A project like this involves the assistance of many people, and they are acknowledged at the bottom of this page; but a few folks deserve special recognition: 

Lowell McManus created the banner which appears on every page of the website.

Tom Chandler, whose Railspot web server in Bossier City, Louisiana provided the home for RailWhales from its inauguration in November 2003 until July 2005.

Shaun Ortolano, whose Railstuff web server in Metairie, Louisiana hosted RailWhales after Tom was no longer able to do so.

Lee A Guatreaux of Houma, Louisiana who recreated RailWhales after Railstuff crashed in 2007 and who has hosted it on his own RailGoat Site since 2008. 

At this point I should mention that many of my digital files for RailWhales were lost during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, when my home in New Orleans was inundated with nine feet of water.  The Railstuff web server survived the storm, but after the hurricane Shaun relocated to Houston.  Unfortunately, his web server crashed in early 2007 and his backup disk had gotten lost when he moved; so it looked like that was the end of RailWhales.  In 2008 Lee asked if I would mind if he recreated what he could of RailWhales on his RailGoat Site, and I was more than happy to let him do this.

Derek Pinsonat of Denham Springs, Louisiana began sending me trace reports on the big tank cars we knew of as soon as RailWhales was launched in November 2003; and he has continued to do that regularly for 10 years, although the number of cars in now less than 100.

Jim Kinkaid of Burns, Kansas made his sizable library of Official Railway Equipment Registers available, and has helped with photos.  My interest in big tank cars began long before I started RailWhales, and at some point I had created a spreadsheet showing how many cars of each group were listed in various issues of the Register.  Over time, over a dozen people contibuted data from whatever issues they had; but there was still a lot of material that I wanted.  Enter Jim Kinkaid!

Jim had amassed a considerable collection of Registers for his scores of freight car magazine articles and his numerous Morning Sun books, and he offered to let me use these.  Fortunatley, Jim's home is less than 400 miles from mine in north Fort Worth, and most of that is a straight shot up I-35.  After spending a day and a half in Jim's basement with my laptop, I had quantities for EVERY group of RailWhales from EVERY ORER between January 1963 and January 2009!  Since then, Jim and a couple of other folks have heped to bring the infomation up-to-date, but I am still in need of some recent data.

The informaton from Derek and the Equipment Registers, especially Jim's, has been used throughout this 10-YEAR overhaul of RailWhales and has added greatly to the site.

Listed below are all of those who have contributed to RailWhales in some way over the past 10 years.  Some have provided a photo or a needed bit of data, while others have made copius amounts of photos and/or information available.  To all of you, I say Thanks!

– MIKE PALMIERI –