About the Picture Collection

Why do I make it ?

On these pages you will find a huge collection of vehicle pictures. The majority of the pictures are drawn in the scale 1 pixel = 10 cm. Such pictures can be used in several programs (Traffic Screensaver, MM&MM Screensaver, BahnLand, Railway32, Train Side View) and javascript packages (Opaku's TrainKit and Brian Clough's TrainGif JavaScript) - if they are stored in the correct format. Additionally, there are pictures here in other scales too: TrainGif (26 pixel high), TSV30 (30 pixel high), TrainBanner (32 pixel high), Mission Railroad Specification (39 pixel high), Railway32 narrow gauge, NSME, TSV120 (1 pixel = 5 cm), LTC (3 pixel = 10 cm).

There are many reasons for me to maintain this collection:

• To have all of these pictures readily useable in the Traffic Screensaver.
  • You can download the pictures in the proprietary picture library format ( *.tvl). The whole collection is stored in about 50 library files so it consumes only a moderate disc space (compared with the total size of the individual pictures). At the moment, the total size of the free pictures is about 200 MB. With the Traffic Screensaver you have the ability to use all of the pictures shown here without the need to download more ten thousand pictures individually.
• To provide an overview of the available pictures.
  • As the number of picture authors is more than 600, there are multiple authors drawing vehicles from the same country or same railway company. With this list you can easily determine who has done what, and which vehicles are already drawn, which are missing, whether they are in the old 16-colour scheme, or if they are already rendered in a photo-realistic style. Additionally, several homepages these pictures were collected from are no longer on line - this is the only place where certain pictures are preserved.
    
• Because I believe in cooperation between the communities of the different programs.
  • To make a really good picture the most difficult work is finding documents, drawings, and photos about the original vehicle and then to draw it. It does not matter if you draw it for Railway32, MM&MM, BahnLand, Train Side View, TrainKit or Traffic. The differences between the programs are large enough that it is not a simple change from BMP format to GIF or vice versa; it is hard to automate even with existing general-purpose programs. However, the work of converting formats is not a job for a human; it is a task for a machine. So, I collect pictures from all the communities and try to convert them with my program to other formats, whenever possible. There are, however, several limitations: BahnLand and Railway32 need pictures that are transparent; Train Side View cannot handle animations; the smoke of steam locomotives is generated in a different way in Railway32, etc..
    

The advantage of having pictures with differing scales is not so obvious (besides being able to run them in one program: Traffic) as the different communities do not interact much. There are 3 different small scales (TrainGif, Train Side View 30 and TrainBanner) that are not so far from each other. One cannot use the pictures together in the same train, but it is possible to use them in different scenes sequentially - the difference is small. The available set of vehicles in these scales is very different: the TrainGif scale has the richest North American collection but only a few European vehicles; TrainBanner has a huge Japanese collection and an acceptable set of European vehicles, but very few American drawings.

Each community can use the collection of the others as a source for its work. Resizing the pictures in either direction does not result in high quality drawings, but it can give ideas about what to draw, what is missing, and if the existing picture is in a larger scale than the target scale, one can use the existing drawing as a base further work.

This site is in no way a replacement for the authors' sites, because the individual style of the source page and the descriptions about the vehicles are missing here. You often find photos and the history of the vehicles on the authors' sites - and you will find the newest pictures on the authors' sites first. There are more and more sites from railway clubs or fans, who draw or show only the vehicles they are interested in or which they own--and they know the most about them.

The author's site is only one click away from you while browsing this collection. Just click on the  icon. Note: sometimes the author's homepage doesn't contain any pictures for the screensavers. It may deal with other railway-related themes. Many authors show their screensaver pictures only in collections or on other homepages than their own. You'll find a list of sites with pictures in the 1 pixel = 10 cm scale on the Link page . The link pages for the other scales will come soon.

Authors and Copyright

There are pictures in this collection from many different authors (see the page: Picture Authors). Pictures are either sent directly to me or I have collected them from the Internet (only two sites' pictures are intentionally absent due to lack of the author's permission). The copyrights of all of the pictures rest with their respective authors. There are 3 different categories regarding the usage of pictures:

