This week’s progress has got us started on the Rimutaka Incline Section going through as far as Mangaroa Tunnel. We’re now working on the next section through to Kaitoke, and from there to Summit, Cross Creek, Pigeon Bush and eventually Featherston.

Originally our timetable for this week called for us to be through to Masterton by the end of this week. That has been allowed to slip in order to spend more time working on historical aspects of the Rimutaka Incline Section. So we are looking at getting through to Featherston by the end of next week, and then push through to Masterton and hopefully beyond the week after. This should see the full volume of maps completed late April.

Although as mentioned in the recently produced project development report we are relaxing the pace somewhat in terms of how many volumes we produce this year, it doesn’t mean we have lost sight of the overall goal. We are still very keen to get a completion on the entire project. For example having completed Volume 5 earlier this year, we haven’t at any recent time felt like looking over that volume again. We’re pleased it has been completed and that we don’t have to work on it anymore. So the schedule for Volume 6 is being slipped a little but we still are very keen to see it completed.

We are considering an option that we looked at before, for changing the entire project schedule to produce Basic completion (diagrams only) for every route as quickly as possible and then the Intermediate completion at our current level in a longer timeframe, so we may look at that option again and get every volume at Basic level first, which takes much less time, and then put in the more comprehensive coverage. What this would mean is you would see just a set of diagrams for each volume rolled out quite quickly, and then the aerials would come out later. The reason is that we still want to have as many diagrams available as soon as possible and if the overall project schedule has slipped to two years, then we still want to get those diagrams out first.