One of the changes I am now doing with all the aerial mosaics is to render tiles that contain the full aerial photography for an area so that these full images can be used as part of the maps produced. The full aerial images are mainly of benefit for seeing how a greater area around a rail site has changed. I have just been back to the Waipara mosaics project in Gimp and generated the full image tiles for all four of the map eras represented. It’s fascinating how much the township itself has changed.

At the moment creating a map series for the rest of the Waiau Branch is not a priority but it could well be one of the first things done after completing the Otago Central Railway series. Other possibilities would also include the Napier to Gisborne Line and the rest of Volume 12, so I will have to see how the priorities go at that time. For now it is Christchurch alongside the Otago Central with each of these getting about equal time alternately and sometimes simultaneously as I have four computers at my desk and all of them can be used at the same time to work on different map tasks. For example tracing out the sections of the OC Rail Trail in Google Streetview can be done on win10pc, Gimp tasks on serverpc, the OC map project on mediapc at the same time as it is playing music videos and the CWNM map project on mainpc.

So here are the full images of Waipara township through four eras. I have chosen to hide the rail features as it takes a lot of work to display them in each era, it is just easier to display the aerial images by themselves.