This is really just a quick catchup as I have been busy with various things and not much actual map work has been done in the last few days.
On Friday morning I had a trip into Christchurch Archives to look at Methven Branch stuff. As they are only open half days and have been since the quakes there is only so much you can get done in 3 1/2 hours, in this case I looked at pretty well all the files for the smaller stations except either end and those two have the most files. In fact I have only seen one quarter so I am guessing at least two more half days and probably more, the ones still to look at have the most detail. That sounds like a lot but it is not so bad to have an interest that gets one out of the house and into the community. I actually found some other things of general transport interest in the Wigram community which are also relevant so there was some additional benefit from going out there.
At any rate I have managed to get useful diagrams for a number of stations but not all of them so some of the maps will be incomplete or guesswork but we will just have to see how that works out. So actual maps of the Methven Branch are still a way off.
Of higher priority right now is finishing the Johnsonville-Tawa stuff for Tawa Historical Society. I have done some tidying work around the edges of the aerial photos and need to churn out the tiles which I was supposed to do this weekend but it will spill over into next week now but that has to be finished ASAP.
On the Otago Central I still have to do the Ida Valley maps which have not progressed since my last posting so there has not been a lot of progress and of course I have to keep at it, at present my timetable is starting to look like it is falling behind. Basically working back from Cromwell (236 km) we have so far got to Ida Valley (157 km) so have covered about 1/3 of the line and about 1/3 of the stations. Although many of the Taieri Gorge stations will not get mapped without data for them, so it could cut the number of stations. But as of now it does look like the Otago Central maps won’t be finished by the end of the year unless I can totally guarantee to complete a station every week and at the moment this does seem to be proving difficult to keep to, although I also have to spend time on Google Earth checking the streetview between each station which is time consuming so a lot does get done with each map that is not so obvious.