Along with scanner, digital camera, lukewarm coffee, and rain gear (yes- even in a drought, the rain ALWAYS happens just as you get ready to take a picture) the great Iron Horse Hunter always carries… a map. (Some even have GPS!)
I thought it might be useful if the forum members here shared their on-line (or off line) resources for railroad maps. I got lucky a couple of years ago when an NS engineer gave me a system map as well as a notebook full of railroad maps for the Alabama and Central of Georgia divisions. Not everyone gets that lucky, but another source I use is the Georgia Department of Transportation. I’ve already posted this link in another thread, but I think it’s worth repeating:
But if you use Delorme Street Atlas on the computer, with the GPS device, some of the information is outdated. [:(] Locations, of course, dont change too often, but who own what, or even active/abandoned, is often far behind the real world.
In navigating around the country, we have found some amusing differences between what the Street Atlas shows and what the road actually does.[oops]…and it cant be explained by inherent Position Error for the GPS. Roads that have been relocated for 3-4 years are often not updated in the data bases. Perhaps they do a better job in more populated areas, but we tended to travel through more rural areas, given a choice…
I think that thats because Delorme seems to concentrate their updating work on only a few states a year. I’ve been picking up the Iowa one off the counter and browsing through it for several years now, and up until last summer the info in it was last updated in 1999 according to the copyright. Now it looks much more up-to-date with a copyright of 2005.
My best source of free railroad maps has been the state’s DOT maps. They show all highways and other major roads plus the railroads. Plus they are published yearly and are up to date.
Contact the DOT of states by internet and there is usually a form to fill out electronically and in a week you have a map.
The Georgia maps are excellent. Their website also has traffic density maps.
Any info Dale gives out is sacred. If there is a map out there, he knows where it is.
Many counties publish maps, if not free then at minimal cost. I do find that while the roads are pretty accurate (it’s usually the highway department that puts the map out), and the railroads are reasonably accurately placed, the names of the railroads are not always current, although that can be helpful for running down fallen flags…
Sometimes it’s worth a good laugh, too. I was looking at a set of plans at work about a year ago, and they had one of the really old roads listed…seems to me it might have been the Denver, South Park and Pacific. I’ll have to see if I can dig the plan out and look it up. At any rate, if they only knew how long it’s been since the DSP&P has ceased to exist!
For those with a high speed Internet connection, Google Earth can be fascinating. While it doesn’t provide any information about the line, the ability to “fly” a line, even in the lower resolution areas, is intriguing. You can even get an idea of elevations in most areas.
Terraserver has a pretty complete selection of topo maps, albeit often with “out of date” information (I’ve been regularly riding a section of track marked as “abandoned”). Combined with the aerial (not satellite) photography, you can see some interesting stuff. You can basically switch back and forth between the photo and the map, and things line up.
Terraserver covers the US with 5 vertical sections which do not connect, and can cause derailments. It also has holes in their aerial coverage, such as Missoula and Spokane. (There must be someone at Microsoft that does not like Dave and Mike.)
For my long tour out west, I found each state DOT and requested a map in advance. They were very close to being up to date. My GPS is good for fallen flags with the old data base.