User talk:JimIrwin

I am also trying to connect Hoboken as the place where vagrants and others hopped on trains for free rides. They were called Hobos and I am trying to determine if the name "Hobo" was derived from the fact that rail transportation once originated and ended in Hoboken, and rail cars were then ferried over to Neww York City prior to the construction of railroad tunnels, hence the name " Hobo"

Sorry, I have no information about the origin of the word "Hobo". There may be some online dictionaries that have the history.

-- JimIrwin (talk) 13:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Bergen Neck and Bergen Hill rail crossings

Thank you very much for your work regarding RR's in NJ. I wonder if you can help. I am trying to determine the dates, and names (official or colloquial) for all the crossings/cuts in Hudson County. Most difficult is to determine that used by Hudson Bergen Light Rail. Would be of great help. Djflem (talk) 18:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Wilkes-Barre and Eastern RR

Hi JimIrwin:

I'm a GIS Analyst with Monroe County Planning Commission and am working on locating the abandoned rail ROWs in our county. Admittedly, there aren't a lot, but the WB&E and the NYS&W are of particular interest to me.

I'm wondering if you would be able to give me more information on your source material for the NYSW_Wilkes-Barre_and_Eastern.svg image you've created. I've developed what I feel is a pretty accurate location for the ROW by using scanned aerial photography from the late 1930s, but I wanted to compare it with other sources.

Thanks for time, and hope to hear from you.

George Basila

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George, I used historical USGS quads found on Maptech, combined with historical aerial photos from PennPilot, combined with current aerial photography from Google and Pennsylvania GIS. The historical USGS quads don't have good spatial quality, but they do provide a general route labeled with the railroad name. Using those as a starting point, I obtained the 1930's aerial photos from PennPilot and ortho-rectified them using GRASS, georeferenced to current aerial images from Microsoft Virtual Earth and using elevation data from the National Elevation Dataset. Once I had a continuous set of 1930 orthophotos, I digitized the route and created the maps.

It was a lot of tedious work, but it sounds like you pretty much went with the same process. If you didn't orthorectify the aerial photos, I recommend that you don't rely on their spatial accuracy. In the high-relief terrain crossed by the WBE, the aerial photos can be off by quite a bit unless they are orthorectified.

Jim Irwin (talk) 15:10, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

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Thanks for the info Jim! I didn't orthorectify the images, just georeferenced them in ArcMap. I'm using the 2005 PAMAP orthos as a base to digitize the ROW, with the PennPilot images as a reference. The areas on the aerial photos that don't warp to the orthos "fortunately" have the ROW visible on the PAMAP orthos.

Do you mind if I ask, are you a GIS guy, or just get into this on your own?

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Nope, just an amateur, but I've been doing it for about 15 years now. Nowadays, I use Manifold and Adobe Illustrator for creating maps that interest me. I have GRASS just to do the orthorectification. When I first started playing with map datasets, I wrote my own software because I couldn't justify the cost of ArcMap. I still can't justify its cost!

— Jim Irwin (talk) 19:55, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Camera Info for penn pilot images

Jim, I want to try to orthorectify some of the 1938-40 penn pilot photos in GRASS. What camera parameters did you use? I have also been using the 3M (1/9 arc) digital elevation data for Ohio and Pennsylvania that recently became available. Many old rights of way are clearly visible.

Grass is forgiving with respect to camera parameters. I use rough estimates for the 9x9 images and 9x7 images. I use a 209.5 mm focal length, and {0,0} for the x,y point of symmetry. I use the inside corners or perforations of the 4 fiducial marks for the image-to-photo transformation.

Parameter	9x9 Images	9x7 Images
Focal Length mm.	209.55	209.5
X-coord.	0	0
Y-COord	0	0
Fiducial marks	4	4
Fid#1 ID, Xf, Yf	top, 0, 110	top, 0, 85.73
Fid#2 ID, Xf, Yf	right, 110, 0	right, 111.13, 0
Fid#3 ID, Xf, Yf	bottom, 0, -110	bottom, 0, -85.73
Fid#4 ID, Xf, Yf	left, -110, 0	left, -111.13, 0

—Jim Irwin (talk) 14:20, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Permission for use of your map?

Dear Jim, I am writing to ask permission to use your map of the railroad terminals in the Port of New York (circa 1900) for an article to be published in an academic journal. Please contact me at catherine.erkkila@gmail.com at your earliest convenience for more specific details. I would greatly appreciate it! Sincerely, Catherine

I replied to your email address with permissions to use New York City Railroads ca 1900.png. — Jim

hello

I believe the map of Essex County is incorrect. Maplewood is east of Millburn and south of South Orange. On the map it shows Maplewood as north of these two locations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Katgk (talk • contribs) 16:33, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

SVG version of New_York_City_Railroads_ca_1900.png

Can you post an SVG version of New_York_City_Railroads_ca_1900.png to Wikipedia so that more detail can be discerned?

Thank you.

Michael

Lehigh Valley Milestones

Jim, I am attempting to locate, scan and organize the ICC valuation maps for the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Your "Lehigh Valley Railroad Milestones" is very useful in following the many subsidiaries listed in the circa 1917 ICC valuation. Thanks for creating it. I was wondering what application you used to create the timeline? It would be very useful to create one for other railroads I am working with.

Also, Do you have GIS paths traced for the Lehigh Valley Railroad? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stitchenal (talk • contribs) 13:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

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The actual drawing was done with Adobe Illustrator. The information was all organized by hand -- by locating information from various railroad reports, state reports, and news sources in Google Books and online.

Great work ... surprised you didn't use Visio ... is Illustrator that easy to work with?... Many thanks again for your work .... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Risk Engineer (talk • contribs) 11/8/2017 (UTC)

Higher Resolution?

Hello Mr. Irwin:

I really appreciated the map of the NY Port's railroads that you created. It is a wonderful resource.

I am writing an academic book about the Port of New York and I'm wondering if you have a better resolution of the map that I could use.

Thanks so much.

Philip Plotch (plotchnj@gmail.com) — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.239.255.175 (talk) 12:40, 19 July 2021 (UTC)