Artwork Licence Policy

Last updated: 7 September 2026

This policy explains what artwork the train compositions section may use, where it may come from, and what we will not accept. It is the decision rule behind the Contributor Licence Agreement.

Review notice. Prepared as an operational policy, not legal advice. The one place it needs a lawyer is section 7 (trademarks) and any jurisdiction-specific line in the CLA.

1. The problem this solves

Rollway drawings look simple enough that people assume they are free to copy: a rectangle, some windows, two bogies. In practice a livery drawing can be a recognisable piece of copyright artwork, and tracing one is copying regardless of how simple the finished drawing is. At scale, that is the kind of thing that ends in a takedown notice or worse.

So our rule is narrow and absolute: every drawing on this site is either procedurally generated by our own code, commissioned as an original work for us, or contributed under a signed licence agreement. There is no third option.

2. The four accepted sources

A. Procedural (what is live today)

Our renderer draws every consist from code: body, roof, window band, doors, cab, bogies and wheels, at the true pixel width for the vehicle's length. There is no source image and no artist, so there is nothing to license. This covers the whole site as it stands.

This is the default. It is also legible and consistent, and it scales to hundreds of consists.

B. Commissioned originals

Where a drawing is worth an artist's time, we commission it. The brief is published as the illustrator commission brief companion document. We require:

• Work made for hire, or a full copyright assignment in the contract.
• Originality warranty — the illustrator confirms nothing was traced, digitised or derived from existing artwork.
• Provenance note — the artist records what reference material they used, and that it was used for factual reference only.
• Attribution commitment — the artist is credited on the asset page.

We do not accept "traced from a photo" commissions, however good the result, because the tracing step is the copying.

C. Community contributions

Members can submit original drawings under the Contributor Licence Agreement. Before publication we check:

1. The submitter confirmed the section 6 warranties.
2. The drawing is not a copy or trace of an existing drawing, photograph, CAD file or game asset.
3. No share-alike or non-commercial terms attach to the source material.
4. Provenance and attribution are recorded on the asset.

Accepted contributions are credited. Unaccepted submissions get a reason.

D. Licence-cleared open art

We will consider existing open artwork only where the licence is compatible with commercial use, modification and redistribution, and does not impose copyleft, share-alike or non-commercial conditions. Compatible in practice means CC0 or CC BY 4.0.

Even with CC BY 4.0 we would normally prefer option C, because a purpose-drawn original is more consistent with the section drawings than a foreign drawing is.

3. What we will not accept

• Traced or digitised artwork, from any source, in whole or in part. Tracing is copying; a partial trace is still copying.
• Artwork copied from another LopoRail page, a wiki, a fan site, a manufacturer brochure or a social media post, unless it is already CC0 or CC BY 4.0 and properly attributed.
• Share-alike or non-commercial art — CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, GPL, or anything whose terms could reach the site's own licensing later. ND is excluded because we resize and adapt drawings.
• Manufacturer CAD or technical drawings without a written licence from the rights holder. Published in a press release or a tender document is not a licence.
• Screenshots and scans of photographs, drawings or game assets, including "cleaned up" or "vectorised" ones.
• Screenshots from railway simulation games — OpenTTD, Trainz and similar. This is the single most common request we get and the clearest no, because those assets are share-alike and community-contributed, which contaminates everything downstream.
• Photographic composites passed off as vector illustrations.
• AI-generated artwork unless you can supply the licence rights for the model output. We would rather have a plain, honest drawing.
• Artwork using third-party trade dress as decoration — see section 7.

4. Facts are not copyrightable; drawings still are

This trips people up, so it is worth stating plainly.

Vehicle dimensions are facts. The length of a Class 387 vehicle, the seating of a Mark 3 coach, the wheel arrangement of a Class 66 — these are measurements of real objects. Anyone may use them. We publish our sources in the dimension data source list so the numbers are checkable.

Drawings of those vehicles are copyrightable expression. A side elevation of a real train, drawn by whoever gets there first, can be protected — and a livery pattern is even more clearly expression.

So our clean-room rule is:

Take the numbers from the public record. Do the drawing yourself.

That is the whole method. Referencing a photograph to check that a vehicle has two door pockets per side is fine. Producing a drawing by tracing that photograph is not, and it is the single thing that most often makes an otherwise good submission unusable.

5. Dimensions must be traceable

Every published vehicle carries its length in millimetres and a recorded source. Submissions should do the same. Acceptable sources, in order of preference:

1. Manufacturer technical data, the official timetable, or a published formation/rolling-stock diagram.
2. A reputable rolling-stock reference work.
3. A cited encyclopaedia article.
4. A measurement taken from a real vehicle, with the method stated.

Unattributed numbers will be sent back. "Looks about right" is not a source.

6. Attribution and provenance

Every asset in the library records who made it, under what terms, and what it was drawn from. Publicly we show the artist and the licence. Internally we keep the provenance note, because the difference between "drawn from the tender diagram" and "traced from a photograph" is exactly the difference we need to be able to demonstrate.

We do not publish a contributor's contact details. Attribution is by name or handle only.

7. Trademarks and identification

Class numbers, class names, operator names and liveries are used descriptively, to identify which real vehicle a drawing depicts. We do not claim to own any of them, and using a drawing to say "this is a Class 387" is identification, not endorsement.

We will not use a drawing in a way that implies an official partnership — no "official LopoRail" claims, no co-branding, no livery that implies authorisation. If a contributor's drawing reads as promotional material rather than identification, we will ask them to adjust it.

8. Removing something that goes wrong

If a rights holder believes an asset infringes their rights, they should contact [email protected]. We will review the claim against the recorded provenance and, where the claim has substance, remove the asset and its credit promptly. Attribution is not a defence to a valid claim, and we will not argue a contributor's case for them.

9. Why we are strict about this

Every drawing on this site is a promise to the person who made it, to the people who use the site, and to the manufacturers whose vehicles are depicted. It is a lot easier to keep that promise by drawing things ourselves than by auditing other people's work, and that is the trade-off we have chosen.