Good morning. At our last update we talked about planning to start drawing maps immediately and have them completed to Waitakere quite quickly. In theory in fact we shoulld have done this by now. However, we have decided to redo all the historical mosaic for Auckland because as outlined in the Enzed Tech blog which is used to document technical processes used to develop maps, we developed a new system for producing mosaics to ensure greater positional accuracy and reduced file sizes. Hence we are currently redoing the four Gimp projects that cover the Auckland urban section of the North Auckland Line and its branches.
Since this redo will take several days but it is progressing very well, we are setting a new deadline of the end of this week to have the maps drawn as far as Waitakere, Onehunga and Parnell, which are the urban limits for the main line and two urban branches of the North Auckland Line (the branches being to Onehunga and Auckland). The maps will then be produced to the same locations and be put into the albums for Volume 1 on our website, so that they will be able to be viewed by all at that level.
Because of the delays in getting to the actual map production stage, we will only look to do Priority 1 and 2 aerial mosaics for this particular revision of Volume 1. This rules out Priority 3 for the present time. This means that out of the areas we have covered in Priority 1 and 2, we still want to do some form of historical mosaics for the following areas:
- Dargaville
- Kirokopuni
- Te Wharau
- Kamo Ballast Pit
- Whangarei Colliery Siding
- Rangiahua Section
Whangarei Colliery is covered by the Whangarei mosaics. Kamo Ballast Pit has already been investigated in the Kamo maps but no trace can be found of a siding there. The other areas fall into the Dargaville and Okaihau Branches and will be looked into after the Auckland urban area has been completed, as we will then push on rapidly northward and we are confident of keeping a tight timetable of finishing the whole volume within two to three weeks.