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New Railway Map Website

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MatthewB

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16 Jul 2013
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30
Hello,

I've been working on putting together a site depicting historical railways of the UK and Ireland. I've been working on the maps for many years, and have now decided to try and create a Google Maps based site to display them. The site is now up and running, and I'd really appreciate some feedback on firstly, whether it works, but more importantly if this is something that would be useful to the rail enthusiast community and also if there are any mistakes or omissions.

The site is at www.RailMapOnline.com. All feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Matthew
 
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Karlywarly

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15 Jun 2013
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Just two evenings ago I'd been trying to work out how the tracks into the now demolished Linocln St. Marks station and the old Lincoln avoiding line mapped onto today's street plan. (Don't ask why, I'm just interested in these things!). Anyway, lots of time comparing oblique aerial photos with google maps could all have been done in seconds using your site. Certainly for the area around Lincoln the lifted lines are pin-point accurate and you can see the scars in both the countryside and the townscape. Fascinating!

Thanks for sharing!

Karl
Lincoln (obviously!)
 

30907

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On a quick visit, very impressive. How many years' work is this?!

I didn't realise from your description that the aim was to show every line that ever existed - eg Croydon Tramlink doubling up with its SECR/LBSCR predecessors - and I like the Wikipedia link idea - on a random test it seems to work.

On a quick glance, you seem to list post-grouping lines under pre-grouping names (Wimbledon and Sutton, Torrington-Halwill), and I think there are some oddities in the New Cross area.

I also note that most stations in the London area (at least) are still to add.
 

theblackwatch

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Joined
15 Feb 2006
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10,714
I have to repeat 30907's comments - very impressive! It reminds me of the Cobb Atlas which I have a copy of. Checked my local area and it looks very accurate. I can imagine I'll get rather engrossed in it one evening in the autumn/winter!
 

1e10

Member
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13 Jun 2013
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Just taken a look at my local area and it looks fantastic.

Can confirm that this works on iPads.
 

W-on-Sea

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It looks really great - must have taken ages to make!


One error I've noticed: the Wantage Tramway (off the Great Western main line between Didcot and Swindon) continued for another mile or so south of the terminus you've shown, to Mill Street in the centre of Wantage itself. I'm not entirely sure which route it took, but I presume it continued along what is now the A338 (Grove Road), then along another section of Grove Road, and then along the north side of the Market Place to Mill Street, with the terminus near Smith's Wharf (a building of the old Tramway Company remains there)

Everywhere else that I know that I've looked at looks faultless!
 

MatthewB

Member
Joined
16 Jul 2013
Messages
30
Hello all, and thank you for the kind comments. I'm glad it loaded in your browsers and didn't crash at first attempt! Hopefully it wasn't too slow in loading the maps - did anyone try the station search function?

Karl - no coincidence about Lincoln, it's my local area so it was the first part I created and checked.

30907 - you are quite right. May be a bit lazy, but I've used pre-grouping names throughout most of the map, with more recent lines in the same area given the same colour. It's something I'll need to fix in time as I want the information to be correct. If you spot any others then please let me know. And London area stations haven't been added yet. It's on the to-do list, but I think I might work on the Isle of Man first.

W-on-Sea, I shall have to do some more digging on the Wantage Tramway (good spot!) I'll try and find the route and add it to the next update.

Cheers,

Matthew
 

yorksrob

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I have to say, having played with it, it looks to be a brilliant resource. Well done !
 

WSW

Member
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28 Nov 2011
Messages
124
This is one of the best online railway geography resources I have seen and I will be using this on a regular basis.

I'm a cartographer too so I'm interested in some of the technical processes, such as source material, cartographic software, positional accuracy issues - maybe PM me?

Steve


Hello,

I've been working on putting together a site depicting historical railways of the UK and Ireland. I've been working on the maps for many years, and have now decided to try and create a Google Maps based site to display them. The site is now up and running, and I'd really appreciate some feedback on firstly, whether it works, but more importantly if this is something that would be useful to the rail enthusiast community and also if there are any mistakes or omissions.

The site is at www.RailMapOnline.com. All feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Matthew
 

Wyvern

Established Member
Joined
27 Oct 2009
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Blimey! You've evn included the Duffield Bank Railway!

If I were to quibble I could say there were two tramways from Crich, not the one you've shown. The original one was Benjamin Outram's and ran down to the Cromford Canal at Bullbridge. The other was George Stephenson's and ran down to his limeworks at Ambergate. I remember the limeworks but not,I regret to say, the tranways. I think the trackbed of the latter is still visible and maybe Outram's as well. There is a description in the Wikipedia page about Crich.

