Here is a brief history of Locopage and my interest in railways.
I have been interested in railways since a young age (I was born in
1975).
When the Mornington line was still open (it closed in 1981), I can
remember
traveling along it in a railmotor.
Our family was involved with the Mornington
Railway Preservation Society from the mid-1980's to early-1990's.
Trains are a family interest; my brother is interested in railmotors
and rollingstock; while my father has been involved with Puffing Billy,
Walhalla Goldfields Railway, and the Daylesford Spa Country Railway.
In September 1988, I got an
interest in diesel and electric
locomotives, and decided to start 'locospotting'. I cannot recall where
the idea for this
came from.
I made a 'Locolist' covering Victorian diesel and electric locomotives;
this
later expanded to interstate government operators, and eventually,
private
operators.
The first loco seen was N474, while on a short holiday at
Warrnambool on 20 September 1988.
If you want to see the list of locomotives that I have seen over the
years,
then please follow this link.
The printout from the database - the latest edition of my 'Locolist' is now a 'book' nearly 300 pages long.
1994 saw me off to RMIT University studying for a cartography degree. While here, I got access to the Internet, and found the aus.rail newsgroup was a useful source of information.
In May 1997, a request was posted on aus.rail for information on
Victorian locomotives. A reply suggested the book 'Power Parade'.
This got me thinking: I had recently done some web design work as part
of
my course at uni, and I had diesel and electric locomotive information
at
home in 'Locolist'. Perhaps I could create a web site on diesel and
electric
locomotives? So, I got in touch with David Bromage, the webmaster of Railpage, and asked about the
idea
of having a "locomotive page" on Railpage. He agreed, and so Locopage
was
born.
In early June 1997, the first HTML files for Locopage went online. They contained just brief tech specs, details of named and preserved locos, and links to photos. During July, the first stage of Locopage was completed. It should be pointed out that at the same time I was doing this, I also had mid-year exams, and then was working on my research project. I had initially included TasRail locos on Locopage, but after discussion with Stuart Dix, removed these, as they were already covered on the RailTas website.
By late September 1997, I had produced a template of the current design for the individual pages for locomotive classes. The only feature that would be added in the future were the entry-into-service, withdrawal, and scrapping dates, following a suggestion in the feedback.
As soon as I finished final exams in November 1997, I started work on the upgrade. Each class would now have an individual page, based on the template, while the pages for the operators were reduced to become descriptions of the operators with an index of the classes. The upgrade was completed in January 1998. Since then, it has been a constant matter of updating the pages, and adding new pages as required.
In March 1999, I finally got connected to the Internet at home, making things much easier for reading and sending emails, and FTPing updates to Locopage.
Keeping track (no pun intended!) of the locomotive fleets is a never-ending business, especially with the increasing amount of loco sales between operators. Every quarter, I go through my printout 'book', and do a 'major' update of Locopage, as well as the database. Minor updates are made more often as required.
In May 2003, I finally started a permanent job (after previous contract jobs). This meant a long-term look at my hobbies, and so it was time to 'ease back the throttle' a bit on Locopage. This is because the job (as a draftsman at an urban design company) has me with a solid workload in the office on a computer, and therefore I don't want to use one so much in my spare time.From 2007 - with work continually busy; I redeuced things back to
just updating the database and the 'Fleetlist' and preserved locos (and
one or two other) pages; unless I have the time to do more.
In late 2008, I had a think about what to do for the future, and
decided that the way to go - to keep things manageable - was to work on
just one or two pages per weekend, time permitting.
This is now progressing with pages added for newer loco
classes; and updating of existing pages is underway. The updating
of existing pages includes putting back in the 'Withdrawl' and
'Scrapping' details.
By autumn 2009, work remains busy; and to avoid overworking myself,
I've decided to drop things back to just quarterly updates of the
database and the builders numbers spreadsheet.
Bear in mind that other railway enthusiast websites now have more
information than Locopage (for individual operators), while Wikipedia
also has a lot of information on Australian locomotives.