal coil.

4. A survey of the administrative interface was conducted to determine what tasks necessary to the operation of the site couldn't be performed without direct access to the site's database. There are nine, and code to automate these functions is being written.

5. I'm about 80 pages into an Administrator's Guide to the website, intended to assure that any future editor understands how to maintain the site. That's about 2/3 of the way complete.

6. I've written a data dictionary for the database, explaining what each field and each table is, why they're there and how they interact.

7. The site is comprised of about 70,000 lines of Coldfusion code, and about 5,000 lines of Javascript. I've gone through the source code and extensively commented it, so that a future maintainer/developer has some hope of understanding what was going on in my failing brain when I wrote this crap.

8. I'm preparing to hand over the access codes to the webhosting company's admin panel to a custodian to be named later.

So... I'm pretty sure the site will survive a good while. There are other things I'm considering, but that will depend on a lot of factors.

Whoa, that's a lotta cold fusion!

I didn't realize hosting was still available for it.

Good on you keeping that all alive.

People take for granted the effort that maintaining something like that takes. Web technology is ever changing, and while some wags may say "just make it all flat html" that's never really a good answer.

One thing I would highly recommend, in addition to the backup plans I'm sure you've got in place, is to evaluate what it would take to modernize the CF aspect of it into something a bit more modern and "future proof" (but I'll be honest, the phrase should be "future friendly").

Ed, you raise some interesting, and relevant points. I've considered rewriting the site into php, or possibly python. Neither choice is particularly attractive (to me). My best guess is it would take 1800 to 2200 man hours to do the job. And I am pretty sure that I'm not motivated enough to tackle that task.

I should add that steamlocomotive.info runs on an open-source version of Coldfusion called Lucee. It is well supported and I've had only one issue with it, which they rapidly fixed. One of the things I've thought about doing was spinning up a virtual Linux box with some hosting company or another, installing Lucee and moving the site there. That would, of course, entail moving the database from Microsoft SQL Server to some other database.

I've written and tested a utility that can recreate the database in MySQL on Linux, and populate it from a CSV file generated at my current hosting company.

Doing the above is probably the most I'm going to do as far as "future proofing" the site. Not because I don't care, but because I'm tired and lazy, I think.

My grandson (aged 15) loves the site, and is learning its guts. He's a great kid.

I'm glad people enjoy the site. There's a lot I want to add to it. And I probably will.

Also, if you're reading this, and you're one of the thousands who have contributed information, photos or map coordinates, thank you from the bottom of my heart. The site makes me happy.

Oh cool, I didn't realize there was a FOSS version of CF. That's great!

Here's something to keep an eye on: Chat-GPT can do pretty good code conversions. I've seen it do some .NET to React stuff that's perfectly servicable.

Take a look: https://dna.today/2022/12/18/chatgpt-ai ... thon-code/

I'm sure it won't be turnkey, and I'm not sure if it even plays with Coldfusion, but it might be worth keeping an eye on.

This all makes me amused at the fact there will likely be future "historical preservation" efforts aimed at programming languages in the future.

Since 'cost is less of an object' -- consider forking the site, maintaining the ColdFusion version as currently anticipated, porting the content over to a Linux environment, and then making any changes to the two versions in parallel.

To the extent that the ColdFusion legacy code continues to operate in a VM, there shouldn't be major 'futureproofing' issues.

The Linux-friendly version doesn't have to have the same 'looik and feel' of the existing site, just the same basic functionality and fitness to purpose.

The future is here. I know programmers who make it their specialty.

Doug, Thanks for all of your hard work on the website and database. It's an amazing resource.

You're very welcome, Tom. Thank you for all your contributions to the site. They're greatly appreciated. I am having more fun working on the site, now that I don't have to worry about how to pay for it. Life is good. And I got a new set of batteries for my wheelchair, so now I'm faster! Woohoo!

I see a number of CNR engines that don't show up in the database.

If anyone wants to figure out what's missing, they can compare the database against my roster:

http://trainweb.org/j.dimech/roster/steam.html

I believe you would be able to make the changes yourself, and they would be welcomed, although with such a large number you may wish to contact steaminfo/ Doug first.