Following my last post I have nevertheless pushed on with the maps, making life considerably easier for myself by breaking up the workflows. Instead of having a slow, frustrating and often tedious workflow of doing everything in one go, I have the first pass in pegging out the corridor route, and the second pass filling in all the extra details like stations and bridges etc. I often do fill in yard sidings as part of the first pass for a bit of a break from the routine. By making this change, I have in the last two days pushed the completion of the first pass all the way up to New Plymouth/Waitara, and currently I am working on getting the last bit of aerial photography completed, which is 0.1 metre coverage for New Plymouth and Waitara, and all of what is needed for the Stratford Okahukura Line, the Egmont branch and the Opunake branch.
I'll put a little plug in here for the EnzedTech blog as well, as it covers some of the more technical aspects of the map production, specifically the more backroom sort of work that is needed to make the project come together. There is a specific tag in that blog that relates to NZ Rail Maps development, so here is the URL that will display just those specifically tagged posts:
I haven't actually used that tag more than once so far, so there are in fact several posts on that blog which I need to go back to and tag so that they are included in that listing.
There is going to be a new post shortly about the script that I use to copy aerial imagery. I will be writing this post today and there will be some previous posts that are getting added to that tag today as well.
Going back to the maps themselves - as soon as I have all the aerial photography in place I can work back putting in all the detail from New Plymouth and Waitara to, first of all, Waipuku and then the Egmont Branch, and then back to Stratford and then working my way up the SOL. There are several yards to be drawn in along the way, so I'm not quite sure when I can start drawing the SOL, but I am really keen to get that started.
