Welcome to SteamCentral!
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Welcome to SteamCentral!
 
About SteamCentral:
SteamCentral opened in June 1999 to serve as a place where rail enthusiasts worldwide can find out what's going on with steam locomotive operation and preservation.
 
About The Content:
 
SteamCentral's content comes primarily from US sources, as there are already outstanding web sites covering steam in many countries (see the Links page to learn more). But SteamCentral is building its international information base, to help US residents learn more about steam outside their home country, and to help others when planning visits to steam centers in the United States.

SteamCentral gets schedule tips from many different web sites and contributors. But we are also building a network of volunteer staffers in each country to bring you accurate and timely information.
 
About The SteamCentral Staff: 
 
John Craft serves as the main correspondent and designer of the site. John's connection to steam dates back to childhood rides on Southern Railway steam excursions, and he has written numerous articles for rail publications. (Visit johnacraft.com to learn more about John's business life.)
 
Columnists:
 
Jim Wrinn writes the "Crystal Ball," a quarterly column looking ahead to sleeper events, engines soon to be withdrawn for overhaul, and new engines entering service. A longtime volunteer at the North Carolina Transportation Museum, Jim is also the author of numerous books and magazine articles.
 
Correspondents:
 
Thomas Kreitmair covers Germany for SteamCentral, and co-authored the German Travel Resources pages. A resident of Muenchen (Munich), Thomas is worked as an intern in the Detroit, MI, area for one year.
  
Learn how to become a SteamCentral Staffer!
 
Technical Details:
 
This site is maintained in a simple text editor (I use Word). It is designed for 800x600 resolution, and uses HTML4 commands, so some older browsers may have difficulty with some of the pages.
 
 
The news page is updated as events warrant. The Schedules page and its offspring, the Operators and Locomotives pages, are generated from the Microsoft Access database mentioned on the history page. This database is updated as I get information, and when enough changes have been entered to warrant a site update, I run a report I created that automatically "assembles" the HTML. Here's a sample (it generates one line of the schedules page):
 
 
 
Now aren't you sorry you asked?
 
 
There are similar monstrosities for the operators and locos pages.
 
 
  
As I am not a programmer, I have depended heavily on the following tools and sites to learn how to design, build, and enhance this web site:
  
htmlgoodies.com: in my opinion the finest HTML tutorial site on the Web.

Affordable Web Site Design: Darryl Burgdorf's free and shareware scripts are easy to implement, even for someone whose UNIX credentials are limited to causing "core dumps" (yes, it's as bad as it sounds).

 
  
YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE.