Latest News

April 19 2024

• I now have a tidied up personal library of over 600 'railway' books and a dataset of 28 different books to load spanning eight separate libraries for testing, some books 8 times. This will allow testing of the first queries. I have also started thinking about some other larger and more complex areas, one of which is Industrial Tramways. This will be divided int four groups, Bush tramways, Mine Tramways, Construction Tramways and Factory Tramways. Each will further divided based on region/locality/Owner/track. in other words, if you don't know how to search for a tramway, you can do that via a map, first by going to the Region the tramway is in, then defining a smaller locality, at which point you will have both a list of recorded tramways and a more detailed map of an area. That will show individual tracks that make up the tramway network of various owners. To start achieving that I have prepared a New Zealand map divided into regions, and will use the Imagemap extension to create clickable zones for selecting a region of the map. That is all straightforward now as the same system is used on the main page to select a topic.

April 10 2024

• Health issues and other commitments have slowed things down a bit. Still working on Books and observed the need to tidy up my own library data before locking certain info into the wiki. I came across lots of surprises, both good and awkward. I have now got that pretty well sorted and written a VBA routine to generate Book-copy records so the next step is testing that in the wiki. All being well, I then mock up some matching books for a second and third library so I can begin the task of generating queries, of which the first will be Libraries holding the current book. There is still a bit of data checking to do on the Book records that I will need to work through.

March 17 2024

• Work on the Library functionality continues, some 500 book titles have now been entered but 200 of those are still in the old table, progressively being transferred. Looking ahead I realised it was best to do the magazines as well as we may strike the same problems later. That totals 380 records at the moment. I have also looked in much greater detail at Published References, and come to the conclusion that the Tab I had created for this right at the beginning, would be better called 'Facts'. This came about by understanding that data that goes on a tab is data in another Namespace, a detail I had not known about until recently. However, thinking about the implications, it is really just what is needed, but when you work with different namespaces (think different groupings of data) you need to define the namespace in front of the pagename, other that for those pages in the mainspace. It is useful then to use short names and a 5 letter name is then preferable to a 20 letter one. I have also updated the 'Main page' with the mind-map now having an additional two groups and several more balloons are now shaded, signifying progress. I have also grouped the Mechanical Branch and its sub-groups in one area, the start of improving the grouping of all the balloons.

March 1 2024

• With most of the Library entered, I started thinking about using the data. I created the three additional tables and then started nutting out my first query. Simple queries seem to be quite straightforward, but when I wanted to test my first one found I didn't really have the database set up quite right. There were two main problems, the database name was confusing in that I had called it "Books" when it should have been "Book"; and the the page names for Books were also confusing in that there was no indication in the page name that it was a book page rather than a subject page. For this reason I needed to rebuild the database table. At the same time I decided that it would be best if I also adjusted a few of the Fields that didn't quite meet requirements anymore. To avoid having to manually re-enter all the book data (450 records so far) I developed a method of copying the old Template data, pasting it into the new page then adjusting the Template name. Being able to do over 50 a day in between other this meant it was not going to be such a huge task.

February 24 2024

• With no clear answers to why I am unable to reliably load data into Cargo from Spreadsheets, I have decided to set that aside for a little while. As a distraction I have decided to enter my Rail Heritage Library into the Books table, one record at a time through the Books Form. Nearly there after 3 weeks and 450 books, with maybe 50 - 100 books to go. This also had me thinking of the next stage of the books functionality so I created 3 additional Tables, Book_Copy, Magazine_Copy and Library. This will allow the holding of data on individual copies of books and magazines and record which Library they are held in. That in turn has had me looking at Cargo Querying in some detail, another whole language to learn. The first query I want to master is reporting on a Book page, which Libraries hold a copy of that book.

February 9 2024

• Hit a snag wile loading Work and Income History records with the Wiki extension not handling data imports properly anymore. I have developed a work-around for these type of imports but People data does not import completely either and there is no simple work-around for that. Trying to resolve things with the developer. A further issue is the amount of History data I have already accumulated. It exceeds the amount you can hold on a page and make editing the pages nearly impossible. It appears this type of data can be split over pages, but that makes querying more challenging, but not impossible. more learning to do there. A further problem I detected related to Dates. They were not transferring from the wiki page to the Cargo table reliable (many missing). This in turn resulted in duplicate records which Cargo discarded compounding the problem. A fix seems to be to enter all dates with a "-" separator rather than "/".

