Official statement about railcolor.net / hello elektrolokarchiv.de

I have to start this post with a mea culpa. I am sorry that during the past four days, the railcolor.net URL is not functioning. Next to that, I owe you some answers that explain what is happening behind the scenes:

Railcolor.net is not offline; it has moved:

The website is alive and kicking, but under a brand new name and URL: https://www.elektrolokarchiv.de. Yet, we have not prepared you guys for this change. Be sure to add this website to your favorites! For now,  railcolor.net URL will redirect to https://www.elektrolokarchiv.de for the next two months. After that, railcolor.net will take you to railcolornews.com.

The Railcolor.net database website will not go behind a paywall

Since 2008, railcolor.net took you to the lok-datenbank.de database website about modern tri-phase electric locomotives. Since 2018 the news section of railcolor.net got its own website, railcolornews.com, which is now a (this) commercial website with a paywall.

The database previously found under railcolor.net will not follow this example. The lok-datenbank.de team only creates open, non-commercial projects available to everyone. For those that have contributed to the website since 2008, your pictures and information are safe, will remain free to everyone – see https://www.elektrolokarchiv.de.

Why is this happening?

Over the past few years, railcolor.net and railcolornews.com existed next to each other. They have similar names, similar logos. Since 2008, Railcolor.net was a cooperation between me, Simon Wijnakker, and the team of lok-datenbank.de. I was responsible for the design, the content, the news, and I took care of updating the numerous data lines. Lok-datenbank.de took care of the technical development of the website and the big database behind it that contains all the information.

The project became bigger and bigger, and in 2018 I had to make the decision. Shall I stop, or shall I try to make a living out of this? I chose the second option and decided to start railcolornews.com, the news portal you are visiting right now.

Yet, the “old” database website, still containing a lot of valuable information, was not abandoned. Step by step, other lok-datenbank team members are picking up where I have left. Yet, you understand that slowly but steadily, responsibilities changed. These days I have to focus on my own activities, and lok-datenbank.de will further integrate the “old” railcolor.net into its own projects. To clarify who is responsible for what, we decided to rename and rebrand the database website: https://www.elektrolokarchiv.de.

As stated before, I will keep my railcolor.net URL and brand name, and we will use it for a limited amount of time (2 months) to get everybody used to the new name. Later on, it will be redirected to railcolornews.com and/or other Railcolor projects.

Best regards,

Simon Wijnakker