New Zealand Rail Maps Project
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Midland Railway Switchback Line
When the Midland Railway Company undertook to build the Midland Line between Springfield and Brunner, they had to come up with a way of getting across the Main Divide between Canterbury and Westland; the Southern Alps (Kaa Tiritiri O Te Moana) formed a formidable natural barrier between the two provinces. There was found to be…
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NZRM Volumes: Volume 7 (Midland Line / West Coast)
NZRM Volume 7 covers all railways on the West Coast of the South Island and the Midland Line between the West Coast and Canterbury. There is approximately 500 km of mainline trackage within this volume. As at July 2023 only a part of Volume 7 has been fully mapped and this article will be updated…
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NZRM Progress Report 2023-07-25: Midland Line
The maps have now been produced all the way to Otira. A few issues have been found along the way, these will be fixed with an updated edition by the end of this year, which will include the rest of the main line all the way to Greymouth, and hopefully the Midland Line branches as…
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NZRM Progress Report 2023-07-21: Midland Line
After another slow week a lot of work has nevertheless been done to get the mosaics of Springfield finished and imported into the GIS. This has now been completed and adjustments are being made as needed to the maps to address any changes needed. Using the 1976 aerial images (official New Zealand Railways survey of…
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NZRM Progress Report 2023-07-17: Midland Line
Over the past ten days work has progressed on detailing and producing the maps of the mainline section of the Midland Line. Towards the end of last week progress reached Springfield at 48 km from Rolleston, therefore a total of 345 maps were produced over five days for 46 km of actual track distance. In…
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NZRM Progress Report 2023-07-07: Midland Line
This week, progress in NZRM maps has been slow for a variety of reasons. One of these reasons has been putting time aside to write a report about NZRM for the NZ Cartographic Society’s quadrennial report to the International Cartographic Cartographic Association which will be presented at ICCA’s conference next month. The report submitted for…
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Wairarapa Line: Greytown Railway Station
Greytown was a small urban station at the end of the 5 km Greytown Branch, which came off the Wairarapa Line at Woodside (per the previous post about Woodside Station). For more details of the branch see that post. Greytown was briefly the railhead of the Wairarapa Line and the branch was chained as the…
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NZRM Progress Report 2023-06-30: Midland Line, Volume Reorganisation
This week the main work done in the Project has been in the Midland Line. The mosaic of Greymouth in 1945 was completed and has been used in mapping. It is fair to say the planned release of Volume 9 is a bit behind schedule. For reasons explained below, the release of what has been…
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Wairarapa Line: Woodside Railway Station
Woodside Railway Station started off its life as the junction for the 5 km branch to Greytown. It came about that when the Public Works Department (PWD), later on the Ministry of Works and Development or MOWD, which was responsible for constructing the early railways of New Zealand, put together the plans for the Wellington…
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NZRM Progress Report 2023-06-23: Midland Line, Wairarapa Line, Palmerston North Gisborne Line, North Island Main Trunk
This week on New Zealand Rail Maps the overwhelming focus has been on the migration of the project’s websites to a new hosting platform. This is now fully in operation both for this blog and for the webmaps. The new hosting solution is provided in New Zealand, rather than in California, and should probably result…