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  • Apple Maps: Newtown Station

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in Pennsylvania
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in Pennsylvania

Moderator: bwparker1

 #1139493  by 25Hz
 
This is just torture!

Image
 #1139559  by Clearfield
 
Try Atlantis on Apple Maps.
 #1139623  by scottychaos
 
*what* is "just torture"?
it looks like a perfectly reasonable and normal map to me..
(Perhaps if you know, very well, that specific area you would you understand what the torture is?)
but for the rest of us, we have no idea what you are talking about! ;)
not seeing any torture at all..
and im curious, I want to know what the torture is!
(im interested in maps in general, as a hobby) so better explanation please?

Scot
 #1139646  by trackwelder
 
scottychaos wrote:*what* is "just torture"?
it looks like a perfectly reasonable and normal map to me..
(Perhaps if you know, very well, that specific area you would you understand what the torture is?)
but for the rest of us, we have no idea what you are talking about! ;)
not seeing any torture at all..
and im curious, I want to know what the torture is!
(im interested in maps in general, as a hobby) so better explanation please?

Scot
there hasn't been an active rail line to newtown since 1981 (83?), even though it"s technically listed as "temporarily" out of service. the newtown line is a bit of a sore spot for many train nerds in the philadelphia region.
 #1139656  by scottychaos
 
jtaeffner wrote:
scottychaos wrote:*what* is "just torture"?
it looks like a perfectly reasonable and normal map to me..
(Perhaps if you know, very well, that specific area you would you understand what the torture is?)
but for the rest of us, we have no idea what you are talking about! ;)
not seeing any torture at all..
and im curious, I want to know what the torture is!
(im interested in maps in general, as a hobby) so better explanation please?

Scot
there hasn't been an active rail line to newtown since 1981 (83?), even though it"s technically listed as "temporarily" out of service. the newtown line is a bit of a sore spot for many train nerds in the philadelphia region.
oh wow! thats pretty funny..
yeah, for some reason map companys have a difficult time keeping up with the times when it comes to railroads..
I have seen current maps that list a line as belonging to the Erie Lackawanna Railroad..
it happens a lot..

I think as long as the tracks are still in place, they dont bother to look into changing railroad names,
or even bother to look into whether or not trains are still running on those tracks!
these days, they probably update mostly by satellite images and aerial photography, then use computers
to compare older to newer photos, then document the differences..
but if the tracks were in place 30 years ago, and they are still in place today, as far as the map company is concerned, nothing has changed..

Scot
 #1139658  by Levittowner
 
Looks like they only listed the Newtown station, the next station listed on the line is the still active Fox Chase station.
 #1139761  by JeffK
 
scottychaos wrote:yeah, for some reason map companies have a difficult time keeping up with the times when it comes to railroads.. I have seen current maps that list a line as belonging to the Erie Lackawanna Railroad..
I have a recent Montgomery County map with lines tagged Penn Central.

It sounds far-fetched but when I brought a similar gaffe to the attention of AAA's map people, they said they intentionally put in (supposedly) benign mistakes to help catch copyright violators. Apparently theft and resale isn't limited to music.
 #1139776  by scottychaos
 
JeffK wrote:
scottychaos wrote:yeah, for some reason map companies have a difficult time keeping up with the times when it comes to railroads.. I have seen current maps that list a line as belonging to the Erie Lackawanna Railroad..
I have a recent Montgomery County map with lines tagged Penn Central.

It sounds far-fetched but when I brought a similar gaffe to the attention of AAA's map people, they said they intentionally put in (supposedly) benign mistakes to help catch copyright violators. Apparently theft and resale isn't limited to music.
yeah, but those little mistakes wouldn't account for something like Erie Lackawanna or Penn Central still being on maps today..
the "intentional mistakes" the map companys used to make are things like small fictional towns, that don't actually exist..
they were called "paper towns"..
then if that town shows up on a competitors map, it can be an obvious sign that the competitor probably "stole" the map to make their own..
but something like an old railroad name wouldn't work in that case..because the old railroad actually existed! ;)

In the 1930's one map company made a fake town, at a remote intersection, where nothing existed, in the Catskills of NY state.
It was purposely put on the map to be this sort of "trap"..a "paper town" to catch other companys who might copy their map.
They named it Agloe, NY.
and, it worked!
a competitor came out with a new map, with Agloe on it! busted!
but then..years later..a store opened at that intersection..looking at a map, the store owners noticed they were located in Agloe, NY,and so named their store
the "Agloe general store"! which led to a very small town..(just a store and one or two houses really..)
but the "fictional" name on the map, led to a *real* town of the same name!
true story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York
Today the town is gone again..
but Agloe lives on in legend.
Fans of the author John Green make pilgrimages to Agloe fairly often apparently..there are youtube videos.
(I havent read the book, so I dont know that that is about..but DFTBA anyway.)

Scot
 #1139917  by DeltaV
 
I have a Nokia phone, and its maps show a lot of the 'suspended lines', including the full Ivy Ridge, Newtown, and West Chester (including the chester creek and the other 'oc...' branch). No stations, just the lines.

It also shows the branch from Norristown to Oreland through Flourtown; I've been walking that with my family for decades and never saw tracks (although there is a bridge over the Wissahickon).
 #1139960  by Clearfield
 
I use maps like that all the time for transit archeology.
 #1139982  by glennk419
 
DeltaV wrote:I have a Nokia phone, and its maps show a lot of the 'suspended lines', including the full Ivy Ridge, Newtown, and West Chester (including the chester creek and the other 'oc...' branch). No stations, just the lines.

It also shows the branch from Norristown to Oreland through Flourtown; I've been walking that with my family for decades and never saw tracks (although there is a bridge over the Wissahickon).
That was the Reading's Plymouth branch. It actually ran from Oreland (the wye is still in place but now disconnected from the Bethlehem branch) to Conshohocken. It crossed Bethlehem Pike, Stenton Avenue, Joshua Road, Flourtown Road, Butler Pike, Germantown Pike and Allan Wood Road at grade. Most of the line has been totally obliterated and reclaimed by the adjacent property owners and Mother Nature but the ROW and bridge as you mentioned can still be seen bisecting the Philadelphia Cricket Club. Never a high density branch, it did survive into Conrail but the final death knell came with the closing of Allan Wood Steel. IIRC, it was finally pulled up in the early eighties.
 #1140499  by Andyt293
 
That's okay, a few months ago the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission finally got around to placing a Conrail sign on the ex-Reading Catasaqua and Fogelsville Branch bridge over I-476. Nothing like waiting 36 years after the company was created or 13 years after it was split up to let people know whose rail line it was.
 #1142571  by RDGAndrew
 
Here's the current sad state of Newtown Station. I tried embedding the image but it didn't work, so follow the link instead. The townhomes sit on what once was a wye and a freight spur into a lumberyard. Behind the camera, the track used to pass under a bridge, which has since been filled in with an embankment. 18 miles further down the line, a mile and half of track has been converted to a recreational trail, and beyond that a large bridge is missing. But there's still a placeholder in SEPTA's capital budget to restore service *someday*...likely to a park & ride station just outside Newtown Borough at the 413, not conveniently in town as the original was. Note the Pandrol clips on the main track at left - the line was upgraded after service was suspended...

https://picasaweb.google.com/1110328093 ... 3234200050