Adding A Photo

Adding photos really breaks down into two types of tasks, uploading the photos themselves and managing the album that they live in.

Get started by clicking the "Add Photo" link that appears in a number of places once you've logged in.

This will take you to a screen where you select the image on your hard drive, enter in information about it, and select the album it will appear in.

It is also suggested that you watermark your images before uploading them in whatever photo editing program you use. Please make these watermarks as unobtrusive as possible. See other photos for an illustration of techniques that work well.

Titling images

The first form field you're presented is the name of the image. The formatting of this is very important for the proper organization of our galleries, so we ask that you follow the following guidelines.

If this is an image of equipment you should name the images as follows:
CR 2274 at Horseshoe Curve in 1984
CR 6409 Lock Haven, PA 8-12-1992
CR 885475 - Class H50

This is somewhat tricky, and is the result of many long discussions. First start off with the initials CR (or NS or CSX if it's a post-CR image. More on that to follow), don't spell it out (Conrail) then the locomotive or freight car number. Then continue with the location and year for locomotives, or the car class (if known) for freight cars. The formatting of this is not as important as the first part, but it needs to strike a good balance between verbosity and informational content. If you need some guidance it's advised to take a look at other images on the site to see how they're named and emulate them. It is, however, very important to include the year and month if available.

Now, if the image is from after the split, be sure to follow these guidelines:

NS 6738 (CR 5610)
CSXT 7303 (CR 6055)

The reason we're so particular about the way images are titled is because following the standard, CR then car or loco number keeps the gallery in numerical order and is therefore easier to navigate! With post split photos, keeping the titles NS or CSXT, with the CR number in (parentheses) again allows for quick navigation through the images and also gives the former CR number for research purposes. If you're confused, or not sure let somebody know and we can better explain it! Non equipment images, such as tower or building shots are a slightly different story. In these cases the titles should be descriptive of what's in the photo following similar guidelines as above. Again, if you're not sure what to do, take a look around the site for similar images.

Selecting the file

This part is easy, just hit the "Browse..." button to select the image file from your computer. Our goal is to make all photos at least 1200px wide and ideally following a 3:2 format (although others are ok too). The smaller versions of the image that appear throughout the site will be automatically generated after you upload the file. 

Adding General Info About the Photo

There are a number of fields on the form that provide general info about a photo.

Body

These start with the "Body" field. This field is used as a general caption for the photo but does not need to include all technical details about anything pictured (as specific fields for those attributes otherwise exist).

Photographer

This field is for the credit for the photo. If it's yours, enter your name! If it's someone else's, and you have their permission to post it, enter their name. You can also include collection info here as well (for example: "Bill Rettberg photo, CRHS Collection".

Photo Date

Enter as much photo date information as you have in this field by selecting the appropriate month, day and year.

Conrail Road Number(s)

Enter the road numbers of any equipment clearly visible in the photo here. If there are multiple pieces of equipment, it's best to "Add another item" and enter each one on its own row.

Predecessor Paint Scheme(s)

If this is an early Conrail photograph and there are pieces of equipment in predecessor paint schemes these check boxes to tag the photo accordingly. 

Post Conrail Owner(s)

If this is a photo of Conrail equipment after the split, check the box for the owner of the equipment pictured.

Post Conrail Road Number(s)

If this is a photo of Conrail equipment after the split, enter the new road number here. If there are multiple pieces of equipment, it's best to "Add another item" and enter each one on its own row.

Photo Location

One of the coolest parts of the photo archive is its ability to explore photos by location. This is achieved by using the photo location fields.

The Photo Location Name field is simply displayed to users. It should describe the place the photo is taken like "Bethlehem Engine Terminal", "Horseshoe Curve" or "Tiff St Overpass".

The Photo Location Address field can be used to help find the location on the map. Start selecting or entering as much data as you have there to let the map start zooming in on the correct location.

The map displayed can be used to pinpoint an exact location. You can click on a point on the map to set  the exact location for the photo. The latitude and longitude will be displayed below.

Alternately, if you want to enter the exact lat and long (if, for example, you have it by browsing around on Google Maps), you can also enter it directly into the form fields for those values.

Legacy Photo Data

These fields hold data about photos that have been migrated from the old photo site and can be ignored when adding new photos.

Photo Categorization

This is the important info about how to categorize the photo so it appears in a gallery.

The photos on this site are categorized using a "Taxonomy" of "Terms", with photos and info pages tagged with these terms. These terms are used to create the individual gallery list pages and the structure that allows users to browse into them.

The taxonomy is a tree like structure with parents and children. A good example is the ubiquitious SD40-2 gallery. It falls into the structure like this:

Photos > Conrail Locomotives EMD - GP, SD, SW, F, and MP Series >  EMD > SD40-2.

There are, in addition to simple categorizations like equipment type, other galleries that help drive the structure and browseability of the site. These include the galleries under "On Location with Conrail", "Special Topics" and the "Scenic and Action" galleries that contain photographer specific galleries. We recommend clicking the "Taxonomy term tree" button on the photo upload form to browse all the available galleries and see the ones that might be appropriate for a given photo.

There are two ways to select galleries for your convenience. If you're just starting out we recommend using the "Taxonomy Term Tree" to popup a window and select the appropriate terms from the gallery taxonomy for the photo. Remember to always and only select the most specific one (so SD40-2 instead of SD40-2 and EMD) and any galleries that the photo might be appropriate for (don't forget your own Scenic and Action one if it exists).

Once you've gotten familiar with the gallery structure, you can just start typing them directly into the field and let the autocomplete fill the field for you. Separate multiple terms with commas. This approach is much quicker for experienced photo contributors.

You can also view the gallery list page to see all of the photo categories currently available.

Submitting the Photo

Now just hit the "Save" button to add your photo. You should be able to see it immediately and can always come back to it from the "Your Photos" page.

Adding A Gallery

Adding new galleries (for missing equipment classes, locations or photographers) is straight forward.

First, click the "Manage Galleries" link in the contributor menu at the bottom of a page.

Location of Manage Galleries

Next, click the "Add Term" button at the top of the page.

Add term button

Now, on the "Add Term" page, enter the name of the new gallery in the "Name" field. This name should follow the existing similar page names on the "Manage Galleries" page ("Conrail's NCR Line" in "On Location" for example). Enter a description of the gallery in the "Description" field. This can also easily be edited later.

Example title and description

Lastly, and most importantly, click the "Relations" bar to see where in the gallery structure this page should live.

The "Relations" bar

Select the item in the galleries that this gallery should fall under ("On Location with Conrail" for the "Conrail's NCR Line" gallery).

Selecting a parent gallery

Lastly click "Save" and your gallery will be created.

You will now be able to select it when adding a photo or gallery info page.