Apologies for the long delay since the last report (which was sent out December 10 but inadvertently had an earlier date in the title). A lot has been happening with the project since then but it’s mostly been invisible. Firstly, after experimenting for a year with NZ based hosting, the entire site has been rolled back to California. NZ hosting was cost competitive and probably compared well upon performance but certain implementational challenges drove this decision and the shift was so smooth it’s doubtful anyone actually noticed. This is possible because these days there are a lot of commercial WordPress blog migration systems to ease the task, in this instance the returning host had its own supported platform. This has an advantage in other work like Webmaps (which is a simple file copy migration process) because the processes for updating the site were developed with the original host and there could have been a lot of complicated steps with the NZ host with a quite different site management system in use.

As this work took much of December, the web maps update unfortunately has been delayed again. Present work is mapping stations on the Stratford Okahukura Line. Some of the aerials needed for this (including a very useful station survey of Tangarakau, a remote station not able to be practically mapped by other means) will need to be requested from Linz, so work has shifted to arranging a bulk download request which is transferred by post on SSD. This is currently in progress. As soon as the bulk request has been sent in, and whilst waiting for it to be delivered which could take a month or more, work will transfer back to the webmaps update.

As far as this year goes, the intention is to work on Volumes 4-9 with the priorities being Volumes 6-9 in particular. The last year has been very challenging in terms of progress but it is confidently predicted that 2025 will be better.