What I could really use is some form of pattern recognition software that uploads a 30′ and/or 15′ USGS quad sheet and recognizes the railroad symbol and then creates a shape that superimposes itself upon it that can then be uploaded into a CAD or GIS program to map the hundreds of miles of RR lines no longer used. There are georeferenced 15′ quads and for those not yet done, there’s always enough info on one to do that the hard way so the hope would be to have the whole works more or less automated.
Jun 18
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BWS Johnson
June 19, 2012 at 3:32 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
This sounds like a job for railroad enthusiasts. I’ll keep me eyes and ears peeled; I’d be half surprised if the local groups didn’t already have summat patched together. Lower tech than scripting, but higher quality.
Ethan Gruber
June 20, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
This should be theoretically possible, so the question is: has anyone actually done this yet regarding railroad symbols in particular?
No mention of rail, but this might be a useful read: mapcontext.com/autocarto/proceedings/auto-carto-7/pdf/pattern-recognition-procedures-for-autmatic-digitizing-of-cadastral-maps.pdf
Lyle Browning
June 21, 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Has anyone used Vextrasoft? It’s Windows based and seems able to do what is needed for a good price, as compared with Vextractor which is out of this world expensive. I would have thought that the rail symbol would be very easy to extract for such a program.
kevinmdonaghy
June 26, 2012 at 5:32 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Nope, but will check out