Rail Map Project

[Lee_Again]

How about a Forum project to put together an 'ultimate' map [a bit like those sims guys]. Gav could do the coding but others could contribute with various other skills etc.

I'm thinking...

A map of all rail routes (incl. all historic routes, freight etc) in GB
Zoom in for greater detail; junction names, crossings, bridges and tunnels
Click on station for facilities
Click on From, To for routeing options
Click on From, To, Avoid for timetable and ticket info
TOC routes
Distance between two stations (or along selected route)
Approx location of all trains based on latest arrival/departure data

And now the business case...

Charge users a subscription fee for anything other than basic detail
Charge for advertising
Charge us 'anaraks' for recording personal trips - our very own on-line trip history

Thoughts...??

 

[MidnightFlyer]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ambitious. That map that hadn't been updated wass good, hopefully this one can be too, and interctive etc

 

[b0b]

Lots of track technical data here:

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/5523.aspx

 

[ColuGav]

Nice ideas Lee, however I believe we should start with the basic map showing current lines... Not wanting to dig too much of a hole!

 

[Dai.]

I hope this map is going to be an actual Map not .pdf

I dislike .pdf maps they take ages to load.

 

[ColuGav]

well I'm going to release it as a zoomable pdf and a tiled map that you can download sections or scroll around the entire map.

 

[b0b]

The Meridian 2 dataset on data.gov.uk has rail line paths. I'm trying to determine if its got every line mashed together and whether the data is usable with the station data from NaPTAN or Meridian 2 to plot stations.....

Meridian 2 also has a station_point file with stations......

I think someone already did your work there

even better, using qgis to load the rail_in_polyline & station_point set, from random clicking around it appears that the rail_in_polyline splits inside the station_point circles.

It should be possible to draw some awesome charts i think !


qgis: http://www.qgis.org/wiki/Download

edit 2: screenshot of qgis with station data + line data + line section selected

 

[TGV]

I looked into this years ago. I started drawing my own maps from scratch. It wasn't just a simple line to represent "a railway" - I had a single line on the map representing a single railway line. Therefore where a track was doubled, there were 2 lines, where the track was quadrupled, there were 4 lines, etc.... I drew my first sample map on AutoCAD using an underlayed raster image of the map as a template. Having done Kings Cross and Moorgate up past Finsbury Park and on to the junction at Alexandra Palace where the Hertford loop splits, I realised that this was going to take YEARS to finish. The maps looked good though.

I'd saved the .dwg files as .dxf and then converted them into either .jpg or .pdf for browsing. I don't have enough web skills to make a zoomable map. Then I gave up.

But I'm very interested in the idea. I have rail atlases in book format and they're great, but I always wanted more detail. Like what lines are electrified, how and where it starts and finishes. I used simple colours for mine: Blue lines were 25kV, red were 750DC 3rd rail, black was non-electrified and green was other electrification (LUL etc...).

Other things that should be marked - signalling areas, and boxes, level crossings, junction names and significant landmarks - i.e. where major roads and motorways cross lines, bridges over major rivers etc...

In my opinion - to do the job properly and do it justice with the kind of detail above (not just have plain lines scrawled on a map which is no better than you can get on multimap anyway) - you'd need a team of people working on it. I'd be intersted in doing something like that if I had time though - it's just such a massive project.

 

[b0b]

I'm investigating the Meridian 2 data: I've loaded it into a database that supports spatial data and I found a routing plugin, here's what I have so far

find the locations of Carlisle and Middlesbrough:

select gid, name, st_astext(the_geom) from station_point where name = 'Carlisle' or name = 'Middlesbrough';
 gid |     name      |      st_astext
-----+---------------+----------------------
  20 | Carlisle      | POINT(340221 555454)
  63 | Middlesbrough | POINT(449628 520716)

find the the rail edge id for Carlisle (2 results as track leaves in 2 directions):

railway_database=> select source from rail_in_polyline where st_intersects(the_geom, 'POINT(340221 555454)');
 source
--------
     44
     45
(2 rows)

find the rail edge id for Middlesbrough

railway_database=> select target from rail_in_polyline where st_intersects(the_geom, 'POINT(449628 520716)');
 target 
--------
    318
    317
(2 rows)

find the shortest path distance between the two:

railway_database=> select sum(cost) from shortest_path('select gid as id, source::int4, target::int4, length::double precision as cost from rail_in_polyline', 45, 317, false, false);
       sum
------------------
 161718.271471905
(1 row)

I believe the OS grid refs are in meters, so giving a distance of about 162km, which appears in the close!

 

[Nick W]

I hadn't heard of Openstreetmap before - but that looks very useful for finding information about railway elements - I note that it has platforms etc marked on!

Bob has already beaten me to mentioned the railway information data.gov.uk Since this has all the information you need to render a map, I wouldn't waste any time in Illustrator, but look into using open source graphics libraries to render a map automatically. Stations and lines should be relatively trivial. Station names will be a little hard. I might look into this next week if I get round to it. How confident are you at programming?

 

[b0b]

ooo, openstreetmap looks interesting!

 

[ColuGav]

Hello,

I've now got up to Exeter, including Barnstaple and Exmouth Branches!

http://www.4shared.com/document/IO1yYOgh/Map.html

Here is the link to the updated version in PDF format...

Let me know your thoughts!


[edit]My programming expertise probably wouldn't stretch far enough for that, seems you'd be looking at some hardcore server scripting, however I think it may be worth looking into! But evenings after work limit time available [/edit]
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I looked into this years ago. I started drawing my own maps from scratch. It wasn't just a simple line to represent "a railway" - I had a single line on the map representing a single railway line. Therefore where a track was doubled, there were 2 lines, where the track was quadrupled, there were 4 lines, etc.... I drew my first sample map on AutoCAD using an underlayed raster image of the map as a template. Having done Kings Cross and Moorgate up past Finsbury Park and on to the junction at Alexandra Palace where the Hertford loop splits, I realised that this was going to take YEARS to finish. The maps looked good though.

I'd saved the .dwg files as .dxf and then converted them into either .jpg or .pdf for browsing. I don't have enough web skills to make a zoomable map. Then I gave up.

But I'm very interested in the idea. I have rail atlases in book format and they're great, but I always wanted more detail. Like what lines are electrified, how and where it starts and finishes. I used simple colours for mine: Blue lines were 25kV, red were 750DC 3rd rail, black was non-electrified and green was other electrification (LUL etc...).

Other things that should be marked - signalling areas, and boxes, level crossings, junction names and significant landmarks - i.e. where major roads and motorways cross lines, bridges over major rivers etc...

In my opinion - to do the job properly and do it justice with the kind of detail above (not just have plain lines scrawled on a map which is no better than you can get on multimap anyway) - you'd need a team of people working on it. I'd be intersted in doing something like that if I had time though - it's just such a massive project.

Got a copy of these maps you drew up?

may be able to implement a few of your ideas into this basic map, i.e. electrifications etc...

 

[ainsworth74]

Let me know your thoughts!

Good so far!

One thought, it could do with something to show the outline of the country. Just to make it easier to identify the lines location within the country not just to other stations and rail lines.

 

[At_traction]

The Meridian 2 dataset on data.gov.uk has rail line paths. I'm trying to determine if its got every line mashed together and whether the data is usable with the station data from NaPTAN or Meridian 2 to plot stations.....

Meridian 2 also has a station_point file with stations......

How/where did you get the data in .QGS format?

