As most will be aware this blog has not had a post in about 2 months, and in fact I have not done any mapping activity in that time. For the most part I have needed some time to look at where this project is going, and how it fits in with other new interests I have developed in that time.

In the last couple of days I have reaffirmed my interest in developing the Otago Central Railway volume of maps which has had a lot of activity over the past two years. As noted in a post to the project’s FB group recently this is the highest priority of development at present but it will go on probably without significant aerial photography usage as I had done previously. Part of this is that the increased cost of getting photography from Archives New Zealand, whilst still significantly cheaper than what we have been able to get from other sources, is conflicting with other financial imperatives for me at this time. 

So the main resource to be used for the ongoing development is the chainage charts and possibly some recent LINZ aerial imagery where desirable to pinpoint specific locations of interest but not the historic photography except for what I have already obtained (Clyde-Cromwell).

At the same time as developing the Otago Central volume I expect to push the volumes for the rest of the country into some sort of completion, this is because Otago Central is a high numbered volume in the series of volumes that cover the whole country and it would make a lot of sense to have the lower numbered volumes completed first before releasing the Otago Central volume. The lower numbered volumes will not receive any revision at this time, except for km peg and bridge numbering for currently open routes.

So that is a plan for the next couple of years roughly and the key intention is to push this project towards “publication” of some sort of a completed set of volumes for the whole country within a 2-3 year timeframe.