• Pictures shown smaller than normal size, or with missing pixels, are either part of a program or picture collection that is for sale by the authors, or pictures that have some other limitation. Such limitations may be that the author of the given image distributes it only through their own homepage even though freely available, or the author does not wish to have the image republished on another website, but tacitly permits the use of the pictures on local machines for screensavers. In the second case the Traffic Screensaver's stock list contains the pictures--they are just not displayed on the website. You can get them by installing the full install set, or by downloading the libraries from the download page.
  You can use the pictures of the MM&MM V3 screensaver only if you are a registered user of this screensaver (even if you have the DLLs) by installing them in the demo version.
  The majority of the MM&MM V3 and a smaller part of the Nimo Extension Kit pictures are shown already. About the half of the BahnLand pictures are here too. I plan to integrate the remaining pictures as well, but adding the freely available pictures takes precedence.
• The pictures shown without obfuscation, but yet not downloadable, are part of a demo or freeware program (from the Meyers). You can use these pictures in the Traffic screensaver, as it reads them directly from the .scr files (and, of course, you can let these programs run too). However, you are not allowed to extract the pictures from these programs.
  The pictures of the BahnLand screensaver are shown here in the same manner - fully visible, but without a download possibility.  How to buy the BahnLand screensaver is  given on the BahnLand homepage
  
• The pictures shown and available for download are free for personal use on the local machine - in screensavers. For other purposes (for example: to put them on homepages, to include them in other programs, books, etc.) please contact the authors directly for permission. Some pictures are not available in all formats. This is mostly due to technical reasons. Generally it is because the given program cannot use this picture. For example, BahnLand and Railway32 require transparent pictures. In some cases the author has asked that the images not be republished in their native format. In that case you may find the pictures in their native format on the author's homepage.
  

Many authors use pictures from the MM screensaver or from other authors as a source for their own work. They enhance older pictures in the new photo-realistic style, paint them in other liveries, or use them as the basis for creating other, similar vehicles. The Traffic Screensaver is able to store only one author for each picture, and I generate this website from the screensaver's "Stock List." Therefore, I can only name the final author in a possibly longer chain of authors.

Changes to the Pictures

Some pictures were drawn for the Traffic screensaver, others for BahnLand, Railway32, Train Side View, for a JavaScript package, or simply to display on web pages, but most of them were drawn for use in the MM&MM screensaver. These pictures have been converted to the Traffic screensaver format.

Sometimes I break a train up into individual graphics; change the way the pantographs are defined; or make pictures transparent. If the picture has more than 240 colours, I decrease the number of colours. Naturally, the author shown in this case is still the original author.

The other download formats - MM&MM, BahnLand, Railway32, TSV - are generated by my program from the Traffic format, so the picture files found on this site are not identical with the picture files of the authors! For instance, a Railway32 picture that was first converted into the Traffic format, is converted back into its native format at the time of the web site generation. Naturally. the binary format of the original source is not preserved in this process, and therefore sometimes there are some visible differences.

The authors for the MM&MM screensaver use the _SAR pictures for two different purposes:

• To show the pantographs of an electric locomotive in reverse state: left pantograph down, right pantograph up.
• To show the other side of an unidirectional vehicle (tramway, bus).

As I need to differentiate between these two things (the _SAR pictures are used in the Traffic screensaver to animate the pantographs, the connection between the two sides of a vehicle is needed for the BahnLand format), this collection uses the convention of appending an L to the picture name to denote the picture's left side.

The Traffic screensaver can use animations for many actions: to open doors, to raise and lower pantographs, etc.. The majority of the animations cannot be converted to the other formats. I try to display the pantograph states showing only the two final positions.

For the MM&MM format the _SAR picture is used to show the first two pantographs. For multi-system electric locomotives with more than two pantographs there is a separate picture with the inner pantograph(s) - with an _INNER and _INNER_SAR suffix.

The BahnLand and Railway32 programs handle the pantographs differently. I generate separate pictures for them (suffix _P0 with both pantographs down, _P12 with both pantographs up and _P2 with the right pantograph up). Multi-system locomotives can have pictures with the suffixes _P3 and _P4 too.

The side variations are handled by the Traffic screensaver automatically depending on the neighbours of the vehicle. These are converted for the MMcvCC program (by Claudio Vianini) as they are extended to full-height pictures and named with the suffixes _W0, _E0, _W1, _E1 ... The base picture in the generated form is always the picture without the connection between the vehicles - independent of the original picture from the given author. In some cases I have created the side variations manually based on a drawing of a complete train from the author.

With the Traffic Screensaver one can mirror the vehicle pictures to generate an approximate picture of the other side. Because you can control the mirroring in the Traffic screensaver's Stock List by specifying individual areas of a picture not to mirror when a whole picture is mirrored, or only to mirror a part of the picture (for example an old style tramway pantograph), such mirrored pictures can be quite good even if they are not entirely accurate.

A single picture can be generated in Traffic depending on conditions specified for a whole train or for individual vehicles. Common conditions include [E! ] for Empty (the load is removed from the goods wagon, or the coal is removed from the steam engine), or [C! ] for Cold (steam engines without smoke).

