Good evening. This week’s update to the NZ Rail Maps webmaps site completes the addition of content for Volume 12. Volume 12 is essentially an overflow volume from Volume 11 (Main South Line) and includes all branch lines south of Dunedin.

It was proposed originally this update would include more content but this week the Project has been upgrading its map building computer which has taken a major effort with new software and hardware installations. A final stage of this should be completed this week.

This leaves the finalisation of Volumes 7, 8, 9 and 11 to complete the webmaps. This should take about two weeks to finish.

Work is also going on at present on historical aerial mosaics in the Auckland area. This and the hardware upgrades referred to above are part of developing the transition from plain web maps to web maps with historical aerial photography available, which will be pushed into being as soon as the base webmaps are completed. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are the three main centres with the most complete aerial mosaic implementation, and these are all being updated so that these aerials can be added quickly into the project in the coming month.