Monday 12 November 2018

Kingston Branch [2F]: Makarewa-Lumsden, Mararoa-Kingston. Mossburn, Hedgehope, Tuatapere, Wairio

So now that I have mapped Invercargill-Makarewa and Lumsden-Mararoa on the Kingston Branch, work will be continuing to map, firstly, the rest of the Kingston Branch, followed by the Mossburn Branch, Hedgehope Branch, Tuatapere Branch, Orawia Branch, Wairio Branch and Ohai Railway Board section. This will proceed at a slower pace than previously on the KB as I am going to continue with the Otago Central Railway as well.

Aerial coverage north of Makarewa for the Kingston Branch varies with some areas well covered and others not. Some areas are covered by various surveys, notably one from 1964, and some from 1938 to 1946 of lesser quality that mean I can get coverage of most of the way from Makarewa to Lumsden, particularly with the official NZR survey of Winton, and on the Hedgehope branch there is also good quality coverage of Browns when it was still open. North of Lumsden there is good quality coverage of most of the stations to Athol, plus the NZR survey of Kingston has showed up. This is really quite a good situation overall for a rural line because many of them don't have any high resolution coverage at all. The Mossburn Branch is also well covered. I haven't investigated the entire length of the Tuatapere or Wairio lines yet but major stations have the NZR surveys.

So work on that will be starting soon but the timeframe is going to be a bit more disjointed as it depends on what I am working on for Otago Central. In other words all of Volume 12 is being worked on to completion, at which point I can look at putting together a PDF for Volume 12 as well as all of the online maps.

The web site has had the latest revision of the map keys (no. 52) added to it which is current as of yesterday. As usual, older maps will be updated to the new specification in their next revision.