[OSM-talk] railway lines, tracklogs and the like

[Richard Fairhurst]

Quoting Simon Hewison <simon at zymurgy.org>:

> On the past few railway journeys I've been on, I've attempted to take
> tracklogs with an eTrex, and found that I couldn't reliably get a
> signal inside a big metal box.

Depends on the train. Virgin Voyagers are notorious for complete lack  
of signal. Apparently you can get a signal in a Virgin Pendolino from  
the vestibules, but nowhere else. But I've had plenty decent results  
from HSTs, Turbos, Sprinters, Adelantes and so on... and once got the  
whole London-Glasgow line from the Caledonian Sleeper.

> I was thinking that certainly in the UK, the railway network hasn't
> expanded much at all since the OS copyright ran out on the old OS maps.

Channel Tunnel Rail Link, a few airport spurs, and that's about the  
size of it. :(

> Has anyone been tracing the railways on the old OS maps, excluding the
> obvious Beeching cuts? (for the readers outside the UK, Dr Beeching was
> a highly unpopular British Railways chairman in the 1960s who ordered a
> large part of the UK rail network to be closed down)

Yes, I originally started tracing railways from old out-of-copyright  
Bartholomew maps: http://www.systemeD.net/atlas/

but have been using the New Popular Edition ever since I got them  
scanned. I've now got a small number of sheets with railways at least  
partly traced in Illustrator. That said, until we finish properly  
rectifying the scans there'll be some degree of inaccuracy.

cheers
Richard