So today I have started working on Part 3 of the article, which will cover the railway from Wingatui to Ranfurly. In order to aid this part and finish some of the detail carried over from other parts, I spent two full days recently at Archives in Dunedin getting as much detail as I could from their files. I believe I would have seen somewhere in the order of 100 different files and copied a whole lot of plans from these files, and a little bit of text.

The biggest lot of stuff I have got from those files is the chainage charts for the rest of the line from Wingatui up so that I can put the detail into the maps. So right now it is going to be full steam ahead on the maps of the Otago Central again, including filling in the missing detail and drawing as many of the yards as I can with the historical aerial photos. However in some cases I will be using yard plans instead of aerial photos and the diagrams from Archives can’t be published without permission so they won’t get published. It may be that some lower quality aerials will be used for example Auripo where I do have a track layout diagram that I can use in conjunction with the aerial, and the same for the other stations mentioned in an earlier post.

Also because Part 2 is coming out at the end of this month I need to make sure the maps for Part 2 (Ranfurly to Alexandra) are uploaded as a Google Plus collection for public access. Of course all the maps need updating. Some time ago I did aerial montages for various eras for both Clyde and Alexandra but have yet to update the maps for the different eras, so that is an important job to do. So I have done montages for (going backwards) Cromwell, Waenga, Doigs, Clyde, Alexandra, Galloway, Chatto Creek, Omakau, Lauder and Wedderburn. The only ones missing out of the Part 2 section are Auripo and Ida Valley. With the diagrams and a lower quality aerial, I can get started on Auripo right away. It’s different for Ida Valley because we don’t have anything yet from the time that the station was open (i.e. before 1975) and therefore there isn’t anything on the ground that can be traced as far as track and buildings went. So right now Ida Valley will be published as drawn from chainage chart measurements, with a warning label. So to get the Part 2 maps finished, I only need to do one map, which is Auripo. Updating the Clyde and Alexandra maps at the same time will let me ensure that all Part 1 and Part 2 maps are fully up to date, and that will be what is starting to happen straight away.

For Part 3, I need to do montages of Ranfurly, Waipiata, Kokonga, Tiroiti, Hyde, Rock and Pillar, Ngapuna, Middlemarch and Sutton for a start. The coverage more or less peters out from there, although again it may be possible to use lower quality images with the diagrams as a backup. Lower quality imagery is all I have of Ranfurly and Waipiata for the moment. I have track diagrams for almost every station between Sutton and Salisbury, and having the chainage charts now helps to fill in some gaps. Wingatui will also be done and the coverage there is quite good, it is just a matter of picking which era to use. But these Part 3 maps don’t need to be published until the end of March, so they don’t really need to be finished until then. It will just be for article writing purposes that I will have a look at them over the next month for, and they will finally be finished when Part 3 hits the streets.