Well this blog has now been launched as being separate from NZ Rail Maps and I have copied across all of the content from Enzed Transport that is maps related. The final layout of this blog and various other settings have yet to be completed and may well change over the next few days.
What is now relevant is that this blog will be the public face of the project. The actual development work is carried out in a private Facebook group with restricted membership. Since the posts in that group are not visible to non-members, the blog will be published and will also send a post feed to the Enzed Transport & NZ Rail Maps Facebook page.
As some previous posts have described, the Otago Central Railway is the current focus of the Maps project, specifically in relation to Volume 17, 2nd edition which is being put together. The first part of the route to be looked at has been the Cromwell Gorge. By using old aerial photography the route of the former railway has been traced in relation to present day features such as Lake Dunstan and the current highway. This includes the sites of the Cromwell, Waenga and Doigs stations.
The main focus of this has now reached Clyde and at present a request for further aerial photographs from Archives New Zealand is being put together to get some pictures of the Clyde and Alexandra areas. And so it will continue down the line towards Wingatui. Archives New Zealand recently doubled their charges, so that for 20 images it now costs $50 instead of $25. This means I will be limiting my purchases to 20 per month or $50 in general, except where extra scans are needed, but that will not really be an issue because it's hard work to get through them very quickly anyway. Bearing in mind that it can take Archives up to two weeks to process a request then one batch per month seems entirely reasonable. I actually received the last batch about three weeks ago so it does seem reasonable to assume that one batch a month is in keeping with my productive output during term time, rather than the school holidays.
