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My first internet access was in late 1999 and I was bemused to find a lack of current class 47 information anywhere on the web. Nick Scott (who now assists with fleet lists and advance tour info) had been putting together some class 47 news online during the early months of 1999 whilst at university but had ceased doing so by the time I got onto the internet for the first time.
Inspired by the Class 37 Loco Group's workings news website, I set out to put together a small free no-frills web page of workings of the Blackpool-Portsmouth 47 hauled working. It was the C37LG who also gave me my first web site link and probably therefore the first site visitors.
I would have liked the site to be as detailed as the 37 website, but I quite simply don't have enough time. There is now (as I type this in 2007, checked 2009) another site that now details the history of 47's (fleetnumbers and names etc) and others with large selections of photographs. I personally consider it to be a pity that I was not approached to perhaps join forces with one of the other sites to make one very large, very detailed and very unbeatable site, rather than make people have to look in many places at once for news - but never mind. Thankyou to everybody who continues to support me in keeping everybody else up to date with current class 47 news.
It was in April 2001 that I moved the site from Expage.com to Geocities.com (part of Yahoo), and the first photo's appeared on the site, of 47773 at Kingussie, and 47292 and 47488 top'n'tailing a Norwich-Great Yarmouth/Lowestoft diagram.
In late summer 2001 the site moved to the professional webspace provider of Supaweb and the address of class47list.co.uk after problems with Geocities free site being unreliable with high numbers of people viewing the site.
The site moved back to Geocities in October 2002, in the height of class 47 popularity in 2001 this websites news page had reached 1300 visits in one day.
This site has covered the end of class 47 hauled trains on First Great Western, Scotrail, Virgin Cross Country, Virgin West Coast, EWS freight and parcels ervices, and seen the introduction of Cotswold Rail and the movement of loco's to Cotswold, DRS, Fragonset, Riviera Trains, and the West Coast Railway Company.
In the same time period has been the unfortunate demised of Cotswold Rail and FM Rail - the latter being the end result of a merge between Fragonset and Merlin Rail.
Charter operators have come and gone, many using class 47s have thankfully flourished including Compass Tours which I was involved with from the beginning, though unforunately less so in later years with time constraints in my personal life. Compass Tours has been one of the most successful non dining charter organisers of the decade, thanks to the commitments of Kevin Melia whom I initially assisted. Kevin is a very talented individual when it comes to planning tours, thankyou for providing us with many great days out (not so many thanks for the three 66s I had in 2009...!).
Over the period many loco's have been withdrawn and scrapped, or converted into class 57's fitted with General Motors engines. I have chosen not to cover class 57 news as personally I am not interested in these, my interest being in the class 47 design fitted with the Sulzer power unit.
A boost in page views and myself having a bit more time for updates in the middle of the decade coincided with moving the site again to the professional half of Yahoo (the paid for bit! which also helped me to develop the original Compass Tours site) and the move to the sulzerpower.com address, to go with my email address and to distinguish that this is not a class 57 website(!).
Nick S (DBT); The man with the first 47 news site in 1999 when he was at Uni, Nick is another selfless individual who compiles a railtour list at regular intervals for the benefit of others and assists me with publishing this at The Class 47 List. This tour list can be found here.
Myself and Nick were both involved in Compass Tours from the very beginning, and assisted each other in building the identity, including the logo and on train branding.
Regular contributors; Without you, where would this site be? You are named on the daily news if you have helped, thank you for taking the time to compile any email you have ever sent. I can't start naming names here as there are so many, but to anyone who has been able to provide their time over the past decade, some of whom have spent countless hours helping out - thak you; very very much.
I put a large amount of my own spare time into updating this website and I attempt to see the updating of the site as 'fun' and enjoyable, thus things can sometimes seem slightly unprofessional.
I will however endeavour to use all information/photographs (where I see as relevant to class 47's) when I have time. Amounts of information are occasionally overlooked when editing time runs out (due to personal life/working life reasons). Your contributions are always saved and are usually used eventually if I haven't used them within a few days (even known to have been added several years later!).
Crumb was granted access to the news section from 2008 to allow myself extra time to browse news messages and give me much more time to download/upload contributed photographs. This has given both of us extra time and more information to deal with archive material also.