Railroad Forums 

  • Bing Maps incorrect at Marion Interchange

  • Discussion related to the operations and equipment of Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail) from 1976 to its present operations as Conrail Shared Assets. Official web site can be found here: CONRAIL.COM.
Discussion related to the operations and equipment of Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail) from 1976 to its present operations as Conrail Shared Assets. Official web site can be found here: CONRAIL.COM.

Moderators: TAMR213, keeper1616

 #761626  by CPSK
 
Have you ever noticed that if you look at the BING street map of the Marion Junction area in Jersey City, NJ, you will still see the old connector from the P&H Westbound to the runner that leads up towards Croxton yard, and eventually into the CSX River Line.
This track was removed shortly after the new connection to the P&H Eastbound was built.
If you look at the Aerial map, you will of course see the new connector, not the old.

It is my understanding that all of the commercially available maps use the USGS survey maps for much of their data, so the problem would be the USGS are not updated often enough.
Because of this, I have come to rely mainly on the Aerial maps, using the street maps only to get into a general area more quickly.

I guess what I really need is a good railroad map that also has the street overlay.

Another note: Not Conrail, but NYS&W. Same problem with the maps. It's hard to find a street level map that even shows the NYS&W through Passaic and Sussex county, NJ.

FW
 #761638  by umtrr-author
 
Well, they're free and worth at least that much... and sometimes exactly that much.

Checking for an office I have to visit next month, entering its exact address resulted in the return of... a vacant lot. I'm sure the several hundred people at this location would be very surprised to know this.

And had I followed the directions of another map service, I'd be at the bottom of Lake Tahoe right now.

The net of it for me is, most of the time the online maps will get you close, but you still have to do a little bit of your own work once you get in range.
 #762047  by lvrr325
 
Jeeze, I bought maps in the 1990s that showed the entire Lehigh Valley main across New York - and still labeled it as such - and one that labeled what is now either the Rochester & Southern or the abandoned Buffalo & Pittsburgh, as Conrail - updating that stuff isn't exactly high priority, and errors can be left in on purpose to help ID if you copied their map to make your own.

In fact even my NYS DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer has a goof in two editions - although the former NYO&W track is entirely deleted between Onieda and Sylvan Beach, not even the ROW shown, it does have a dismembered "abandoned" still on the map. Which means, more oddly, that some previous edition must have still shown as abandoned in place a line that was pulled up in 1958 - which is before you could ever buy a DeLorme map, I'm pretty sure.
 #762080  by CPSK
 
The truth of the matter is that cartographers do not pay much attention to railroads. If it's an active line, they'll usually indicate the track in its approximate location, but rarely have the name of the railroad correct. I find it funny that sometimes they try to show multiple tracks, but never show how the tracks are really interlocked.

I am extremely thankful to Google Earth and Bing aerial maps though. They are obviously more accurate than the general street maps. I'm also enjoying Google's street level images, which really helps to see what is really there.
I can go to places to see rail alignments where I would never set foot for fear of my life, but I am finding more and more Google maps that let my little "avatar" do the railfanning :-D

FW
 #762083  by RussNelson
 
I've been editing OpenStreetMap, and fixing the railroads of New York State. http://openstreetmap.org/ They're the same folks who have been making crazy improvements to their map of Haiti, putting in markers for collapsed buildings, and refugee camps, etc. The nice thing about OpenStreetMap is that you don't have to wait for anybody's permission. When you see something wrong, you just go fix it.
 #778222  by CPSK
 
RussNelson wrote:I've been editing OpenStreetMap, and fixing the railroads of New York State. http://openstreetmap.org/ They're the same folks who have been making crazy improvements to their map of Haiti, putting in markers for collapsed buildings, and refugee camps, etc. The nice thing about OpenStreetMap is that you don't have to wait for anybody's permission. When you see something wrong, you just go fix it.
Thanks for the info on OpenStreetMap. I created an account.
If I want to properly edit railroad lines, is there a website I can find the current ownership of a specific line?
I don't want to put in any incorrect data.
I have noticed some errors in the NJ/NY area, including the sections of NYS&W labeled Erie Lackawanna.

Thanks

FW
 #780750  by JC1076
 
I just checked out OpenStreetMap.org, specifically the Philadelphia area, and they've got the NEC and just about every stub track at 30th Street Station labeled "Norfolk Southern Railway." I thought Amtrak owned those tracks...
 #781056  by RussNelson
 
Yeah, the problem with the existing railroad data is that it was put in by the Census Bureau. A lot of their data obviously came from tracing topographic maps, and they haven't been updated for a few decades. So (at least in NY) I see a lot of Conrail and Penn Central line.

No, I don't know how to determine ownership of a railroad using online resources. There's a railroad map of New York State, put out by the DOT. That's pretty good data, but it's only for one state.
 #782607  by checkthedoorlight
 
Note that my trackmaps cover that area, but even those are a bit out-of-date. As we are speaking I am updating those areas, and am putting in Greenville, Bayonne and Oak Island yards. That's always been a confusing area as to which line is which. Remember that the HBLR took over some of the ROWs through there too (which is why the current CSX River Line starts at Bergen Yard, right where the CR Northern Branch ends, as opposed to coming in from CP-WALDO and the Weehauken tunnel and creating a junction).

I've seen LOTS of long-abandoned ROWs in the process of making these maps. Google maps (which I use as the trace layer for these) got a database "upgrade" about 2 years ago which added in a ton of old, long gone, lines. Which is still better than the old database, which were missing a bunch of ACTIVE lines (like the LIRR's Port Washington & Oyster Bay branches).