We host educational and informational content, all of which is contributed and made possible by users like yourself. Generally we do not contribute, monitor, or delete content (with the rare exception of policies like these Terms of Use or legal compliance). This means that editorial control is in the hands of you and your fellow users who create and manage the content. We merely host this content.
You are welcome to join as a contributor, editor, or author, but you have to follow the policies that govern TrainsDepot.org. Because we are dedicated to making content freely accessible to the public, we generally require that all content you contribute is available under a free license or in the public domain.
Please be aware that you are legally responsible for all of your contributions, edits, and re-use of TrainsDepot.org content under the European laws and other applicable laws (which may include the laws where you live or where you view or edit content). This means it is important that you use caution when posting content. In light of this responsibility, we have some rules about what you cannot post, most of which is either for your own protection or for the protection of other users like yourself. Please keep in mind that the content we host is for general informational purposes only, so if you need expert advice for a particular question, you should seek the help of a licensed or qualified professional. We also include other important notices and disclaimers, so please read these Terms of Use in their entirety.
TrainsDepot.org is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of content, and to hosting the full for the public free of charge. We act only as a hosting service, maintaining the infrastructure and organisational framework that allows our users to build the TrainsDepot.org website by contributing and editing content themselves. Because of our unique role, there are a couple of things you should be aware of when considering our relationship to you and the other users:
- We do not take an editorial role: Because the TrainsDepot.org is collaboratively edited, all of the content that we host is provided by users like yourself, and we do not take an editorial role. This means that we generally do not monitor or edit the content, and we do not take any responsibility for this content. Similarly, we do not endorse any opinions expressed via our services, and we do not represent or guarantee the truthfulness, accuracy, or reliability of any submitted community content. Instead, we simply provide access to the content that your fellow users have contributed and edited.
- You are responsible for your own actions: You are legally responsible for your edits and contributions on TrainsDepot.org, so for your own protection you should exercise caution and avoid contributing any content that may result in criminal or civil liability under any applicable laws. For clarity, applicable law includes at least European laws. Although we may not agree with such actions, we warn editors and contributors that authorities may seek to apply other country laws to you, including local laws where you live or where you view or edit content. TrainsDepot.org cannot offer any protection, guarantee, immunity or indemnification.
You can find our Privacy Policy here.
You may find some material objectionable or erroneous: Because we provide a wide array of content that is produced or gathered by fellow users, you may encounter material that you find offensive, erroneous, misleading, mislabeled, or otherwise objectionable. We therefore ask that you use common sense and proper judgment when using our services.
Our content is for general informational purposes only: Although we host a great deal of information that pertains to professional topics, this content is presented for general informational purposes only. It should not be taken as professional advice. Please seek independent professional counselling from someone who is licensed or qualified in the applicable area in lieu of acting on any information, opinion, or advice contained on the TrainsDepot.org website.
TrainsDepot.org only exist because of the vibrant community of users like you who collaborate together to write, edit, and curate the content. We happily welcome your participation in this community. We encourage you to be civil and polite in your interactions with others in the community, to act in good faith, and to make edits and contributions aimed at furthering the mission of TrainsDepot.org.
Certain activities, whether legal or illegal, may be harmful to other users and violate our rules, and some activities may also subject you to liability. Therefore, for your own protection and for that of other users, you may not engage in such activities on our sites. These activities include:
Harassing and Abusing Others
- Engaging in harassment, threats, stalking, spamming, or vandalism; and
- Transmitting chain mail, junk mail, or spam to other users.
Violating the Privacy of Others
- Infringing the privacy rights of others under the European laws or other applicable laws (which may include the laws where you live or where you view or edit content);
- Soliciting personally identifiable information for purposes of harassment, exploitation, violation of privacy, or any promotional or commercial purpose not explicitly approved by TrainsDepot.org; and
- Soliciting personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18 for an illegal purpose or violating any applicable law regarding the health or well-being of minors.
Engaging in False Statements, Impersonation, or Fraud
- Intentionally or knowingly posting content that constitutes libel or defamation;
- With the intent to deceive, posting content that is false or inaccurate;
- Attempting to impersonate another user or individual, misrepresenting your affiliation with any individual or entity, or using the username of another user with the intent to deceive; and
- Engaging in fraud.
