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YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE.   How did this site get started?   I've been following the preservation steam story since childhood rides on Southern Railway's steam excursions. As my horizons expanded beyond the occasional Southern Steam Special, I began receiving flyers on trips and, luckily, saved most of them. As I got deeper into the hobby in the early 1980s, simply having the information became a pleasant aspect for me, as well as using it to plan my travels. I also became friends with Tom Schultz, who shared a similar interest in both steam and information about it. Through Greg Scholl, a mutual friend, Tom turned me on to one of the more irreverent rail newsletters of the 1980s, the "Fractured Frog." This "sometimes official newsletter of the Queen City Division of the RRE" (RRE is the Rail Road Enthusiasts, similar to the NRHS or the R&LHS.) was edited by Ken Stewart, who took an interest in events far beyond Cincinnati, and a number of us fed Ken information on steam happenings. As a result, "TFF" became a great archive of information. Want to know about NS ferry moves for 611 and 1218 in 1987? Check the Frog. Care to read a trip report on chasing 6060 along the Fraser River? It's in the Frog. Of course any fan interested in the international scene is indebted to "World Steam," produced by David Thornhill, and "Continental Railway Journal," published by the Continental Railway Circle. These newsletter / magazines were the "flimsies" and the Internet of their time, keeping subscribers updated on the changes in steam around the world as it happened. When computers became generally available to me through school or work, I began keeping a document summary of current information. In 1994 I wrote a relational database program in Microsoft Access to store and print out records, eliminating a lot of the errors I would make when updating the document. This database slowly became more comprehensive and complicated, including information on locomotives and sponsoring organizations. (It's from this database that the automatically-generated pages of this site (the schedules, operators, and locos pages) are drawn.) As the Internet expanded into more and more people's everyday lives, I began to find some very interesting sites about steam, including one managed by David Randles in the UK listing all main line steam activity in that country. I also noticed nothing of that sort existed for the USA - most web sites devoted to American steam were either personal or historical in nature. But just as importantly I saw a lot of misunderstanding. Steam locomotives haven't been a part of everyday life here since 1960. And many "railfans" really don't understand how a railroad works. Along with my friends in the industry, I want to plug that gap. Stick with me and you'll understand WHY Union Pacific doesn't use other steam locomotives for PR, or WHY excursion tickets cost $100+.     YOU ARE BROWSING THE OLD STEAMCENTRAL.COM. TO SEE OUR LATEST ENTRIES, CLICK HERE.