January 30 2024

• With a concentrated effort on processing people records, I am now ready to load 5000+ records to the wiki, for the third time! Have done lots of cross-checking and now have person data from all official reports from 1895 and earlier. The focus now will be to get the Excel data loaded and then derive Work History and Income History records from the source tables. From there on, the work will become repetitive, working through each new year's data, adding new records to the Master List, and updating the history records. On the Wiki side of things, the next major step will be creating the work and income history tables, then setting up the templates to query those tables so that data appears as tidy tables on the person records.

January 16 2024

• So into another new year and still working with people data as I felt I did not have a robust enough method of identifying individuals. While I have made considerable progress, it has not resulted in much additional data yet and all existing people records will be overwritten by a new set shortly. A significant concern that was bugging me for a long time has now been resolved relating to Cargo table data and wiki pages. The limited documentation with Cargo implied that you must have a wiki page for each Cargo record, however, Yaron Koren the author of Cargo has confirmed that that is not the case as you can hold many records on a single page by selecting Append on the Import Spreadsheet utility. A simple use-case for this is the work history of NZR employees. While you want a page for each employee record, you do not want a page for each work history record, all the records go on a single page with many rows of data that create the Cargo table records. Progress with re-sorting Names has been slower than hoped, mainly due to other commitments, but I am now nearly through all the pre-1895 data with some 2000 names properly back referenced now, and all with compatible source tables. From these I will now be able to create the Work History records and get them displaying properly on the wiki pages for individual people.

November 24 2023

• It has been a while since my last update but not a whole lot has changed. However, they are about to. I have had to have some time off for more spinal surgery but with that largely behind me now, there was a real need to push on with People data. I have today loaded the first block of People pages, nearly 5000. These are people that I have found in official list from 1895 and earlier, and I will now progressively add all the others I have sorted out up to 1900. I also need to build the other Templates to be able to load the data associated with the People, especially work history. Again a plea for anyone who has experience with setting up data in Mediawiki, I would love to hear from you.

July 5 2023

• All of June was spent on preparing data for the People side of the wiki, thousands of them! However, none of them have been added to the wiki yet for a couple of reasons, 1, I am not sure I completely understand the Table structures I need yet, and 2, I was still waiting for the spreadsheet extension to be added to the wiki, there were a few issues and with some other small issues popping up, we decided it was time to update a number of extensions, as well as Mediawiki it self. This site is now running on Mediawiki 1.39 and the latest version of Cargo and its counterparts. Page Schemas in particular has improved greatly making it much easier to modify a schema by being able to insert additional fields and move fields around within a table. I will need a couple of weeks more time on preparing the early staff lists before writing some code to interrogate them to produce useful data that can be stored in the wiki.

May 8 2023

• With the Previous and Next Issue buttons working well, it was still a lot of work to implement that on all Magazine issue pages, the better option was to include the code in the Mag_Issue Template, but you could then not manually tailor the line of code to suit the current Issue. It therefore required some additional code that could interrogate the existing Pagename, separate the Magazine and Issue number and create new variables of 1 less and one greater that the issue number to insert into the Clickable button2 code. Eventually found appropriate templates and functions and when Extension:Parser Functions was added to the wiki, one additional line of code in the Mag_Issue Template added both buttons directly under the Pagename. Using the pagename as the source, it automatically works for each different magazine. Have also completed the manual checking of the 1910 D3 list so now need to explore how/what to add to Cargo tables. Have also nearly finished entering key data from Volume 4 of the Observers. Will keep plugging away at these to try and get the first 14 volumes done.