Committing Infringement
- Infringing copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other proprietary rights under applicable law;
- Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes;
- Posting child pornography or any other content that violates applicable law concerning child pornography;
- Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law; and
- Using the services in a manner that is inconsistent with applicable law.
Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities
- Posting or distributing content that contains any viruses, malware, worms, Trojan horses, malicious code, or other device that could harm our technical infrastructure or system or that of our users;
- Engaging in automated uses of the site that are abusive or disruptive of the services and have not been approved by TrainsDepot.org;
- Disrupting the services by placing an undue burden on the TrainsDepot.org website or the networks or servers connected with TrainsDepot.org;
- Disrupting the services by inundating TrainsDepot.org with communications or other traffic that suggests no serious intent to use the TrainsDepot.org website for its stated purpose;
- Knowingly accessing, tampering with, or using any of our non-public areas in our computer systems without authorisation; and
- Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of any of our technical systems or networks unless all the following conditions are met:
- such actions do not unduly abuse or disrupt our technical systems or networks;
- such actions are not for personal gain (except for credit for your work);
- you report any vulnerabilities to TrainsDepot.org developers (or fix it yourself); and
- you do not undertake such actions with malicious or destructive intent.
Paid contributions without disclosure
These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. You must make that disclosure in at least one of the following ways:
- a statement on your user page,
- a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or
- a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.
Applicable law, or TrainsDepot.org policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure.
We reserve the right to exercise our enforcement discretion with respect to the above terms.
You are responsible for safeguarding your own password and should never disclose it to any third party.
Although you have considerable freedoms for re-use of the content on the TrainsDepot.org website, it is important that we protect our trademark rights so that we can protect our users from fraudulent impersonators. Because of this, we ask that you please respect our trademarks. All TrainsDepot.org trademarks belong to TrainsDepot.org, and any use of our trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, or domain names must be in compliance with these Terms of Use.
All users contributing to TrainsDepot.org are required to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely, so long as that use is properly attributed and the same freedom to re-use and re-distribute is granted to any derivative works. In keeping with our goal of providing free information to the widest possible audience, we require that when necessary all submitted content be licensed so that it is freely reusable by anyone who cares to access it.
Please note that we do allow commercial uses of your contributions, as long as such uses are compliant with the terms.
Re-use: Re-use of content that we host is welcome. Any re-use must comply with these Terms of Use.
When you re-use or re-distribute content from TrainsDepot.org, you agree to attribute the authors in the following fashion:
- Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages that you are re-using.
TrainsDepot.org wants to ensure that the content that we host can be re-used by other users without fear of liability and that it is not infringing the proprietary rights of others. In fairness to our users, as well as to other creators and copyright holders, our policy is to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the formalities of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Pursuant to the DMCA, we will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, users and account holders of our system and network who are repeat infringers.
However, we also recognise that not every takedown notice is valid or in good faith. In such cases, we strongly encourage users to file counter-notifications when they appropriately believe a DMCA takedown demand is invalid or improper.
If you are the owner of content that is being improperly used on TrainsDepot.org, you may request that the content be removed under the DMCA. To make such a request, please email us at legal@trainsdepot.org.
You are solely responsible for your use of any third-party websites or resources. Although the TrainsDepot.org website contains links to third-party websites and resources, we do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for their availability, accuracy, or the related content, products, or services (including, without limitation, any viruses or other disabling features), nor do we have any obligation to monitor such third-party content.
At TrainsDepot.org, we rarely intervene in community decisions. In an unusual case, the need may arise, or the community may ask us, to address an especially problematic user because of significant disturbance or dangerous behaviour. In such cases, we reserve the right, but do not have the obligation to:
- Investigate your use of the service (a) to determine whether a violation of these Terms of Use or other applicable law or policy has occurred, or (b) to comply with any applicable law, legal process, or appropriate governmental request;
- Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues or respond to user support requests;
- Refuse, disable, or restrict access to the contribution of any user who violates these Terms of Use;
- Ban a user from editing or contributing or block a user's account or access for actions violating these Terms of Use, including repeat copyright infringement; and
- Take legal action against users who violate these Terms of Use (including reports to law enforcement authorities).