Still to try and show all the tramways around Derby would possibly be a long job and maybe not worth the effort.

THe detail you have of the standard gauge lines is amazing, considering you are covering the country. What a job!
 
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30907

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Key appears if you click on Company at the top

@MatthewB - rechecked New Cross area, the only missing link is from the LBSC towards Bricklayers' Arms.
 

MatthewB

Member
Joined
16 Jul 2013
Messages
30
Hi, and thanks again for the support and feedback.

I've been through and updated the Wantage tramway and found the missing Crich tramway. Both were on old OS maps, but I guess I just didn't spot them first time round. Thanks to Wyvern and W-on-Sea. By the way, does anyone know where the Duffield Bank Rly actually was, as this is my best guess?

I've also re-badged the North Devon & Cornwall Junction Light Rly (thanks 30907) and made a few other corrections. I'll add in the New Cross missing link next time.

To see the corrections you might have to reload the webpages to make sure it just doesn't load the cached version.

1e10 - the legend is on the Company tab. The list is incomplete, and it's not very good at actually giving you a relevant legend at the moment. If you click the Area button it should narrow down the list to only those lines that are in view, but it is inaccurate - it's close to the top of the things to fix list! You can also click on the lines to get a pop-up box with company details.

WSW - if you go onto the Info tab there is some information about the main sources of information and a little about the methods used to put it on the web. I think I might move this to a separate page so its a little more accessible.
 

W-on-Sea

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Another omission I've spotted: in East London, the part of the Central Line opened in tunnel in the 1940s between Leytonstone and Newbury Park
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Also, unless I've misinterpreted the map, it looks as though there is only one branch of the Northern line shown between Euston and Camden Town (the Charing Cross branch, which has a station at Mornington Crescent): the Bank branch takes quite a substantial loop to the west of there
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
And.... the original, now closed branch of the Piccadilly line between Holborn and Aldwych/Strand is missing, too...
 

eastwestdivide

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Key appears if you click on Company at the top

All I get if I click Company is
Code:
Company Legend
Eastern England & Cumbria
Name  Area
Search: 
Data Loading

Safari 5.1.9

However, with Firefox 22.0, it works OK.

Also, in both browsers, a pop-up thingy appears if you click the actual line you're interested in.
 

MatthewB

Member
Joined
16 Jul 2013
Messages
30
Thanks W-on-Sea, tube lines corrected. As you can see, the representation of sub-surface lines is very basic at present. I need to tidy this up - does anyone know of some good information on the underground routes the tubes follow?

eastwestdivide - not sure what could be causing it. Does the list of stations load OK, or do you see "Data Loading" there as well? This part of the site uses Google Fusion Tables to load the data, so it could be that Safari 5.1.9 doesn't like them. Is the pop-up thingy working correctly (should get the line's name, any links and the option to search Google)? I'll do some digging - your feedback is really appreciated.
 

eastwestdivide

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Yes I get a list titled 2099 stations in the Places panel, and it appears immediately. I don't think it's complete though, as I'd have expected Abbey Wood to be near the top, and even typing Ab or ab doesn't show it when it's filtered down.
Equally, stations not on the list on the left don't appear as a little circle on the map when you tick the box
(All of the above = same behaviour in Firefox)

The pop-up thingy works pretty much as you describe - here's what I copied and pasted from one:
Code:
 Newtown to Dovey Jnc (Cambrian Rly)

http://www.railbrit.co.uk/Newtown_and_Machynlleth_Railway/frame.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_and_Machynlleth_Railway

SearchGooglefor 'Newtown to Dovey Jnc (Cambrian Rly)'

with the word Google as a link to
Code:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Newtown%20to%20Dovey%20Jnc%20(Cambrian%20Rly)+railway


Good luck debugging!
 

Wyvern

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27 Oct 2009
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1,573
Right - Duffield Bank Railway.

First thing to note: The present Duffield Bank House has nothing to do with it. It was built much later. Heywood's house was up the bank above the Makeney Road.

After that I'm somewhat lost. The railway was virtually forgotten even in Duffield until recently. There are a number of old OS maps on http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html but they aren't very clear.

Looking at the 1881 OS map you can see you can just see the line of the railway, the tunnel and two signal posts are marked. The 1900 and 1914 ones dont show it.