April 30 2023

• Have had further success and setbacks with Able2Extract, and now waiting for a reply from the developers again. There is something in the pdf files that cause the program to hang, otherwise it does seem to fit the bill. In the meantime still working through the tedious task of checking names from the 1910 dataset which is a 2 person job and only getting 500 - 1000 names a day done. Have now passed 6100 out of 9050 so getting there. Have also started working with Magazine_Issues again, creating detailed contents for the Observer and have processed 3 volumes (18 issues) this past week. Decided the template needed some tweeking in that it needed to display the full name not the short name, and added a field for Page Range. That meant deleting the cover image field, and adding the Page Rage field and a new Cover Image field. Now all existing records in the Mag_Issue table need updating. While doing that, realised it would be useful to have some standard ways of referring to things, especially loco's, wagons, cars etc. This will then allow some quick searches if you know certain data is held in the wiki. Have also decided that from the Magazine Issue pages it would be very convenient to be able to move to the previous and next issues easier than typing the issue name in the search box. I have therefore exported the 'Clickable button 2' template from the Wikipedia site, and imported it to RKB. This allows buttons to be placed on a page with an associated hyperlink and independent button text. Two buttons side by side at the very top of the page, labeled 'Prev Issue' and 'Next Issue' work very well and now need to be added and edited for each Magazine Issue page.

April 24 2023

• Spent a lot more time than I should have on the 1910 staff list, but have now got all the data neatly in excel and just doing a final check of the names before I work out how to store it in Cargo. Have determined that the program Able2Extract is the right one for the task but found a bug in it which needs resolving before purchase it. As a change, I have started getting the Observer magazine data into the wiki. Have completed the Issue table (with all hyperlinks) for the whole series and an introductory page for the magazine as a whole, then using the Mag_Issue template to create each page. Now starting the laborious job of entering the data to describe each issue's contents in reasonable detail.

March 29 2023

• With some forced light duties for a while following back surgery, I continue to explore some new areas for wiki data. The first is Staff Housing; with a lot of information around about staff housing, but nowhere to usefully bring it all together, the Knowledge Base seems the ideal solution. With some data on about 1500 mainly South Island houses now in my list, the challenge will be setting things up and then sensibly integrating that with other data that is available. Juliette Scobel has offered me her research data which I believe includes a lot of Housing data as well, so I am waiting to see what that includes before making any major decisions. Secondly, I have decided to tackle the big area of employees. For years I have been aware of the Staff D3's and even attempted an OCR scan of some pages some years ago. None of that was leading anywhere promising, but with the early D3's now on the web as part of the Parliamentary Reports, I thought I would give things another go. With a bit of work (4 days), I have a 1910 staff list of some 9000 NZR employees, with their positions and rate of pay. Some of the data did not convert well so I am still exploring all the years of service info as I will need that to create unique records for individuals. With that as a starting list, I need to work out processes for adding new names before and after 1910. The lists with names only start at 1896 and go as far as 1923 on the web. They were produced up until 1986 I believe. Over the coming weeks I will continue to explore options in this area and start developing the Cargo tables required to hold this data. Employees in particular should attract a lot of wiki use with increasing interest in family research.

March 8 2023

• Continued to work on Locomotives with some additional general data pages created for locomotive types etc. Have also started a section on Rollingstock (of which locomotives are technically one branch) with a couple of general data pages there as well. I hope to tidy up that section over the next couple of weeks when I will have to take a forced break to recover from spinal surgery.

February 16 2023

• So the weeks continue to slip by, with the past ones focused on researching 'F' class locomotives. This has resulted in a pretty extensive page for this early locomotive type, setting out a preliminary page layout for this type of page and creating several tables of useful data. that has automatically listed every F class locomotive, so I have added links to those so pages so each loco can have its own page created if wanted. I have taken that step with a few specific loco's where I came across a reasonable amount of data I could put in chronological order.

January 24 2023

• The past month or so has seen some definite progress again, but off on some tangents. Images continued to be an area I wanted to box off a bit, so developed a method to store image data in a Cargo table. When I say images, it is actually an occurrence of an image, not a record of a unique image. This came down to defining a number of fields for image attributes like where is it located, what is its size, who is its creator, owner etc, date if available, and what size it is. Then there are two searchable text fields, one where you describe the over-all image (main theme of the image), and the other where you can enter other things that are visible, usually in the background, eg a signal, or wagon or locomotive. I then proceeded and entered about 350 images, working from the start of Rails magazine, and I have over 2 years done. As a result of that , I recognised that most of the images are naturally of locomotives, so I started thinking of how locomotive data might be constructed in the wiki. That led to starting an NZR Locomotives page, where the introduction is a overview of published New Zealand locomotive research. This is followed by a series of tables listing the data for all the locomotive classes used on NZ Railways. I have nearly completed the Steam Locomotive table and then have Diesel, Electric, Railcar, DMU and EMU tabled to do. They are all much smaller of course. Each table entry has hyperlinks to individual pages for each class (of course none of those are created yet) and also links to pages for Manufacturers. A similar arrangement could be adopted for Rollingstock later.

