Is there a time-lapse 1830-2010 railroad map of USA and Canada?
A map showing the construction and abandonment of railroad lines month by month from the start of the first railroad construction in about 1830 to at least 2010 is something that would be great have for reference. It should be possible to speed up, pause, and reverse the time-lapse map.
A feature where the viewer was able to zoom in and out would be helpful,
Has anybody seen such a map?
Andrew Falconer
Show the GIS people the $$$$$$$$.
Zooming in and out to what scale?
Close as you are going to get is something like what Iowa DOT has, which is only by decade and Macro. FRA/DOT has some work on a related idea and it’s only 1920 forward.
Accuracy would be a big issue (SPV discovered this, those atlases are flawed, often by guesswork from the guys accross the pond, even with good intentions)
Probably not a month by month map but surly a year by year is possible…check Rand McNalley’s and other’s railroad maps and books of maps. Also individual railroads’ public timetables and other maps produced by them. Perhaps the Association of American Railroads have some maps which could be collected…they used to publish PR materials which showed growth… National Geographic is another soruce, off hand, as is several books on U.S. and North American rail history from American Heritage, National Geographic, among others. I would start with the Rand McNalley series and check Trains Magazine ads for more sources.
Mike Kudish, a forestry professor who has made a hobby out of recording Adirondack railroads (and is up to a third edition of three volumes from the first edition that was the size of one of the current volumes) has also discovered this - and his studies are restricted to just the Adirondacks.
It should be noted that most of the major features/lines are accounted for and accurate. It’s the minutiae and some old lines with limited historical records that usually cause the problems.
Dollars and GIS notwithstanding, There is probably enough information available on-line that a determined individual would be able to make his/her life’s work with creating such a map.
A fan in my area is using “openstreetmaps.org” to document his searches for rail lines both only planned and actually built. Perhaps something along this line (and along the lines of Wikipedia) could be created which would allow local fans/experts to add lines of interest to them. That way one person wouldn’t have to try to decipher when the Podunk Hollow Railroad was built and abandoned or changed ownership - someone with local knowledge would do it instead.
There is a book by Zlatovich (sp?) that chronicles the building and abandonment of railroads in Texas. This book is several years ago and probably needs updating. It is based on the records from the Texas Railroad Commission. I am working from memory and do not have the exact title or the possible correct spelling of the author’s name.
The digital mapping could start with all of the USGS maps that have the railroads emphasized after being converted to a computer file. This would require many people running the USGS maps through large scanners to start the process. Someone will have to calculate out how many people and how many scanners are needed to complete the digitization process in less than a year.
Andrew
The USGS is already scanning all old topo maps, and is about half way thru the process. It is often many years between updated editions of a particular quadrangle. I plan on a separate thread for details.
You are asuming that USGS 7 1/2 minute quads cover the whole country. They don’t. (most likely never will)
There are also “provisional” 7.5 minute quads that were never finished in some places. (better than nothing, but…)
The old pre-1950 15 minute quads (many done with Bilby tower, plane table and alidade, not cameras in planes) had even larger holes in the national coverage.
Many times the railroad had come and gone before the mappers arrived.
…and then they did not always get the right railroad owner with the right land feature.
…and then there’s all the stuff that never was saved, especially from the railroads… (Diningcar and I could go on and on about all the stuff that was pitched by ATSF operating types (pinheads) during the 1988 consolidation because they did not understand its value.)…They didn’t want to pay to store it, so it got roundfiled.
EDIT 1:
Because somebody will ask: http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/survey_towers/bilby.html
http://www.antiquesurveying.com/images/2439.jpg http://planetableandalidade.com/
EDIT 2: Going back to the original post, “Just because it would be nice” doesn’t mean its gonna happen. Button pushers are sometimes going to have to get out there and work at it a little. The internet is not always going to grant instant gratification and some folks will never get it.
Fine detailed would be too ambitious of a concept.
Perhaps just at least a gross representation of the construction, removal, and enlargement & movement of railroads in the USA would be a helpful reference. For some people it can be used to show that no matter how amazing a technology is it can not be everything for everybody at all times. For others it can be used to search down abandoned relics of the past.
There could be some notes as to what spurred development and caused abandonments attached to the changes in the map.
Andrew
According to the USGS nationalmap site, “In 1991, the USGS completed the analog map coverage of the 48 contiguous states of the United States at the 1:24,000 scale. The coverage includes more than 55,000 7.5-minute quadrangles.” I realize that parts of Alaska don’t have coverage, but I have seen a number of topo maps of the ARR and WP&Y. Admittedly the 7 1/2 min quads are of limited historical value since the are more of a post WWII era product.
Mike: They quit mapping in 1991 and left everything where it was at in the process (thus the provisional maps). Closest to you, CO, UT and NE have some little blank rectangles/squares (missing or never completed) in the USGS index maps for those states . Other maps were revised multiple times while others were never touched. Come visit USGS Map Sales and the USGS Library in the Federal Center in Denver sometime.
Andrew: USGS has made limited “Historic Trail Maps” for some states at 1:250000 scale as a 1 time snapshot of those regions. You caught the point I was trying to make about the scale of what would be needed for “evolutionary” mapping.
Edit: (for Mike) Thought about this on the drive into work. There are several maps in the indexes for CO, WY, NE and NM that appear to never have been published. (At least the USGS in Denver can’t lay their hands on them…there seems to be gaps in every series of Maps from Hayden 1876 until today. There are places that BLM never surveyed either, for that matter, in PLSS / western states).
Any Railroad Historical Society could be raising awareness and be raising funds by selling USB drives with all of their maps collected in a coherent manner to show the progress and change of their railroads. It does not have to be done by one central organization.
Andrew
I love old printed topo maps. My prize possession is a Deadwood SD, 30 minute, edition of 1916. The topography was done in 1898, so unless Jules Verne was involved, I’m certain it is pre-aerial photo. I actually live in Michigan, but am a frequent visitor to CO. I took a tour of the eastern maps USGS office in Rolla MO, and will visit the Denver Fed Center office as soon as the light rail line is built. I looked at the website index map for CO.
I clicked on “MARK POINTS” to turn on the grid key and zoomed in until I could see the quad names. At first i saw some blank squares, but zooming in further would reveal a name. I swept back an forth across CO,and it looks like there is at least an electronic copy of all the 7 1/2 min quads. I’m glad that this is available.
