Hi Dolcoathguy
At the moment there's no specifc album for photos of equipment (or for plans - that's another one that's been suggested but I think they're probably inextricably linked to a mine location).
What you can do though is upload photos to your personal album (as you've said) and then you can 'favourite' them and add them to a new favouites collection. If you set it to a public collection then other people can view it and add to it.
Here's a good example:
http://www.aditnow.co.uk/lightbox/?uid=75&showpublic=true air receivers collected together by Colonel Mustard
As for searching for photos. A lot of the relies on people putting captions and descriptions. If you do a photo search for example for
GHH Fahrzeuge using 'exact search'
http://www.aditnow.co.uk/photos-mines-quarries/ it'll throw up a couple of photos of a dumper and drilling rig from BAUMA. The better the captions and descriptions people put on photos the better the image search becomes!
my orders are to sit here and watch the world go by