December 14 2022

• As the year comes to a close you wonder where the time has gone, certainly not a lot of time spent on the wiki. Having completed the Railfan magazines, I started on the Rails magazines and got the first 50 issues entered. These are a monthly issue so many more to a year, however they are thinner so less entries. Towards the end of October I had to set aside all wiki work to focus on a major home renovation task of rebuilding a bay window. Being a double storied vintage home, everything had to be measured and drawn accurately in CAD before physical work could commence, and I am now well into dealing with the lower story which has resulted in solving most of the issues I am likely to strike. I don't expect to complete things till we get well into autumn. So with the problems solved, it does free-up some time for wiki things again. While I will try and keep working away at the magazines, There is still some South Island Station details to complete before trying to get the North Island Station pages created.

September 20 2022

• A couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity to borrow a full set of Railfan Magazines. This allowed me to scan all the covers and create a wiki page for each copy. Some standard data about the individual issue is stored in the Cargo database and retrieved for display at the top of each Magazine Issue page. In the free text area of the page, I have entered a slightly expanded Table of Contents, listing all the main articles, each book, and video that is reviewed, each heritage group that has a news item and each general rail news topic that is covered. All this data immediately becomes searchable, so it becomes a quick way to determine in which issue of Railfan you can find a particular topic. I have a few days work left before I have entered all 101 issues. I intend to do the same for Rails magazine next (but at a slower pace), as I have my own copy of each issue, so no rush to return them.
• Focusing on that task has of course prevented other things from progressing and hence the need to now make time to get the North Island Station pages generated.

September 6 2022

• With further delays on starting to enter North Island data, I have pushed on to try and get the South Island more complete. Have now got all the major lines done and most of the branch line, a few smaller ones still to go. This time round I concentrated on page functionality (Anchors, Trails and Categories) leaving the Archive data to a second pass as it was quite a different process. Paid work is getting in the way again so progress will inevitably slow down once more.

August 13 2022

• It continues to be a period of far too little time available to make real progress, at least visible progress. Having had to deal with a good bout of Covid hasn't helped either, but I do continue to make headway on two fronts.
• I have spent far too long double checking things for the NIMT, but have now committed to populating pages. The Auckland Metro scene is an ever changing beast and I have decided to not try and make provision for additional stations that are not built yet, as this was becoming very confusing around Drury which has already had a station in 3 different locations (which are now all closed) and is to get two new ones in the years ahead. I am currently preparing the last blocks of data that are needed to allocate the various pages to the correct categories and providing the correct Trail data.
• We are well on the way to providing the Library functionality we want. Currently we can add Books, Book Series, Magazines, Magazine Editions, Authors, and Publishers. The next stage is to make this all user friendly via a few action buttons rather than rely on users having to know the raw Wiki functions that we have used to enter the initial data.

July 20 2022

• Have completed an accurate representation of the North Island Network. Now the large task of populating all the pages with Trail and Category data.
• I have prepared all the NIMT data so you should see that grow over the coming weeks, and before the NIMT is finished, I will have data for some other Line prepared. So steady progress from here on.
• I am aware that there is still some data to finish on the South Island diagram, a few minor lines and junctions.

June 3 2022

• Still nowhere near enough time available to enter much needed data. However, I have got a first cut of the North Island Network Diagram prepared. It can be found using the link at the bottom of the main Page.
• Its structure was quite a bit different from the South Island and a number of new coding styles have had to be developed, which all takes time.
• This is still very much a first draft with a number of things still to resolve so you will have to bear with me there. One thing this has achieved though is the links to all the stations, so I will start preparing some of the functionality that needs to go on those pages.
• I have also been spending a fair bit of time trying to fully understand the Publications and Images part of the wiki. This is proving far more complex than I had first envisaged, but am now getting to the point of documenting the data table that will be required and their structure and interactions. That will remain a background task as I get into sorting out the North Island page functionality.

May 8 2022.