In the interests of our users, in the extreme circumstance that any individual has had his or her account or access blocked under this provision, he or she is prohibited from creating or using another account on or seeking access to TrainsDepot.org, unless we provide explicit permission.
Though we hope you will stay and continue to contribute to the Projects, you can stop using our services any time. In certain (hopefully unlikely) circumstances it may be necessary to terminate part or all of our services, terminate these Terms of Use, block your account or access, or ban you as a user. If your account or access is blocked or otherwise terminated for any reason, your public contributions will remain publicly available, and, unless we notify you otherwise, you may still access our public pages for the sole purpose of reading publicly available content. In such circumstances, however, you may not be able to access your account or settings. We reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. Even after your use and participation are banned, blocked or otherwise suspended, these Terms of Use will remain in effect with respect to relevant provisions.
We hope that no serious disagreements arise involving you, but, in the event there is a dispute, we encourage you to contact us. If you seek to file a legal claim against us, you agree to file and resolve it exclusively in a court located in Brussels, Belgium. You also agree that the laws of Belgium and, to the extent applicable, the European laws will govern these Terms of Use, as well as any legal claim that might arise between you and us (without reference to conflict of laws principles). You agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of, and agree that venue is proper in, the courts located in Brussels, Belgium, in any legal action or proceeding relating to us or these Terms of Use.
To ensure that disputes are dealt with soon after they arise, you agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action you might have arising out of or related to use of our services or these Terms of Use must be filed within the applicable statute of limitations or, if earlier, one (1) year after the pertinent facts underlying such claim or cause of action could have been discovered with reasonable diligence (or be forever barred).
At TrainsDepot.org, we do our best to provide educational and informational content to a very wide audience, but your use of our services is at your sole risk. We provide these services on an "as is" and "as available" basis, and we expressly disclaim all express or implied warranties of all kinds, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We make no warranty that our services will meet your requirements, be safe, secure, uninterrupted, timely, accurate, or error-free, or that your information will be secure.
We are not responsible for the content, data, or actions of third parties, and you release us, our directors, officers, employees, and agents from any claims and damages, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with any claim you have against any such third parties. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from us or through or from our services creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms of Use.
Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through your use of our services is done at your own discretion and risk, and you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from the download of any such material. You agree that we have no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any content or communication maintained by the service. We retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the types of disclaimers in this section, so they may not apply to you either in part or in full depending on the law.
TrainsDepot.org will not be liable to you or to any other party for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data, or other intangible losses, regardless of whether we were advised of the possibility of such damage. In no event shall our liability exceed one thousand Euros (€ 1000.00) in aggregate. In the case that applicable law may not allow the limitation or exclusion of liability or incidental or consequential damages, the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you, although our liability will be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.
Because it may be necessary to modify these Terms of Use from time to time, we reserve the right to do so at any time and without explicit warning. However, we ask that you please periodically review the most up-to-date version of these Terms of Use. Your continued use of our services after the new Terms of Use become official constitutes an acceptance of these Terms of Use on your part. For the protection of TrainsDepot.org and other users like yourself, if you do not agree with our Terms of Use, you cannot use our services.
These Terms of Use do not create an employment, agency, partnership, or joint venture relationship between you and us, TrainsDepot.org. If you have not signed a separate agreement with us, these Terms of Use are the entire agreement between you and us. If there is any conflict between these Terms of Use and a signed written agreement between you and us, the signed agreement will control.
You agree that we may provide you with notices, including those regarding changes to the Terms of Use, by email or postings on TrainsDepot.org.
If in any circumstance, we do not apply or enforce any provision of these Terms of Use, it is not a waiver of that provision.
You understand that, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by us, you have no expectation of compensation for any activity, contribution, or idea that you provide to us, the community, or TrainsDepot.org.
These Terms of Use were written in English. While we hope that translations of these Terms of Use are accurate, in the event of any differences in meaning between the original English version and a translation, the original English version takes precedence.
If any provision or part of a provision of these Terms of Use is found unlawful, void, or unenforceable, that provision or part of the provision is deemed severable from these Terms of Use and will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and all other provisions of these Terms of Use will remain in full force and effect.
These Terms of Use went into effect on January 1st, 2018.