Railway32 and Opaku's TrainKit can both handle partially transparent (opaque) pictures. Until now I've seen this used only for the windows of the vehicles. As Traffic cannot handle opacity, this property is lost during the conversion.

Pictures are often renamed:

• In the Traffic Screensaver picture names are most frequently written into the "Timetable" file, which controls the vehicles' movements on the screen. As one often edits this file manually, it is better to have shorter picture names. The place for the description of a vehicle is not in its filename - one can use the Label field in the MM&MM user_bmp.ini, and the Description page in the Traffic Screensaver.
• Many special characters--and leading numbers too--can have special meanings in the Traffic Screensaver "Timetable" file, so these characters can cause problems when used in picture names. A picture name must begin with letter, and may contain only letters, numbers and the underscore character.
• The left side of the same vehicle is given the identical name as its right side, but with an L appended to the vehicle name. I need an easy way to find the left-right pairs in order to convert the pictures for the BahnLand program.
• I try to follow the convention
      <company>_<era><vehicle_type><livery> but try to leave names already in heavy use (the picture names of the MM&MM screensaver) unchanged. Both the <era> and <livery> parts can be omitted, if  they are not needed:
  
  • if the era determines the livery, only one of them is given - the era is preferred.
  • if the company name determines the era, the era is not given (for example, DBAG).
    
• Pictures of the same vehicle with the same livery but from different authors often have the same base name, a suffix with a tilde ( ~ ), and a short code to denote the author. The Traffic Screensaver handles this version system in that when you use the picture name without the suffix, it uses the version of the picture that appears first in the Stock List.

Symbols and Numbers in the Collection

The numbers following the section titles show the number of pictures contained in the section. The format is: <total number> (<free pictures> / <from demo programs> / <protected pictures>).

There are two different "new" pictures.

• The really new ones (sent directly to me, or converted by me from other formats - Railway32, Train Side View or collected in other scales) have a red marker: .
• Pictures I have collected from other MM&MM internet sites have a blue marker: . Usually these were new pictures on the authors' sites during the previous weeks or months, but sometimes I tag older pictures this way that I forgot to include in the past or had no time to deal with.

If you regularly follow the announcements of the authors in the MM-screensaver mailing list or frequently browse authors' sites searching for new pictures yourself, you need only look at pictures with . If this site is your main source for new pictures (for example if you use Traffic, Railway32 or BahnLand), you should check both and .

There are two chains established in the picture collection to let you jump to the new pictures. The red chain, controlled by the and  red arrows is for the really new pictures . The other chain is for both types of new pictures: it jumps to and pictures alike. Usually you would want to follow the blue arrow. If the next picture in this chain is a , you see only a red arrow. If the current picture is a , and the next picture is a , you'll see both blue and red arrows:   . In this case the lets you jump to the next picture, the jumps directly to the next picture.

Pictures that were updated by their authors since the last release of the collection are marked by , and chained by and .

The catalogue entries show the number of the , and  pictures in each category and subcategory - these numbers are red, blue and brown. These coloured numbers serve as hyperlinks: you can jump directly to the new or updated pictures of a category by clicking these coloured numbers.

The picture collection has a separate chain for each author allowing visitors to jump to all of the pictures of the particular author. It starts on the author's data page - just follow the green arrows.

Problems

Please feel free to report errors or give me suggestions on improving the collection (and the Traffic Screensaver too). My e-mail address is godeny@gmx.net.

If you find problems in one format, but the other formats are OK, it could be that the format conversions have some bugs and my conversion program is at fault. I cannot look at all of the generated pictures after each modification (at the moment there are more than 90,000 vehicles, of which some are in 2, others in 3, 4, 5 or 6 formats, with multiple single BMP or GIF files belonging to a given vehicle... It would take weeks to check every picture file on the site).

If you have ideas for better chapter titles, description item titles (it is hard to find the English or German words for some railway-related words even in large dictionaries), how to sort and separate some subsets into sections (based on era, company, line on which they were used, or something else) - write me.

Parts of this collection were reorganized by James McDonald (continental goods wagons and North American railways), Lars Boßhammer (German passenger coaches). Wherever the titles are only numbers it means that I had no idea what name to use, but I wanted to split the set so as not to have huge web pages in the collection.

If you have problems with individual pictures in all formats, please check the authors site (if any) first. Perhaps there is an update already. If not, please write to the authors directly.

The authors' e-mail addresses are available alongside the pictures (click on the icon). Their e-mail addresses should be transcribed by hand: they are not hyperlinks, or even simple text--they are rendered as images to protect the authors' e-mails against spammers, automatic e-mail harvesting robots, etc.