Showing posts with label Ordnance Survey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ordnance Survey. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 October 2020

Confident, pinpoint navigation depends on accurate maps for the walker and mountaineer

 Thanks very much for the e-mail and yesterday evening's discussion.

I made good use of the DM in January 2019 in re-opening Worcs 514(A is my insistence) (actually, 514(D) because the landowner was only too happy for it to become invisible/grown over, to further protect her caravans in her caravan storage park in the railway cutting.  She is now using my new path, herself!).  The large scale paper version proved beyond doubt it was a right of way and, with the note, "farm cart track".  It runs between two long rows of railway concrete posts, twelve of which I straightened!  I would love to show you, one day, because it opens up the extensive path network in our 32 sq Km Golden Green Triangle from Hunnington cricket ground and the proposed housing development at the Blue Bird sweet site.  It allows more circular walks from Bromsgrove Road.

I certainly want more paths or obvious desire lines and, lost paths to be added to the DM but would prefer the Ordnance Survey, when there is conflict between the old DM path and the actual path on the ground, to map the one on the ground and not the invisible one.  This, for clarity, to not clutter the map and to avoid confusion for walkers that then lead to complaints to the OS at Southampton.  The DM will always remain as the final arbiter and protector.  I'm attaching three screenshots of the zig-zag path at Neen Sollars that is even more important because it appears to be a sunken lane but is missed off the OS maps.  Very poor!

I'm simply insisting on accuracy, correctness and to be able to hone my much sought after pinpoint navigation skills on 100% reliable maps!

Thanks so much for your point of view that has informed me so helpfully.

All the best

Sunday, 15 March 2020

"We are sorry to announce Britain's worst train" - front page, ST, 8 March 2020

"We are sorry to announce Britain's worst train" - front page, ST, 8 March 2020

​Forget the worst train service.  In the Black Country, on the western side of Birmingham, we have the worst railway service in the middle 56 Kms of the Worcester, Black Country, Derby railway.  Not a single train has turned up in 50 years.  Yet, the railway line is called by Network Rail, "of national strategic significance"​.  Not one train, even though train travel took off in the mid 1990s and, as road and railway congestion has worsened in our densely populated, over two million, West Midlands region.

Even the latest Ordnance Survey map indicates that this principal, mainline railway is in use.  It is not.  Since the 1980s, a Metro tram extension has been promised on only 6 Kms in the middle of the unused 56 Kms that runs alongside or near to the traffic choked M5 and M6.  Main works start next year on the tram to break up the mainline but, still not a single useful commuter or regional train on the remaining 50 Kms to connect with the short, isolated tram line.  The "bus on rails" trams will prevent the return of intercity trains that will always be needed, even with 'the too fast to stop', HS2 on the eastern side of Brum.

Therefore, the one million population of the congested Black Country wins the prize, easily for having "the cold, hard truth of Britain's worst service" (ST 8 March).

Explanatory map, here courtesy of the national railway lobbying group, 'Railfuture'.  The tram line is planned from Wednesbury to Brierley Hill; both towns are marked on the map: