Although we are still working to complete the map volume as rapidly as possible, our workload over the weekends is always reduced due to other time commitments. This means all we have to report at the moment is having posted the blog article on Matawhero Station, and completing drawing the yard layout at Muriwai, which will enable us to complete the 5th and final part of the M-M-M article series. Some smaller changes were made here and there. This also signifies the end of the Greater Gisborne section of updating the maps project, meaning we can move on quickly to creating the updated aerial and diagram maps of this area, and final checking prior to release. We also have to generate map sets for the Gisborne-Waioeka Survey and Ngatapa Branch as previously mentioned.

Therefore by sometime tomorrow we expect to have completed all the maps north of Napier and to be focusing our attention on Napier itself where we will quickly add any missing detail such as siding names to the maps of Napier Port especially, and then work our way back towards Palmerston North itself. As outlined in a previous update, this entails completing detail of the selected stations for which Comprehensive level coverage has been chosen, such as Waipukurau and Dannevirke, and posting blog articles about these places. It also means checking details on S&I diagrams for details that have not yet been added to the maps.

We are currently having a technical problem with the GIS software that prevents us using WMTS background layers from Linz at the same time as our local maps of stations, but a quick workaround is to make a temporary copy of the project that only uses the WMTS layers, and this will obviate the need to download the entire set of Linz aerial photography for the PNGL. We still plan on obtaining that in the future and have previously downloaded a considerable portion of it, but this will be attended to at a less critical time.

Following the completion of the PNGL maps, as outlined previously, we intend to move on to the Wairarapa Line (Volume 6). But there will probably be a pause of up to a week before that to allow for a break from the intensive pace of the last few weeks, and routine maintenance of our computer systems, the map drawing one being critically low on disk space and needing a big cleanup. Being able to finalise the PNGL project will also enable us to free up storage on the aerial photo processing computer, used for downloaded aerial photos, since it is always near full due to the large number of these resources and the space they consume. Before moving on to Volume 6 we also need to re-evaluate how much time is actually reasonable for Comprehensive level coverage of selected stations given its time consuming and intensive nature. This will influence whether or how much of such coverage can be added to other volumes. One of the things that has happened with Volume 5 is a lot more time than planned spent on the Comprehensive coverage of stations around Gisborne, primarily due to additional discoveries being made at the research level for various stations which has meant the historical mosaic maps being extended numerous times. We need to ensure this doesn’t happen with other stations in the PNGL volume and other future volumes, probably by doing the research earlier in the map development timeline, so we can have better time management.