Topic: Ref. source of int'l liveries and abbreviations of foreign railroads

[JackVerheydt]

Hello people:

Is there anyone among you who knows of a reference source where I can find the abbreviations for international, at least the European railroads, with colored pictures of their customary liveries ? For instance, I know NS, DBB, SNCF, RENFE, SBB, and the affiliations of the TGV (French)  and ICE (German)  trains, but as the only foreign vehicles are usually found only in the webpages of the Japanese Simutrans club and I can't read Japanese, I can't decipher those that are not accompanied by some English language info. I had hopes for the Wikipedia, but have not been able to find anything sofar. For instance, I don't know what Zeno's Renfe vehicles even look like. Many thanks in advance to any amateur librarian. A fellow bibliophile, Jack Verheydt.

[DirrrtyDirk]

Most trains on these pages (at least in pak128 size) are from japanese railroad companies, mainly former Japanese National Railways (JNR) = today's JR Group and other private companies, like e.g. Keikyu, Tobu, Odakyu and many more. You can start your research here.

[wlindley]

The RailFanEurope site has a huge set of current and historic livery images:  http://www.railfaneurope.net/liveries/index.html

[JackVerheydt]

Thank you Dirk and especially you, Mr.FL Lindley, for the wealth of info you referred me to. I'm going to have a hard time to put together a "typically national" looking train when I get to making a world map, there turn out to be so many liveries. This I am planning for the future, and I want to try and be as realistic as possible. Thank you very much, for now I cannot let a Dutch train drive in China, for instance. Amazing, this enormous variety of choices. And thank you very much. Dirk, you and I both seem to be regular customers of the Japanese website, so you'll know what I'm talking about !
P.S. Wish the developers would provide us with some kind of cross reference for when you are looking for a certain loc or carriage to match. With the number of locs and carriages growing by leaps and bounds (thanks especially to the prolific Japanese contributions), it is getting harder and harder to find a particular vehicle to match with a particular loc. Good thing they are the only foreign contributors I know of, sofar, and I know I must limit them to a minimum, especially for Japan. Seems they have a different model and livery for every region and city ! Now (hopefully) on to oher countries. Right now, I am using a lot of them in Combuys' Europe 1960, but one of these days..... Hope to see soon the new shipsZeno promised, as well. Great plans. Jack.