G'Day.
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Update (010) --

I've spent some time learning the KML language and, thereby, learnt how to construct PATHs. So, the stations are all joined with trackwork. Most of the paths are, at this time, station-to-station straight lines. However, I have started entering digitized information of the locii of the trackwork. This has already been done for the Belgrave to Emerald Lake line. ( "Puffing Billy" ). This runs amongst the hills East of Melbourne. You really should have a look at the trackwork on that line. It took a while to track the meandering curves of that line, but the results look good. I'm not going to do that for the whole of the project !!!!!

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Update (008a) --

All of the Melbourne Suburban railway stations are now created.
I took the liberty of adding in a number of stations that no longer exist.
Lilydale to Warburton.
Baxter to Mornington.
Melbourne to Port Melbourne.
Melbourne to St Kilda.
North Melbourne to Clifton Hill.
The current and the old are in separate folders, so that each can be turned on/off, as can be done with the individual lines of the railway network.

Not many people are aware that there used to be a link across the top of N.Carlton and N.Fiitzroy, joining N. Melbourne to Clifton hill, with a spur to the Fitzroy football field, from the North. This would mean that Melbourne used to have an inner city loop, many years before we got the City Loop ( underground and under only the CBD ). The satellite pictures easily show the property fences and the lay of the land that was a consequence of the trackwork, even though it was dismantled more than 50 years ago.

The station markers are raw, in that they do not have any descriptive information yet. That will happen.

At the moment, I'm joining up the stations with railway track. I don't have GEpro, so I'm drawing the lines using some C++ code to read and interpret a set of 'turtle math' like parameters, and generate the additional KML code to 'construct' the railway tracks.

I'd like to put some 'buildings' on the trackwork that represents suburban traffic. This would include Tait (red) trains, Harris (blue) trains, and ComEng (silver trains). This will be quick to do, because, some time ago, I constructed 3ds ( 3D Studio ) 'models' of these trains

This is fun. I'm quite enjoying this.

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Update (003) --- More suburban lines added.

Dandenong and Packenham.
Frankston and Stony Point.
Sandringham.
Williamstown, Melton, Sunbury.

Next time: Werribee, Broadmeadows, Upfield, Epping, Hurstbridge.

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Original Message.

Having collected much information over many years on the railway and tramway systems ( current and historic ) of Melbourne and Victoria, I have started to put it to some good use.

So far, I have started with the railway stations of the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne. This was a little bit of a problem because of the low resolution images on much of that area of Google-Earth. However, I have latitude and longitude information ( via GPS ) of many stations, so I positioned via the images and checked the lat/lon of the Properties of each marker.

By doing this, it became clear that the Google-Earth mapping is not all that great on its use to determine the lat/lon of locations on the earth. I get the feeling that Google is having some problems / limitations on the projection maths. Stereoscoping geodetic imaging and mapping is a precise process, these days. It is interesting seeing all those pictures of aeroplanes in flight and seeing the effects of the stereoscopic imaging, due to parallax. Sometimes, there is a primary image, a stereoscopic ghost image and a shadow ( on the ground ) image.

I haven't got Earth-Pro yet, so, while I've marked the stations, I haven't yet drawn the trackwork. This is pretty important for situations such as the Puffing Billy line. Simarly, the close proximities of the Glen Waverley and Alemein Lines. This will become more significant when the time comes to tackle the Melbourne Tram routes.

Flinders Street to Glen Waverley, Alemein, Ringwood, Lilydale, Healesville, Belgrave, Lakeside ( "Puffing Billy" to Emerald Lake ).

Eventually, I'm looking to do the whole of Victoria.

Anyone want to join in ???

Also, I like to tackle a few Historic scenarios.

Peter Fox.
Melbourne, Australia.
[Email]peterfox@optusnet.com.au.[/Email]
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Project update -- version 010.

Peter
Great effort and thanks. FYI you have Wattle Creek stration on the Hurstbridge line - should be Wattle Glen.

Peter,

What a fantastic project!

I've been surprised with how much time I spent looking at the old tracks and stations you've highlighted.

Great work with the Puffing Billy line.

Well done & thanks.

Cheers.

What a fabulous work you have done, really lots of remembers of Melbourne. I was there in 1959/1960


My Overlay is on the Railwaybridge over the Yarra River with the old red train: Title: Hey down under.


Greetings from Italy, Peter.

Hiya to Hastings AU from Hastings England, UK.

I am trying to locate my daughters house. Can you post mark darebin road in Thornbury ?
Rob

Unfortunately NO because I am living in Italy, in OZ I was 47 years ago.
Greetings from Italy
Peter.

This is awesome. I was able to find my way from Werribee to Sunbury in an attempt to show my grandparents where I go to Uni... Now... If I can just see circle road, I'll be right.