• With a request to help out with some inspection work on the real railway, I have had little time to add data., but keep plugging away at bits in the background.
• I have caught the gremlins in the South Island Network Diagram but not formally updated the page yet. You can access the draft South Island Update via a link at the bottom of the Main Page.
• I have made significant progress with the North Island Network diagram which is currently undergoing testing before a first release in a couple of weeks. Developing the layout for that has had me rethink some sections of the South Island again but i will not make any major changes there in the meantime.
• I have also spent significant time on the area of Publications. This was both to get a semblance of order into my own physical library, as well as to better understand how publications will be managed within the wiki. Further details can be found on the Publications wiki page.

March 18 2022.

• The past 4 weeks have seen steady progress on adding data. A good number more branch lines have had the Station Archive data, Trails and Anchors added, as well as Junction stations having a functional Junction Trail. All Junctions on the Main North and Main South Lines have been added.
• I had hoped to have an updated South Island Network Diagram ready but a few gremlins have crept in and it is better in the long run to deal with those properly now, than keeping on compromising.
• I have made a start on the North Island Network Diagram, so hope to be able to stick to my target of June for its release.
• While officially retired, I have been asked to help out with some deadline work over the coming months that will limit the time I can dedicate to wiki building, so keen to know if there is anyone out there willing to help.
• In the background we are attempting to understand how best to tackle some of the bigger issues around the other major pages we still need to develop. The format of Station pages is firming up but we need to very soon get error logging working, as well as info submission and Published references.
• A lot of pages include hard data, and wiki's are renown for not handling data well, so that is the other area we are spending some time on. The system we adopt early on will have a big bearing on how we can make use of data later

February 22 2022. The site went live today, though with a minimum of functionality, to give prospective users a feel of what will be available. This will hopefully be sufficient to entice you to become involved one way or another

• The South Island Network Diagram is operational barring a few possible errors in links to specific pages, please report any you find.
• Most of the major Lines are reasonably fully populated with a Line page, Track Section pages, Station pages and the File Records pages for those Stations added. It gives some idea of the extent I intend to complete each. The completed Lines include: Nelson Section, Main North Line, Main South Line, Midland Line, Otago Central Line, Catlins River Branch, Southbridge Branch and Little River Branch. Additions are being made daily.
• I have also started writing up a page for the Nelson Section as a whole, (accessible from the blue Line-name link on the Network Diagram, or searching for 'Nelson Section'). These pages are designed to hold information about the construction of the line and usually also its deconstruction.
• There is a lot of work in preparing the maps for the Lines pages, but I am now well through mapping the whole South Island in Google Earth. As time allows, additional Lines pages will be developed
• A start has also been made on writing up a concise story on the early development of the South Island railways. This is accessible from the Main page.

• Specific functionality that is working on the Station and Track-section pages that have been readied includes:

1. Breadcrumbs: At the top of the page you find a row listing the 5 most recent pages you have accessed. This is an easier way to go back to an earlier page than using the browser's back button.
2. Tabs: there are 6 additional tabs at the top of each page (7 on Station pages) to enable quick access to associated information, one or two more may still be added. Only the File Records Tab is being populated as part of the data load.
3. Anchors: These allow you to go the matching station or section cell on the Network Diagram without needing to scroll from the top left corner. The cell you have requested will always be on the top row, usually at the right hand corner.
4. Trails: This is a unique bit of coding that displays a diagram of the Stations and Track-sections either side of the current Station, with links to enable you to jump to them. This is also a significant block of work and there is still some tidying-up to do on these. Solid lines represent railways that exist, dotted lines are therefore railways that no longer exist.

Once the primary tasks are completed for all the South Island Stations, we will move on to developing the North Island Network Diagram to get that to a usable stage. The lessons learned on the South Island Diagram, will help to speed that process up considerably. At this stage I have tentatively set June as a target for getting the North Island Diagram live. If you are interested in some of the details of data loading, you can find the table I use to keep track of what is, and still needs doing here. I maintain the data in a spreadsheet which I will copy over from time to time.

By going live we of course hope to generate a lot of interest, which could generate a lot of inquiries. These will need some priority attention, but that will hopefully still leave us enough time to keep the project as a whole moving forward. As hinted in a number of places, we would welcome assistance, particularly from those that might have some wiki skills.