my garmin shows railroads only if zoomed way in. is there a recent and available brand and/or model that shows tracks well at any zoom level?
thanks
My Garmin doesn’t show railroads at all. With the number of vehicles we get ‘turning onto’ the tracks without GPS indicating them - I would hate to hazard a guess of how many more would really think the track are a street if they were indicated on GPS.
Whatever happened to reading an actual map?? A little advance planning goes a long way and I would find the screen on a Garmin contraption to be a distraction.
The sole purpose of a consumer GPS device is to help you find the right ROADWAY route to a location, not how to drive down a railroad track. Showing railroads would be courting disaster by people turning down them thinking they are a highway.
Even the FRA’s GIS is a joke. You are not gonna find much of a decent uniform geographically registered system until the market demands it.
http://fragis.fra.dot.gov/Apps/GISFRASafety/
Union Pacific by far has the best in-house railroad GIS application.
The map behind my Android “Navigator” app shows railroads reasonably well. I haven’t really tried to pinpoint a geographic location (ie, a specific crossing) so I can ask for directions there, but it might be possible. It’ll take me to road intersections, though.
If you have a smart phone, most web maps (Google, Bing, etc.) have a pretty good representation of railroads on their base map and can also show your location.
I was pretty disappointed with the FRA’S railroad dataset. I think I read in the metadata that it was digitized in the 90’s from USGS 1:24k quads. With PTC coming, I bet we’ll start to see higher resolution geospatial data at the national level. Could the FRA request that type of data from the Class 1’s that they have either developed or had contracted?
The North Carolina DOT has recently digitized the state’s rail network from 6-inch orthoimagery, and it’s pretty detailed. No real attributes, other than maybe crossing id’s, but it’s impressive for data in the public domain.
For a fee, anything is possible. Uncle Sugar won’t get it for free considering the other unfunded mandate that is currently a frankenstein mess as an overall system, hardly uniform.
I don’t think USCGS maps are available in printed form now. Some of the last ones I got showed no evidence of such landforms as existing RR cuts from abandoned RR lines. It’s been a long time since then, so I don’t remember specific maps with this problem. IMHO, a map should show what is there. Maps are used for more than just driving from here to there. They show historians what used to be there, and indications of such things as abandoned RR’s show why there is (for example) an existing cut or fill where no RR currently runs. If we rely on maps with incomplete data, I can imagine problems for those involved in construction projects.
Tom
All USGS maps (Still available in print, but the imagery is free online = “current” and historical in pdf form) are used for in the construction process is for recon and some large macro projects like figuring approximate drainage areas for hydraulics, otherwise surveyors are performing topographic (topo) surveys for the engineers. The level of precision and timeliness isn’t there for a responsible engineering project.
Some GPS NAV systems definately show rail lines, the one installed on my phone does…
In the last decade or so as GPS in vehicles has become common I have seen several news stories of motorists blaming their Nav system for getting their vehicle stuck on railroad tracks. In many of these cases it seems that the GPS system was telling them to turn onto a road running parallel to the tracks and they drove onto the tracks by mistake (i.e driver error).
In one case around here (Southeastern New England) a trucker managed to get his rig highsided (wheels stuck off the ground) on a rail line and tried to blame his GPS. Luckily the track in question was not a busy mainline…
I wonder: was the trucker driving at night, in fog? One night, when I left work (just after midnight), I missed a turn because of heavy fog. I knew that the street that I was on merged with another street that intersected with the one that I missed, so I continued until I thought I had reached that street–and soon ealized that I was on a branch of the Rio Grande. At first, I though about continuing on to the street I wanted–and then thought, “what if a train should be coming?” So, I backed to where I had turned too soon, and got on the right track–no, the right street–and proceeded home, wit
I suppose mistaking a turn by a few feet is better than driving “ILS” at highway speeds using your GPS to tell you you’re still on the road because you can’t even see the lines due to the fog…
That may be an “old wive’s tale” about truckers, but I wouldn’t doubt it’s happened…
I find the nav system in my tablet tells me to turn a few feet before I actually reach the intersection. Of course, common sense and looking at the road tell me that I shouldn’t yank the wheel at the exact moment the box tells me to turn, but I can see folks doing so.
Truckers using civilian grade GPS get themselves into deep doo doo by paying more attention to the GPS instruction than the highway signage - ‘Clearance 12 Feet’ - ‘High Center Railroad Crossing’ etc. etc. etc.
There is a new Distribution Center that has been built near one of my carriers low clearance overhead bridge’s. Weekly or more often we get a call from the local authorities about a truck wedged under the overpass - the most common explanation proffered - ‘I was following my GPS.’
The best GPS to show Railroad tracks is Tom Tom. I found that Garmin has pretty much stopped showing the rails. But every Tom Tom that I have has shown the tracks on several different levels of magnification.
GPS is handy, but lots of drivers forget it is also necessary to look out the window. [^o)]
My Google Map app on smartphone gives great reference for railroads.
Mudchicken…your knowledge of the industry never ceases to amaze me. Thanks for your contributions.
Ed
One can’t blindly rely on the GPS… look out the windows too. If your GPS doesn’t jive with reality, assume the GPS is wrong and go with what you see outside (to avoid running into trains or through barns).
Sounds like you don’t deal with the i-Zombies* too terribly often. They are virtually indistinquishable from the overly reliant button-pushers with their GPS/GIS brainboxes.
(*)Any time we work in a high pedestrian area anymore, we have to bring cones, barricades or sawhorses with us to protect us from them. College campus areas are nuts to work around.
Here’s one way to do it:
Use http://mapper.acme.com/ to find the general area you’re interested in, then click on the “Topo” button in the upper right corner to view the USGS maps (at possibly a much larger scale). Use the USGS map to find the rail line or facility that you’re interested in, or is closest to you; then use the Lat. - Long. data from the box at the lower right (e.g., N 40 51.616’ W 75 16.562’) to input into your GPS.
- Paul North.