Yesterday we wrote a quick update on Volume 5. Today we are taking a more indepth look at what we can do to complete the update of this volume covering the Palmerston North Gisborne Line (currently only open to Napier).

Yesterday’s inspiration came from BERL’s new report on reopening the Wairoa to Gisborne section of the route. Today’s comes from the discovery that Retrolens has just updated its site to include content from every part of NZ. So what we said yesterday about a lack of historical aerial photos from Horizons Region is no longer correct. Content is now in Retrolens from the entire country.

So far we are not seeing NZR station surveys in either the West Coast or in Horizons. We expect this is because scanning has only recently commenced and not all of the aerials have been captured to date. Corridor surveys do exist in both areas. As well, some of the oldest content is not yet available either. For example, there is no historical coverage of the old central city Palmerston North railyards yet.

The full update of Volume 5 (to Intermediate or Comprehensive level) won’t be completed for some time yet and leaving this until there is more of the historical aerial photos available for Horizons makes perfect sense. However we intend to work on this as a higher priority than other parts of the North Island, but it won’t adversely detract from the completion of the major South Island volumes (Volumes 8-11) and we still do not intend to give it an actual priority ranking at this stage.

In general we will be working quickly to complete basic corridor alignments and details for all volumes quickly so that Basic level maps can be produced in the quickest possible timeframe. What is being scheduled is Intermediate or Comprehensive level maps for different parts of the country. So the work at these levels continues for Greater Christchurch, Stillwater Ngakawau Line, Main North Line, Midland Line and Main South Line. But at the same time we will be working on all other volumes to complete the Basic level. We will then publish the Basic level maps for all 12 volumes as quickly as possible, maybe even by the end of March, and then focus on rolling out the Intermediate and Comprehensive levels for each volume as deemed appropriate and according to a preset order over the remainder of the year.

Volume 5 is relatively easy to update due to its being one of a small number of previously published volumes and therefore, the data tables were produced some years ago and all we need to do is regenerate all the maps in the new format and republish them.