Canterbury Railway Society Inc

News

Ferrymead Members Pioneer Work On Proposed Blueprint Database

31/5/2002

Late last year, the NZ National Federation of Railway Societies began to investigate a proposal to create a national database of blueprints of railway subjects that would be accessible for general use over the Internet. In the past six months a small group of rail enthusiasts and computer experts have been working on the development of the proposal to the stage of being able to demonstrate a data collection system which can be used by member societies at their own sites.

This plan has built upon work already done by the Garden City Model Railroad Club and Society members who have catalogued almost 5000 blueprints and plans held in our archives at Ferrymead. A presentation on the proposal is to be made at this year's Federation Convention and will incorporate results taken from that work.

The collection of data will be followed by the creation of a central database and search system which will allow for queries to be run and the results sent back to the originator of the request. It is not yet clear what form this will take.