Well in OCR[32] I posted the footprints of three aerial photos of Alexandra. I have now purchased these photos for $110 and received them today.
The yard at Alexandra was comparable with Clyde or Cromwell in view of the type of facilities that were needed in order to service the commercial requirements of the local community and there is a lot in the photos that I have not seen documented anywhere else. This is quite typical of the focus that the NZ Rail Maps project has been able to bring to the history of this and other railway lines in accessing different historical material that has not been widely used in the past to fill in lesser known information about the railways.
Whilst I won't publish the photos at this stage the kind of information I am able to fill in incorporates all the yard details and will enable the track layouts and buildings to be marked out in exactly the right places instead of being somewhat guessed. The main additional detail to be added is the sidings at the oil company depots and other premises. These depots still existed at the time the aerials were taken whereas I had originally thought they may have been removed by 1983 so it seems that the general loss of freight to road transport was relatively slow to kick in given that road transport started to take over from the mid 1970s. It may be that the sidings were still in place but disused by this time.
The article is progressing well, there will be a short delay for me to update the maps over the next couple of days then back into it to get the writing finished so that the first part of the article is ready for publication on time.
