New Zealand Rail Maps

Category: Otago Central Railway

  • Taieri Gorge Railway mothballed; OETT selling out its shareholding

    It’s been reported in the ODT today that Dunedin Railways is to mothball its operations due to the COVID-19 caused economic recession. 80% of their business comes from overseas tourism, notably cruise ship visits to NZ, which is naturally hugely affected by COVID-19, and it is difficult to run the trips under current lockdown conditions…

  • Closure of Taieri Gorge Railway from Pukerangi to Middlemarch proposed

    The big news in rail heritage this week is that Dunedin Railways has proposed to stop running trains from Pukerangi to Middlemarch on the Taieri Gorge Railway. The decision was announced on 5th December. The next day, Dunedin City Council said they had received no prior warning of the decision and that they would require…

  • Otago Central Railway [61BB]: Alexandra-Cromwell 25: Cromwell Gorge Survey

    Last time we wrote about the Cromwell Gorge section that we have been remapping. We chose to redo the aerial mosaics down this section from scratch for various reasons, but a part of that has been the discovery that the original placement of the historical photos in some places was most probably incorrect in that…

  • Otago Central Railway [61AA]: Alexandra-Cromwell 24: Cromwell Gorge Survey

    So here we have the first post on the Otago Central Railway for 2019. Last week I started redoing the Cromwell Gorge maps using the same 1962 historical survey images as previously, except this time sourced from Retrolens. They are a slightly higher quality, but the main change is harmonising everything with the other surveys…

  • Project Diary 2019-05-17

    We try to post at least once a week depending on what we are doing in this project. Most of the posts are about specific volumes or regions we are working on. Other times there will be a progress report for the whole project like there was last week. This week it will just be…

  • Otago Central Railway [47J]: Current delay in OCR maps

    The current effort on NZ Rail Maps to map the Otago Central Line started in November of 2017 – about 18 months ago. It was at that time with the first of the posts in series 47 that we started the widespread use of the LINZ background imagery and bringing in historical imagery with the…

  • Project development: Work programme for 2019

    In my last few posts I have talked about the PNGL mapping I am working on. I have just about completed downloading the base aerial photography, and are working on mosaics for almost every station on the line. This is Volume 5 of the 12 volume map series and the PNGL and its branches is…

  • Otago Central Railway [64C]: Middlemarch-Ranfurly 3 – Ranfurly 1

    Ranfurly using the 1973 aerial survey as a background. Ranfurly is a nice little railway precinct with virtually all the buildings intact except for the first goods shed and the first engine shed, and is a complete contrast to Alexandra where only the station platform remains. At the moment I am busy downloading all the…

  • Otago Central Railway [64B]: Middlemarch-Ranfurly 2 – Waipiata 1

    It’s two months since I started a series for the Middlemarch to Ranfurly section of the OCR. There weren’t at that stage any maps in production for the series. Since that time I have gone back and redone some of the earliest maps with new higher resolution coverage which has thrown the whole schedule back.…

  • Otago Central Railway [61Z]: Alexandra-Cromwell 23 – 2nd Clyde Station 2

    Last time I posted the 1972/77 aerial photos of Clyde station had some problems that needed to be fixed. It looks like the aerial images of a 1977 survey were significantly distorted, perhaps the plane that took the photos was not level. Anyone who has used a data projector knows about keystone adjustments you have…