I believe therefore that Sir Arthur's house was what is now Springwood House Residential Care Home. As best as I can tell the railway ran where I've put the green line on the copy of your drawing, The lodge being where the red dot is just at the end as Eaton Bank road turns down towards the Bridge Inn. South of that was another property called Edgehill.
 

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tsr

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Between the parallel lines
As you can see, the representation of sub-surface lines is very basic at present. I need to tidy this up - does anyone know of some good information on the underground routes the tubes follow?

Try this extremely detailed map of all the London Underground Lines and most of the mainline railways within Greater London:

http://carto.metro.free.fr/cartes/metro-tram-london/index.php

Of course, you will probably wish to contact the cartographer first if you want any of their data or want to copy their drawings.

As an aside, may I compliment you on your hard work with this site... it's absolutely brilliant! :) Just one thing, though - I'm pretty sure there were more branches within Betchworth Quarry than (I can see) on the map. I believe old OS Maps may have details.
 

Class172

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West Country
I had a brief look at the map the other night and didn't have time to reply then - I must say what you have done is truly excellent, I have been looking for a map like yours for a while, showing closed railways alongside current. A superb effort!

I presume you are still in the process of adding station names, since when I searched a few of my nearby stations, they weren't in the search results?
 

Muzer

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3 Feb 2012
Messages
2,773
It would be good to be able to filter by time. So you could hide all lines that aren't there today, or show all lines that existed in a given year. Would this be at all feasible given the current system?
 

MatthewB

Member
Joined
16 Jul 2013
Messages
30
Hi all,

I've added in the Duffield Bank Rly as best as I can make out the route. Thanks Wyvern for tracking it down. While I was looking I also noticed that the Little Eaton Gangway needed some re-work, so that's had an update.

Also had emails about the missing Penmanshiel tunnel on the ECML and a mistake in Montrose, so they've both been corrected.

The stations are incomplete - 2099 included, and about 2000 other places so far. I'm adding to it a county at a time, but so far it contains Lincs, Yorks, Lancs, Durham, Northumberland, Cumbria, Devon & Cornwall. I'm trying to add in 'interesting' features as well, but if you spot any significant places missing in the counties covered so far then let me know (preferably with a Lat,Lng!)

eastwestdivide - looks like everything is working except the company list. This might take some time to fix, but it does load in a slightly different way to the station list which might explain it.

tsr - that carto map is amazing, but it is under Copyright so I will avoid copying it without permission. Wonder where he got his underground information from?

Muzer - I though about a time filter, but unfortunately I'd finished most of the maps by the time it occurred to me. It could be difficult to retrofit so I'm afraid it won't be coming any time soon.

Once again, thanks for the feedback and the help in spotting errors. It's finding all the little lines that I've never heard of before, or spotting new features that makes this so interesting for me. It all started (like many of us I suspect) by wondering why lines were where they were, and what some of the odd bumps and cuttings were that you see in the landscape.

Cheers
 

Muzer

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Muzer - I though about a time filter, but unfortunately I'd finished most of the maps by the time it occurred to me. It could be difficult to retrofit so I'm afraid it won't be coming any time soon.

Ah, that's a shame - just at the very least would have provided a good way to compare "then and now".
 

samxool

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26 Jan 2013
Messages
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for so long i had wondered why a bunch of seemingly random alley ways in mitcham and hackbridge were called tram path, as i could not find any evidence of a tram operating. Turns out it was the surrey iron railway, and your map not only highlighted me to it, but the alleyways called tram path do indeed follow the path of this railway.
One of life's greatest mysteries finally solved!! :D
 

cjmillsnun

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13 Feb 2011
Messages
3,254
This is one of the best online railway geography resources I have seen and I will be using this on a regular basis.

I'm a cartographer too so I'm interested in some of the technical processes, such as source material, cartographic software, positional accuracy issues - maybe PM me?

Steve

Ditto.

Chris
 

causton

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I love the fact it still thinks there's a railway from Hatfield to St Albans, which is pretty accurately represented for a line that closed 50+ years ago, as you can see the cycle path markings underneath :D
 

nickleics

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21 Jun 2008
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+1 to all of the positive comments about this new website - quite overwhelming to see how much work must have gone in to it, and how accurate and detailed it is. A really valuable resource - thank you.

Nick
 

maniacmartin

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Very impressive. The amount of detail is amazing. However I found the interface a bit counter-intuitive.

Also, since I couldn't get the bubble to pop up for it, what are the light green lines in the Nocton/Dunston fens (a local question for you)
 
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