Cyber Spotting
As it says elsewhere on this site I have been a cyber spotter for many years and have got a picture of every TOPS numbered locomotive. Recently I decided to expand my search and attempt the impossible and find a picture of every locomotive that ran under the ownership of British Railways and the preceding Big 4 Grouping Companies. So everything since 1923. Also if I come across pictures from before I will also take those.
I have built a comprehensive database from various sources and if I discover pictures of locomotives not in the database I do some research and add the details.
Using my 54 years of computing experience all is safely stored on my computer, with back-ups in the Cloud
When I get around to it I will add some figures and progress reports here. it is very early days for this incarnation of my website. If anyone wants to join in and share images or information then get in touch
So these are the "rules" I set myself. I am searching for numbers of locomotives. Locomotives are often renumbered so I am searching for pictures of all the numbers. Getting one number does not mean I do not need to search for pictures of the same loco with its other numbers.
The picture must show the number clearly enough to be recognisable. If some part of the number is obscured then the visible part of the number must uniquely identify the loco. Not all the loco needs to be visible on the picture, just the number. Any picture which appears on the screen can be captured and stored in my database. Any physical picture, photo, magazine etc can be scanned as digital image and stored. I also purchase digital images or prints from commercial sources
Wherever possible I record the origin of each picture and appropriate copyright information. If a picture I have captured, rather than bought from a copyrighted source I am willing to share either the picture or a link to the web page
Being brought up in Yorkshire - Southern Region was the lowest on my list, purely because of distance. However a contact from my picture selling business provided a wide range of SR pictures and as a result the BR/SR section of my database is the most complete. Of all the locomotives which carried the 3xxxx series of numbers I only need 31 pictures:
30174 30276 30311 30402 30418 30430 30447 31151 31176 31179 31291 31378 31383 31490 31511 31532 31541 31580 31599
31667 31674 32085 32154 32400 32453 32462 32465 32485 32575 32589 32592
LMS had the largest number of locos so I still need over 1000 of the ones that made it into British Railways. So here are just a few highlights from my wants list:
Crabs: 42735 42802 42850 42899
I have a picture of all the Standard locomotives 7xxxx, 8xxxx, 92xxx AND NOW I have all the WD's in their 9xxxx guises
BIG RESULT !!!!!