Spotting report

Quite simply, a spotting report is a record of the location of a specific piece of railway equipment. At its most basic, it shows when and where the equipment was spotted and could include the train number or name, operating direction, a photo, the spotter's name and any other relevant information.

For example, an entry for an A-10 Thunderbolt II could look like this:

Date/time	Location	Aircraft Id	Direction	Photo	Spotter	Notes
1992-10-06	RAF Fairford		taxiing		Tim Trent	Taxiing at the Royal International Air Tattoo, Fairford, Gloucestershire, England.

Each row of the table is one spotting record. In this example, the plane was seen on 1992-10-06 at RAF Fairford, Taxiing at the Royal International Air Tattoo by Tim Trent. The user has uploaded a photo of the spot to show what was seen at that time. Since the plane number was unknown to the spotter, that column is left blank for this record.

How do I create a spotting report?

Easy. Grab this table. It looks like this:

{{spot-start}}
{{spot-line
 | date = [[1992-10-06]]
 | location = [[RAF Fairford]]
 | direction = taxiing
 | photo = Thunderbolt.a10.fairford.arp.jpg
 | spotter = [[User:Tim Trent|Tim Trent]]
 | notes = Taxiing at the Royal International Air Tattoo, Fairford, Gloucestershire, England.
}}
{{spot-end}}

Now, if you're not sure what to do, the parts {{spot-start}} and {{spot-end}} are templates, created by one of our admins. You can see what they do by clicking them. {{spot-line}} is another template that deals with the row in the table.

If you just saw a Concorde you would search for its page (or create a page for it of one is not present already) and add a section for Spotting reports. Then copy the table in, or, if the table is already there, just add a row,

The finished part of the page will look something like this as you edit it:

==Spotting reports==
{{spot-start}}
{{spot-line
 | date = [[1992-10-06]]
 | location = [[London Heathrow]]
 | direction = Static
 | photo = My pic of Concorde.jpg
 | spotter = [[User:Tim Trent|Tim Trent]]
 | notes = Static ground exhibit
}}
{{spot-end}}

You should also add a category relevant to the spotting reports (or create one if one does not exist. see Category:Spotting reports