Since the last update we completed maps around Beach Loop. These include: 1942, the original route at T 24; 1962, a service siding around a washout at 225 miles; and 1986, the track layout at BL. Since then, we discovered the more of the S&I diagram No. 1276 which covers Paritu to Muriwai from 1968. The extra detail of interest is a service siding at 216.56 miles (Tikiwhata, or around 350 km, or about 0.5 km north of Wharerata Walkway Station), however aerial photos around that timeframe show no trace of it. There were probably many of these sidings over the years to fix problems such as slumps and washouts.

The features that will be able to be shown, apart from the 225 mile washout, include the Maraetaha boulder pit siding which was less than a mile north of the station. We will not do aerial photo maps of this one but just trace it roughly on the ground.

The major work completed today was to generate mapsets for Matawai-Wairata survey and the Ngatapa Branch. Progress on these was slowed considerably by software issues that have taken all day to overcome and within these sets you will still see an occasional gap in the aerial maps where for some reason the full set of tiles has not completely loaded off Linz’s WMTS server.

So we have made progress albeit slow and whilst acknowledging being a bit behind on delivery, we are continuing to press on and still very much looking forward to getting down to Napier ASAP.