Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Maps task force

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[edit] Initial tagging

I've gone through Category:Wikipedia requested maps and Template:North America class I and tagged articles with Mapneeded=yes as appropriate (and a few, like Wisconsin Central Railway, with Mapdetails to give more information). There are quite a few more that still need to be tagged, especially when we look at railroad companies and train routes worldwide. We've got our work cut out for us. Slambo (Speak) 03:46, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Category:Trains project articles needing maps now has 112 articles in it. Slambo (Speak) 03:47, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There's the articles listed on {{US class II}}, now we're up to 124 maps needed. Slambo (Speak) 04:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I got a start in going through the articles on {{US class III}}, getting up through the reporting marks that start with C. It's getting late here, so I'm going to bed now and plan to get back to tagging in the morning. If anyone else wants to finish off the class III lines, feel free (just leave a note here on how far you get). Slambo (Speak) 04:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Tagged D, E and F on {{US class III}}. We now have 178 in the map needed category. Slambo (Speak) 15:14, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There, I'm through that template now, and I went through Cat:Amtrak routes as well. We're up to 313 articles that need maps now, and we haven't even started on the list of railroads and trains operating outside of the US. Slambo (Speak) 19:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Data Source

For the maps I've been making I've been using http://www.bts.gov/publications/north_american_transportation_atlas_data/ as my source - does require GIS software to use. Note the date is 1998 so it doesn't include the most recent mergers. Kmusser 15:34, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

How accurate is it? The publicly available railroad GIS layers I've looked at for New York State are essentially worthless. They're very precise but not very accurate. For example, they list sections of the Rutland east of Norwood, even though that railroad doesn't exist. And they are missing sections of the New York and Ogdensburg which does exist. They're so bad that I created my own dataset for New York State. It's not as precise but it's far more accurate. RussNelson 02:56, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure really - I've been using it for national scale maps, so detailed accuracy isn't really important. I haven't checked it against any other sources to see how good it is. I have noticed that many lines are missing data, that is the location is shown but without any ownership information. Kmusser 05:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Metra maps

I noticed that Slambo tagged Metra Electric Line with "maps needed". I wondered about making a bunch of Metra maps myself. Should they be real, to-scale maps, or are schematics more appropriate for commuter railroads? Gws57 16:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm more inclined to build maps that show the lines with all their curves and bends in a more to-scale representation. A schematic could be used to show all the lines on a summary article about the entire system, but once we get down to individual lines, they should be rendered realistically. Slambo (Speak) 17:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Slambo's inclination, but would like to add that I think any map showing the Metra Electric line in detail should also show the South Shore (NICTD) line. They share tracks between downtown Chicago and 115th St./Cottage Grove Ave., which represents a considerable portion of both lines. They also share seven stations (Randolph St., Van Buren St., Roosevelt Rd., McCormick Place, 57th St, 63rd St., and Kensington). In any case, the map should at least include the NICTD's route up until it crosses into Indiana. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.72.174.16 (talk • contribs) 16:23, December 6, 2006.

Sounds reasonable to me as long as South Shore owned infrastructure is labeled as such. Slambo (Speak) 12:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus

So let talk about a consensus on how maps look. I not sure how many have made maps but it not easy. I use photo-shop to make mine, scale is the big problem. Most of the ones i made more then once do to the problem of scale. I will be the first to say that i am not realy happy with the way they look. The problem is that old rail maps are not around of thease railroads. Lazarus-long 16:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

There are several different styles in use currently, these are just a few...

BNSF Railway	Scott Special	Boston and Lowell Railroad	Maine Central Railroad
Boston and Albany Railroad	Qingzang railway	List of New York railroads	List of New Zealand railway lines

Of these, the BNSF map is closest to the style that is preferred by the Maps project. I created the Scott Special map based on Image:US state outline map.png, cropped and edited with The GIMP to add the route line and labels. The only problem that I run into (other than time) when I have the resource data to correctly draw the route is that I don't have specific map making software.

I like the way that both BNSF and Scott Special look, mostly because they show the most important data for the map (the routes that are discussed in the article and how they relate to political borders) and they don't include an extreme amount of data that cause the route to be lost and difficult to follow. An interesting coincidence that I see is the choice of color for the route – the majority of railroad maps use a bright red color for the route. Slambo (Speak) 17:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I did make the BNSF one with the Maps project in mind. I like the way the Scott Special one looks as well, I prefer it to the B & A map. I think the others all have their place though. Historical maps like the MC one are neat and should be used where they're available. I tend to prefer geographically correct maps to schematics like the B & L one, but if you don't have the actual track location a schematic may be the best you can do - also some lines with stations very close to each other like commuter lines might be better shown by schematic. Adding topography is nice for routes that were famous for going over mountains, I wouldn't add it for all though as it can make the map harder to read.

