Aerial Photo Order 3 (Otago Central Railway) – Cromwell to Alexandra

I am currently setting up an order for 21 more aerial photos as follows:

  • Survey 1452 of 1962
  • Run S. Photo 7 – this should give me the very end of the line at Cromwell which so far has eluded me.

    Run W, Photos 19-20 and  Run X, Photos 1-2: Alexandra

  • Survey 5073 of 1977
    • Run D, Photo 15; Run G, Photo 7; Run H, Photo 15 cover the 1907 Clyde station and just to its south and should therefore show the NZED siding that was in use until 1978.
  • Survey 5880 of 1981
    • Run A, Photo 1 should show the new Clyde station yard just opened (hopefully – this is a single photo in this series as no others exist in the lists). It would be interesting to speculate if this was a special one taken by NZR to base an aerial map of the Clyde yard, as they did use aerial photographs to make diagrams for staff use.
  • Survey 11936 of 1992. This is a big survey that must have been taken quite soon before the first filling of the Clyde Dam started. I am using this series to get a look at selected stations along the route rather than the whole route.
  • Run L, Photo 2; Run M, Photo 3; Run I, Photo 1/3; Run Q, Photo 2/3; Run R. Photo 2/3; Run U, Photo 1/2; Run V, Photo 4.
  •  Survey 5361 of 1979. This is to be scanned at high resolution because it is 1:25000 instead of the considerably larger scales of the other prints. Because of this it will end up being at a cost of $30 for the single image. I can’t afford to have too many high res scans along the way because of the cost (I also have to pay the $50 base fee so I may as well get my money’s worth and put in another 20 images at 600 dpi which can be included in the $50).
So that is 21 images for $80 – just under $4. And we are finally moving down to Alexandra. As I expect 4 images should give enough detail of Alexandra yard and from here we will go fairly quickly down the line to Wingatui. I am estimating another 6 batches of photos will be needed to finish all the remaining yards down to Middlemarch. It is possible I could continue looking at aerials for the Taieri Gorge section as well as there are many stations which have disappeared since that time.
So there is some scope to look again at the publication timeline. I also intend to obtain the chainage chart for the line and I don’t know how many pages it is. Hopefully 20 pages will cover the Cromwell Gorge because the bridges and features in that section are not documented elsewhere whereas all the bridges and other things on the Rail Trail section have been documented by DOC in their Conservation and Scientific Notes publications. Once all of that is put together the publication date ends up getting pushed out a bit. The earliest as far as I can see will be the middle of next year.
Once Volume 17 is finished the aim will be to push ahead with first editions of every other volume (2nds of North Auckland and Napier-Gisborne) and this might go on concurrently with the Volume 17 work if I end up waiting for further photo orders to come in. There won’t be any other volume as detailed as Volume 17 in the near future, All those other volumes will have to wait for 2nd (or 3rd in the case of NA/NGL) editions to get any aerial sourced data into them (except for the Christchurch area and a few other cases where free aerial footage has been used).


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