A quick follow up to the previous post. The key question for many reading this blog is "Does the Christchurch Transport Blog project subtract from the NZ Rail Maps project time commitment"?
The simple and perhaps slightly regrettable answer to this question is "Yes". This is key to understanding the recent slowdown in progress on NZ Rail Maps, since creating a Christchurch specific Qgis project file for parts of Volumes 10 and 11 of the maps has been the key focus for CTB and that has taken all of the priority in the last month or so.
The historical content that is relevant to the NZ Rail Maps project will continue to be included in Volumes 10 and 11 of NZRM and it's not expected to become a separate volume at the moment. However the possibility of the Christchurch map data going into some other type of publication is quite likely as well. It is already being published in the CTB and being used in various contexts related to CTB.
At the same time I also hope to get some historical map data of the Christchurch central business district which so far has eluded me (it would seem the surveys in Canterbury Maps are not available on Retrolens, so I will have to see if I can source CM's data in some form). It may be I end up having to use some lower resolution stuff but my preference by a long way will be at least 0.3 metre pixel resolution or maybe 0.5 or even 0.75 which I have not found anything similar to that goes back to say the 1960s or 1980s and covers the CBD area.
But at least I can draw upon the NZ Rail Maps mosaics for the historical rail corridor coverage and that is why the effort is going into that at the moment. So I just need a little more work to get what I need out of somewhere.
As we saw last week I posted on how to get NZ Rail Maps in general back on track, refocusing on Volumes 1-12 Basic level maps, and that has to be the most important thing for NZ Rail Maps right now outside Christchurch.
Visit Christchurch Transport Blog to see what is happening there - just give me a week to update it with the current focus and some important stuff that I want to put onto there to give a context to that project. So just keep an eye on it between now and the end of June as I get some posts into there to explain more about what the CTB project is about and where it is going.