The Maps project recommends using SVG over PNG and that probably would help your scale problems. I haven't been able to make a SVG map that looks nearly as nice as my PNG ones though, though that might just be me knowing how to use Photoshop a lot better than Illustrator. Kmusser 13:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I created Image:Nys-railroads.png and could create similar maps for individual New York State railroads with relatively little effort. I agree with Slambo that the Scott Special is a nice representation, particularly since it shows the stations along the route. It clearly requires a fair bit of hand work. However, that would not be appropriate for a map that shows a system map of the entire New York Central. For that, the BNSF map, or my Nys-railroads map is more appropriate.

[edit] System Map Location?

Where should system maps be located on the page? I looked at a few pages, and whenever a system map exists, it is the top image in the infobox. However, some infoboxes have the railroad's herald there. Seems to me that there ought to be a standard place for displaying the railroad's herald as well.

I ask because I want to auto-generate a bunch of system maps for New York State, and I want to be able to auto insert them as well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RussNelson (talk • contribs) 22:17, October 7, 2006.

What you're seeing is a difference in the presence of specific infobox parameters. Where a railroad logo is added, it will always appear above the map area in the infobox. Both the logo and map parameters are optional and their respective rows are hidden if the parameters are not specified. Slambo (Speak) 14:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

W00t! Okay, what do people think of this one: Delaware and Northern RussNelson 17:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd brighten up the color used for the route, I think it blends into the background a little too much. Otherwise, it's nice Kmusser 16:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A few undecided features in maps

I've tried my hand at a few maps:

Now that I look back at these, I see I haven't been using a consistent style for these maps. Beyond that, though, I'm looking for feedback on a few things I've done:

I've been using dotted lines and/or different colors for trackage that has since been abandoned. (Except for the RRVW map, where I used dotted lines for trackage rights on other railways.)
For the most part, I've used thich red lines for the primary railroad, and other colors for other railroads in the area. An exception is the BNSF map, where I used BN's green color and ATSF's blue color to show those lines separately. Do we have any sort of color standard? Actually, can you help me come up with a color standard for consistency?
Should I show the names of major cities along the route?
Is it useful to show the highways in a metro area along with the railroads, like I did with the MNNR map?

I welcome any other comments on the maps I've drawn so I can be consistent and clear in what I'm doing. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 21:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

There hasn't been any standard. I've been using red for the primary railroad as well. I noticed that many of the railroad companies use dotted lines for trackage rights on their own maps, so that may be a good way to go. For cities I'd say it depends on the scale, for the railroads that cover large regions I've left them out, but if it just covers 1 or 2 states they make a useful reference point. On the MNNR map I think the highways are a little confusing, they could easily be taken for other railroads - just having cities is probably good enough. Kmusser 15:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The colors I used on my NYS map

   'BnO': 'saddlebrown',
   'BnM': 'limegreen',
   'DnH': 'blue',
   'DLnW': 'purple',
   'EL': 'red',
   'LV': 'peru',
   'NYOnW': 'khaki',
   'PSnN': 'palevioletred',
   'NYC': 'green',
   'NYNHnH': 'purple',
   'PRR': 'dodgerblue',
   'LIRR': 'dodgerblue',
   'Rutland': 'plum',
   'Shortline': 'orange',

I took these colors (more or less) from the New York State Railroad Network Map linked here: [1] The names of the colors are standard X Window System names; ask if you need to have RGB color numbers to go with them.

[edit] Test of a CSX division exported from ArcMap

Obviously it is not completed; I would add trackage rights and other divisions and fix the labels. But is the general idea good? I also hope to distribute my changes to the BTS GIS data; I added columns for the divisions and subdivisions. --NE2 01:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It's good, but I think readers who aren't familiar with US geography wouldn't have a good idea of where it fits in the country. Maybe if you added an inset to show where this lies within the US; the map on Monaco shows one example of using an inset, but with the smaller land area in the inset. Slambo (Speak) 12:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I decided to make a full map first, but I need a few questions answered: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains#Questions for anyone familiar with CSX operations. Please help. --NE2 01:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Here it is; it still has a few possible errors but it's good enough for the article now: