As you will appreciate in a project like this we make use of many sources but they don't always get acknowledged at the foot of every single post. Nevertheless it is time to make this page as a list of some of those resources and how they have been used. The contributors are not listed in any particular order.
The politics of this project tend to surround the difficulty of making any money off it or being able to pay royalties to any contributor as would be the case for a commercial publication. Simply put, a series of publications that run to an estimated total of around 3000 pages are not going to appeal to a wider community of railfans because of the expense. I have chosen to forgo any possibility that this project could produce any kind of income for me in the future and therefore released the output of the project free of charge. It is hard enough as it is to produce more mainstream railfan publications and make a living off them in NZ without going out onto a more niche tangent like this one that attracts a much lower level of support even in the railfan community.
Unfortunately this means some of the people in the railfan community who have considerable knowledge are not always able to share it because of a threat to their own livelihood as authors or any royalties they may be able to derive from contributing to other publications. I appreciate this fact and this is mainly why there is not more information or cooperation with this project. Another political factor is my release of the output under a Creative Commons Share Alike License. The decisions around some of these are due to the time and expenses that could be involved in resolving the use of some significant sources of information and the possibility of having to administer and account for royalty payments in respect of some of these sources.
| Source | How Used |
| Steve Watts | As the current owner of the Quail Map Company's 4th edition originals for the NZ Railway and Tramway Atlas, Steve has unwaveringly supported and encouraged this project from the very beginning, even when it has not enjoyed unqualified support in the wider railfan community. We all started this more than 10 years ago in the hope of producing a revised 5th edition of the Atlas and Steve has not entirely abandoned that hope. From my point of view the maps of this NZRM project are capable of being used in a revision of the Atlas but not without much more work than I am capable of giving my attention to. |
| Land Information NZ via Tony Hurst |
The NZMS1 scanned map collection has been extremely valuable in looking at the historical placement of features that do not exist today or are not present on current maps.
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Geoff Blackmore
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Geoff contributed a lot of his personal knowledge and experience of many areas he has visited and maps he has viewed from various sources. Whilst Geoff hasn't been involved with this project for some years he still has free access to the output from the project without prejudice.
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Gerald Petrie
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A well known author in his own right in the NZ rail community, Gerald assisted me with some information on the Southbridge Branch. I regret that his livelihood as an author and the politics surrounding this project does not permit him to make more contributions but I have no regret in allowing him access to the work that I have done with this project as the license I have released it under allows free reuse.
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NZ Railway and Tramway Atlas (Quail Atlas)
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Quail Atlas 4th Edition was made available to me at an early stage of this project and contains a lot of relevant information. This project has returned that favour by discovering and documenting numerous errors in the Quail Atlas.
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Bruce Hermann
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Bruce is another author who has helped this project in practical ways such as making available the chainage charts for the Otago Central Railway and as a member of the research reference group.
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National Library of New Zealand
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This electronic resource has been the source of many maps from their collection and Whites Aviation oblique aerial photographs and photos of other railway subjects.
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Archives New Zealand
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Archives New Zealand's main contribution has been from their aerial photography contact print collection which gives access to orthogonal aerial photography at a relatively affordable price. Without that it would not have been practical to have made any significant use of this resource. My one regret is that their collection is not yet fully in the public domain free of charge because it is still too expensive for me to get more of their material that I would like to make use of. A lesser amount of data has come from specific research into particular rail lines in NZ.
