I’ve had this map in my collection for several years, long
enough that I’ve forgotten exactly where I found it. For the longest time, I wasn’t sure when it
was published, until I discovered a small notation, “6-44,”in the lower right
corner, separated from the legend where you normally find the date. Well, that made my day, but at 24”x36” with
lots of fine print, not terribly useful to these aging eyes. So back into the stash it went. I came across it again while I was scanning
some newly acquired photographs using my new Epson flatbed scanner. Hmm, I wondered if I could use a digital
magnifying glass? After all, I do have a
pair of pretty large flat screen monitors for my desktop. My first thought was to find a large format
scanner, as this had worked well in California with several maps and blueprints
that I had borrowed. A discussion with
one of the local print shops that USED to have such a scanner led to the
suggestion that I scan and stitch together in Photoshop as that I was what he
would have to do.
I had a direction. I
scanned overlapping sections of the map at 1200 DPI and ended up with seven
3-400 MB files. There things sat for
several weeks as my copy of Photoshop was on a broken 13 year old laptop and I
couldn’t find the original CD. I do have
PS Elements 15 on my current machine, but I hadn’t found a way to use Elements
to stitch photos together. Then on
Wednesday, I viewed Ted Culotta’s Lightroom clinic. I was impressed with the ease of reassembling
the multiple screen shots that he demonstrated.
I resolved to resurrect my copy of PS CS2. Before that happened though, Michael Gross posted
that he had found the perspective crop hidden away in a dialog box on his copy
of PSE15, the same version that I have installed. That inspired me to see if I could find and
use it as I had before my 2007 laptop was damaged. A quick experiment with a photo I have of an
Fe-U yielded these results:
ATSF 66299 Fe-U
single sheathed auto box car straightened
The Bx-35 was converted from the Fe-U by sealing the aux
door and extending the car lining inside it.
I’m in need of a pair of these for my 1944 layout and this was a natural
to try the technique on as it could help with a future scratch building project.
Then I thought, if that’s there, what about the stitching
tool? Well, it sorta is. I discovered the “panorama” tool in the
Guided mode. It can and does (sometimes)
combine images that have overlap. My
first attempt using all seven of my large files flopped. Hmm, lets start smaller and combine only two. That did work, and so did two of the combinations
of three but not two of the combined files with each other. That’s when I discovered the file size limit
in PS Elements, 30,000x30,000 pixels and I needed something like 55x25 thousand
to assemble my files as is. Sometimes
you can have too much of a good thing, and I’d scanned at too high a resolution
to successfully reintegrate the separate images with the software I had. But, I was able to downsize the files to 900
DPI resolution and combine the four files of the northern portion as well as
the three of the southern into two transcontinental maps. Better than seven, but still not what I was
hoping for. Starting with the northern
map, I expanded the canvass and manually imported the three downsized files and
manually aligned them. I didn’t do a
perfect job as I discovered that my scans each had some minor distortions. But I managed to make it mostly work. At some point, post covid, I will rescan the
entire map on a large format scanner and eliminate the minor discontinuities. But until then, this version will allow me to
zoom in and out while tracing routings across the US and Canada.
1944 Rail Map issued
by the Santa Fe Railway
I hope you find this useful as well. You can download a higher resolution copy at
John Barry
Lovettsville, VA
18 July 2020
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