Here is our second project development report for the NZ Rail Maps project for 2021. At the beginning of this year, after making the decision to launch our own web site, NZ Rail Maps was set up on the current hosting platform as three distinct sites, all of which are subdomains. This blog is hosted at www.blog.nzrailwebmaps.nz, webmaps are at maps.blog.nzrailwebmaps.nz, and volumes are at volumes.blog.nzrailwebmaps.nz. The main focus has been onto the webmaps for the first four months of 2021, the amount of time that it has taken to capture them for the entire national railway network. The Volumes site was set up in January 2021 and content was added to it from that point as well. Some issues have been noted with Volumes and we have now changed to a new gallery system and the existing content will be migrated to it in the next few weeks.

For the rest of 2021 the focus will be divided between the Volumes site, Stage 2 and 3 of the Webmaps (updating the existing maps and adding historical aerial photos), and refining the Webmaps client (the user experience in the browser). Currently at the time of writing, aerial photos are being produced of two areas – in Auckland and in South Canterbury – to be added to the webmaps as part of the development of script-based automated addition of aerial photo coverage. Some of these areas will also be added to Volumes to be shared for research purposes.