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| Canterbury Maps | Canterbury Maps' collection of orthogonal aerial photography of Canterbury has helped fill in many historical features going back to the 1920s. |
| Auckland Library Heritage Images Collection | A great deal of interesting historical photography is available from this collection including historical orthogonal aerial photography of Auckland. |
| LINZ Data Service | LDS has released many map layers under Creative Commons that have been used to fill in additional detail in the maps as well as orthogonal aerial photography. |
| QGIS Project | The QGIS Project is a FOSS software development project that produces the software that has been used to author the maps that are now produced in the NZRM Project. The software is of a high quality and I have almost always used and had confidence in the beta releases and frequently updating them to the newest build. It was easy to use on Windows and stayed easy when I switched to Linux on the computer that I have done most of the authoring on. |
| Linux Mint Project | When I stopped using Windows as the host OS on which the maps are authored I did so in the confidence that the Linux Mint distribution is a high quality operating system that is more than capable of meeting the needs of a wide variety of computer based projects. The transition from Windows to Linux for authoring has been very straightforward and trouble free. |
| Google Earth / Google Maps | Google Earth is a pretty good basic map authoring tool and a great deal of the early work for this project was drawn up in GE. It is still useful in a number of areas but the technical limitations of their software and of maps based on overlays of ever changing aerial images have been a prime reason why the change to a GIS based authoring system was made. A very key issue is the possibility of issues with Google licensing for making use of information from their satellite imagery and that is one key reason why the project is a non-profit activity. |
| Open Street Maps | Open Street Maps is another mapping project that could have been a platform for this project. The main issue with OSM was their initial lack of interest in historical information and some difficulty in producing a hard copy output. Hence the break to a GIS based system. I don't know whether their stance has changed much in relation to historical information but their maps in NZ don't have a great deal. |
| New Popular Edition Maps (UK)(npemap.co.uk) | This English website was an inspiration about 10 years ago when I was tracing some old railways in Wales on Google Earth and has inspired this project. It was originally part of a free postcode database project which has since been discontinued, but the map site and its content remains. (I have never been to the UK, but researching some of its rail history from afar was very interesting) |
| Colin Kemp | Colin Kemp gave me some useful pointers, including the realignment of the Main South Line between Normanby and Pareora (due to coastal erosion) and the Midland Line just south of Joyces Creek. For political reasons I felt unable to accept his offer of a cab ride to see these areas for myself. |
| Keith Clare | Keith Clare alias "Westle Quix" helped with a lot of Otago Central stuff, lending his firsthand knowledge as a surfaceman working on the line in the 1970s, including the Cromwell Gorge. |
| Andrew Wilson | I've known Andrew since we both worked on rail preservation projects in Christchurch in the mid-1980s. We travelled a few of the old branch lines in North and Mid Canterbury about that time. Andrew now chairs the Little River Station museum project that has developed out of the Little River Rail Trail. |
| NZR & Kiwirail publications | Working timetables and a considerable volume of other data from NZR and Kiwirail have helped inform this project with respect to the stations and their locations on the Kiwirail Network as it presently stands. |
| Rail Heritage Trust (Juliet Scoble) | Juliet Scoble's publication "Dates and Names" released under the auspices of the Rail Heritage Trust contains invaluable information about nearly every railway station in New Zealand. |
| Railway Enthusiasts Society | RES published in the 1960s several volumes of curve and gradient diagrams for major lines. |
| Otago Railway and Locomotive Society, Otago Excursion Train Trust, Taieri Gorge Railway | These organisations through the publication of "Over the Garden Wall" and related activities made available considerable data about the Otago Central Railway. |
| Te Papa Museum of New Zealand | Historical photography collections contain a great deal of interesting data. |
| Chris Wood | Chris Wood's book "Steaming To The Sunrise" published 1996 contains a wealth of information about the construction of railways in the Gisborne District. |
| Christine Johnson | Chris Johnson has contributed a volume of interesting archival material including photos of some old tunnels and a now-defunct Geocities site about the construction of the NIMT. |
| Malvern Shoemark | Malvern Shoemark contributed a number of historical photographs and other information about the NZR rail network. He also helped in the obtaining of the chainage charts for the Otago Central Railway. |
| Chris Dawson | Chris is sometimes better known as "munkysquidhybrid" in certain forums. He has provided information about a number of railways around Southland in particular. |
| Southland Ghost Railways forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Shane McDowall have contributed a volume of information about railways in the area, including some of the early coal lines and NZR branches. |
| Ghost Railways of Otago forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Murray Renton have contributed a volume of information about railways in the area, including some of the early coal lines and NZR branches. |
| Ghost Railways of Canterbury forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Gary Kirton have contributed a volume of information about railways in the area, including some of the early coal lines and NZR branches. |
| John Stephens | As a former NZR civil engineer John has assisted in technical information about aspects of the Kiwirail network. |
| NZ Railway Historical Group forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Paul Weatherhead have contributed a volume of information about railways across New Zealand. |
| New Zealand Locomotives forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Geoff Blackmore have contributed a volume of information about railways across New Zealand. |
| Locomotives of New Zealand forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Nathan Kemp have contributed a volume of information about railways across New Zealand. |
| NZ Rail Geography forum members | Members of this forum which is admined by Steve Watts have contributed a volume of information about railways across New Zealand. |
| David Leitch and Bryan Scott | Leitch and Scott published two editions of "Exploring New Zealand's Ghost Railways" back in the 1990s, which for a lot of New Zealand railfans really germinated their interest in ghost railways. The intention of this project is to produce an online resource which supplants this now defunct publication, through effectively documenting all of the information it contains in map form. |
| Bruce W Melville and Stephen E Coleman | Professors Melville and Coleman, of the Auckland University Engineering Department, have through their book "Bridge Scour" informed the project on the deterioration of the longest railway bridge in the North Island and why it is a significant long term liability for the Napier-Gisborne Line. |
| Rusty Railers | The "Rusty Railers" group has as its members a number of persons mentioned above and we have exchanged a good deal of information, including collections of maps produced by this project, at various times. The group actively visits ghost railways around the country to further our knowledge of these lines at ground level. |
| NZ Rail Maps forum members | Members of this research group have provided invaluable assistance in the production of the maps and the entire project to date. |
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