Merry christmas everyone,new here and on a quest to locate railroad maps for the csx line running south out of richmond va and shooting southeast to hopewell and directly south to collier yard in petersburg.also,would like a map for norfolk southern in the same areas.thanks
I don't know if you are familiar with topo maps, but the link shows the topo map for the broad station area of Richmond. You can follow the RR lines beyond the borders of the map by clicking on the arrows on the borders. The cursor on the map also gives the GPS coordinates.
http://mapserver.mytopo.com/homepage/index.cfm?lat=37.5603828&lon=-77.46056&scale=24000&zoom=100&type=1&height=498&width=498&icon=0&searchscope=dom&CFID=15384012&CFTOKEN=90762160&scriptfile=http://mapserver.mytopo.com/homepage/index.cfm&bpid=MAP0060030900&latlontype=DMS
"Railroad maps" is an overly broad term. Care to define that? (scale, use, etc.)
The maps and areial photos on sites such as Google Maps, Google Earth, Bing Maps are very good for current following rail lines in most of the country. Where they exist Google Street View and Bing Birds Eye are often a great resource. Google Earth has freature that shows older aerials (often up to ten years or more), although the quality of them is generally poorer. The technology has really improved.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
When using Google Earth, be sure to turn on the "Transportation" overlay...
On the right hand side of the window there should be an area of 3 sections ("Search", "Places" and "Layers")... if not, click on the left most button in the command bar at the top... (it looks like a "window" with a narrow bar across the top, a darker blue thin area on the left and a larger white square on the right)... click on it to make the area show (or hide).
If the "Layers" section is not open to show the available layers, click on the word to show them.
Scroll that "Layers" area down (if necessary) to the word "More" at the bottom and click on the plus sign ("+") to the left of that word. This will open a list of additional things that can overlay the images of the earth. Click the box next to the word "Transportation" in that list. (You can also click the "+" to select individual modes of transportation if you wish, but I find including them all to be advantageous at times).
Enabling this Layer will make small blue icons appear on the images where there are terminals for the various forms of transportation. It will also, at certain levels of zoom/magnification, overlay the RR lines with black lines to make it easier to follow them. This works very well in North America and Europe and the British Isles, but may have some error in position in other areas. It will show many of the abandoned lines (the data base has not been updated to remove them) and, of course, may not show more recent construction.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.