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Representation of railway track layouts on large-scale Ordnance Survey maps


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  • RMweb Gold

hi folks,

 

Many of us use the fantastic online resources of National Library of Scotland and their historic Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and plans: 

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=5&lat=56.0000&lon=-4.0000&layers=1&b=1

 

One issue that I have seen raised by those of us using plans of larger scale, eg 1:2500 and 1:1250, is how far the track layouts shown by the OS are true or not.

 

Well, an article written by OS expert Rob Wheeler on this subject has appeared in the publication of the Charles Close Society (CCS), called "Sheetlines":

 

https://charlesclosesociety.org/sheetlines

 

The article is accessible as a PDF online here:

 

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/sheetlines-articles/Issue112page31.pdf

 

Hope this is of some interest and that I have posted it in the right place here!

 

I really recommend joining the CCS, it's only £15 a year (https://charlesclosesociety.org/Membership).

 

all the best,

 

Keith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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hi folks,

 

Many of us use the fantastic online resources of National Library of Scotland and their historic Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and plans: 

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=5&lat=56.0000&lon=-4.0000&layers=1&b=1

 

One issue that I have seen raised by those of us using plans of larger scale, eg 1:2500 and 1:1250, is how far the track layouts shown by the OS are true or not.

 

Well, an article written by OS expert Rob Wheeler on this subject has appeared in the publication of the Charles Close Society (CCS), called "Sheetlines":

 

https://charlesclosesociety.org/sheetlines

 

The article is accessible as a PDF online here:

 

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/sheetlines-articles/Issue112page31.pdf

 

Hope this is of some interest and that I have posted it in the right place here!

 

I really recommend joining the CCS, it's only £15 a year (https://charlesclosesociety.org/Membership).

 

all the best,

 

Keith

I've always taken the representation of railways on the larger scale OS maps with a considerable pinch of salt.

 

By the way, was there really a county called Edinburghshire?

 

Finally, there are a few railways that never seem to have appeared on OS maps. The spur from Stratford on Avon SMJR to the Racecourse halt that was built a few years before the SMJR closed never seemed to have made it onto a map, and is just shown as a dotted line after closure. The Plynlimon and Hafan narrow gauge line, another short-lived concern, is another one I've never seen properly shown.

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  • RMweb Gold

I've always taken the representation of railways on the larger scale OS maps with a considerable pinch of salt.

 

[...]

 

Finally, there are a few railways that never seem to have appeared on OS maps. The spur from Stratford on Avon SMJR to the Racecourse halt that was built a few years before the SMJR closed never seemed to have made it onto a map, and is just shown as a dotted line after closure. The Plynlimon and Hafan narrow gauge line, another short-lived concern, is another one I've never seen properly shown.

 

Yes, Rob's article is looking at discrepancies and inconsistencies on the OS in how they mapped track-layouts, but would be good to compare the OS with the Railway Clearing House (RCH) maps for similar periods.

 

On missing railways, again, yes, I have been frustrated in my searches for reservoir railways of the early-20th cent, often too short-lived to be shown on the OS 6" for example. Fortunately we have the excellent books by Harold Bowtell to help!

 

cheers,

 

Keith

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  • RMweb Gold

As an old hill walking buddy of mine very correctly and succinctly put it, a map is static but the ground is dynamic; the map is out of date as soon as the data is gathered, never mind when it is printed and distributed, because something will have changed on the ground.

 

I was involved some years ago in a layout based on as close a scale representation as we could manage of Clarence Road, a docklands terminus in Cardiff, and based the plan on the OS 6 inch to the mile, from 1951 IIRC.  It was a very good guide, proven correct when we looked at the surviving land use boundaries on the ground and matched the photos pretty much spot on.  It included signal posts and the positions of telegraph poles, as well as the track plan and boundaries.  

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  • RMweb Gold

Short-lived railways such as contractors' lines to reservoirs are always likely to be missed out on maps as a full revision was only done infrequently.

 

Of course there is another reason why railways are sometimes not shown by OS. Official Secrets. And keep in mind that OS was, until quite recently, a branch of the Army. The most famous case was a railway hiding in plain view where it goes across the M5 on a bridge.

 

From that point of view, the Cold War maps produced by the Russians may be more accurate.

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  • RMweb Gold

hi folks,

 

Many of us use the fantastic online resources of National Library of Scotland and their historic Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and plans: 

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=5&lat=56.0000&lon=-4.0000&layers=1&b=1

 

One issue that I have seen raised by those of us using plans of larger scale, eg 1:2500 and 1:1250, is how far the track layouts shown by the OS are true or not.

 

Well, an article written by OS expert Rob Wheeler on this subject has appeared in the publication of the Charles Close Society (CCS), called "Sheetlines":

 

https://charlesclosesociety.org/sheetlines

 

The article is accessible as a PDF online here:

 

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/sheetlines-articles/Issue112page31.pdf

 

Hope this is of some interest and that I have posted it in the right place here!

 

I really recommend joining the CCS, it's only £15 a year (https://charlesclosesociety.org/Membership).

 

all the best,

 

Keith

 

I had never heard of this Society. Very interesting.

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  • RMweb Gold

Short-lived railways such as contractors' lines to reservoirs are always likely to be missed out on maps as a full revision was only done infrequently.

 

Of course there is another reason why railways are sometimes not shown by OS. Official Secrets. And keep in mind that OS was, until quite recently, a branch of the Army. The most famous case was a railway hiding in plain view where it goes across the M5 on a bridge.

 

From that point of view, the Cold War maps produced by the Russians may be more accurate.

 

The Caerwent branch, which served the US nuclear weapons store at that place from Portskewett, near Caldicot in Gwent, also did not appear on OS maps, including a bridge over the M4 (now M48) motorway.  

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The Caerwent branch, which served the US nuclear weapons store at that place from Portskewett, near Caldicot in Gwent, also did not appear on OS maps, including a bridge over the M4 (now M48) motorway.

 

On the old OS map I'm looking at the Caerwent branch (including the bridge over the motorway) is shown, but it stops abruptly at the MOD boundary. This was the standard practice, I believe, and is repeated for the nearby Glascoed armaments factory and also at Trecwn near Fishguard and at RAF Welford, near Newbury, amongst others.

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  • RMweb Premium

The 1981 Russian maps have the opposite problem, showing lines/stations that were long gone by then e.g. the lines into and around Edinburgh Princes St and Glasgow St. Enoch stations. They must've based a lot of the mapping on late '60s/early '70s sources.

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  • RMweb Premium

The 1981 Russian maps have the opposite problem, showing lines/stations that were long gone by then e.g. the lines into and around Edinburgh Princes St and Glasgow St. Enoch stations. They must've based a lot of the mapping on late '60s/early '70s sources.

 

Do you have a link to these by any chance?

 

Regards

 

Ian

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I would appear that not just government facilities were excluded from these maps.  The large ICI/Nobel explosives manufacturing site at Ardeer near Irvine was also excluded from the map as can be seen here https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=17&lat=55.6374&lon=-4.7260&layers=170&right=BingHyb  roads and railways that just go off the end of the world

 

Jim

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  • RMweb Premium

Do you have a link to these by any chance?

 

Regards

 

Ian

I had to think where I'd seen them, it's actually on old-maps.co.uk

 

I don't think there an index of those available but if you search for your town/city, there is a drop-down menu of maps for the area (click on the 'All Map Types'):

 

post-1060-0-50678600-1533824555.png

 

 

Interestingly, the 1983 map for Edinburgh is pretty accurate. It must've been the 1981 series that was based on old mapping as I mentioned above - Glasgow shows the 1981 map still with St. Enoch, Buchanan St. etc

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  • RMweb Premium

I had to think where I'd seen them, it's actually on old-maps.co.uk

 

I don't think there an index of those available but if you search for your town/city, there is a drop-down menu of maps for the area (click on the 'All Map Types'):

 

attachicon.gifUntitled.png

 

 

Interestingly, the 1983 map for Edinburgh is pretty accurate. It must've been the 1981 series that was based on old mapping as I mentioned above - Glasgow shows the 1981 map still with St. Enoch, Buchanan St. etc

 

Had a google after asking the question, and the Glasgow map is quite pretty.

 

It is quite surprising how easy some names are to recognise, cosidering the cyrillic script.

 

Regards & Thanks

 

Ian

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The Charles Close Society does produce some interesting booklets on maps, if you're into that sort of thing.

 

One thing that's always interested me is the OS interpretation of what constitutes a "Principal Station" on their one-inch maps. Just looking at Sheet 96 (Leeds & Bradford) as an example, edition A of the Seventh Series (1954) gives stations you'd expect to be "Principal", such as Leeds City,

Leeds Central, the two Bradford termini, Huddersfield etc. But also places like Dewsbury, Batley and Heckmondwike. Also Holbeck (High Level),

but not Holbeck (Low Level).

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  • 2 years later...

Perhaps your best bet now is the local library. Sadly local councils digitised what they needed and binned the paper copies. With the downgrading of town planning many of these departments have been merged and relocated, again losing paper copies. It is a shame that the maps have little monetary value because if they did, there would be a market pace to find them.

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