I only found downloads for ESRI Shape and (direct) .DXF formats at the OS site. I thus downloaded the Strategi and Meridian 2 data in .DXF for use with AutoCAD. Strategi data files (just two for the whole of Britain!) were too heavy for AutoCAD or ArchiCAD to even open, but the Meridian 2 was even somewhat useful as a basis... Having a subgrid key for the Meridian 2 reference squares would be useful too.
(I also downloaded one OS VectorMap District but couldn't get AutoCAD to accept any of the .DXF files at all.) So, a great success here so far.

I looked into this years ago. I started drawing my own maps from scratch. It wasn't just a simple line to represent "a railway" - I had a single line on the map representing a single railway line. Therefore where a track was doubled, there were 2 lines, where the track was quadrupled, there were 4 lines, etc.... I drew my first sample map on AutoCAD using an underlayed raster image of the map as a template. Having done Kings Cross and Moorgate up past Finsbury Park and on to the junction at Alexandra Palace where the Hertford loop splits, I realised that this was going to take YEARS to finish. The maps looked good though.

I am in fact thinking of doing something similar, although more in the vein of the London Railway Atlas with more simplified track presentation but with the shape of the station/plafms and the some of the surrounding streetscape presented. And presenting also the locations/shapes of the disused stations as well as speed restrictions and other anorakism I can get from the data.gov.uk coffers.

And yes, around Central London only.

I hadn't heard of Openstreetmap before - but that looks very useful for finding information about railway elements - I note that it has platforms etc marked on!

Platforms? Whereabouts? At least in London I didn't see any presented. May be due to "sloppier" editing, or...

 

[ColuGav]

Thats coming on another layer...

What do you guys think about me putting this into a flash application, allowing you to click on the stations, which brings up information about said station along with a track plan? would that be an idea?

 

[b0b]

How/where did you get the data in .QGS format?

I use the ERSI shapefile Meridian 2 file data and imported it into a postgresql database... postgresql has a postgis add-on and I just found a pgRouting plugin which is what I'm using, for example, to find the rail distance between Carlisle & Middlesbrough.

 

[ainsworth74]

Thats coming on another layer...

Good stuff

 

[TGV]

Got a copy of these maps you drew up?

may be able to implement a few of your ideas into this basic map, i.e. electrifications etc...

Yup - attached below (if it works). This was pre-colouring, but as these lines are all 25kV, they'd all be blue.

It's Kings Cross up to Finsbury Park. Geographically AND track geometry correct. (Pre platform 0 by the way - this was done 5 years ago!)

My plan was to have the whole of the mainland done like this... But to give you an idea of the workload - this one image took 3 days to do including the mapping, conversion of AutoCAD files and that's before putting any notation on it! I think realistically to continue like this, it'd take about 2 days per mile of track... therefore, over 2 years JUST to do the ECML.

 

[ColuGav]

TGV - I like that, looks very clean, how did you trace that? must be pretty high res aerial images?

Am currently researching how I can import this data into my database on my web server..

 

[TGV]

TGV - I like that, looks very clean, how did you trace that? must be pretty high res aerial images?

Am currently researching how I can import this data into my database on my web server..

I drew straight lines over a combination of OS map data AND aerial photos that are high-res enough to show the track detail. As for the smoothness of the curves and parallel lines - that's thanks to AutoCAD's filleting. Basically I drew straight lines over the maps and then filleted them in AutoCAD until the track radius matched that on the map.

Like I said - looks great, but doesn't half take a while!

 

[b0b]

I drew straight lines over a combination of OS map data AND aerial photos that are high-res enough to show the track detail.

And you probably can't distribute the results due to copyright

 

[TGV]

And you probably can't distribute the results due to copyright

That was a long term problem. You can apply for use of up to 10 uses of OS maps for your own purposes (which I did), but my uncle wrote a book that had OS map images in it and he helped me with the licencing issues that I would have had to cover if I'd continued the project.

I wanted to finish the Kings Cross area to prove the concept - and I did - it looked awesome.

I just couldn't be arsed finishing it!

 

[Greenback]

I'm not surprised, it sounds like far too much work for too little reward!