Contributors of the week 2007-11-21

Great job. Thanks for the files. We all appreciate efforts to post POI's. In my opinion this is what keeps this site going. Again Congratulations.

The first POI uploads were relatively easy, unfortunately I have discovered that this is a never ending process of updating and tweaking them. Right now I'm in the middle of updating the coords (as well as adding the stations I don't have yet) of my train stations to be right at the tracks to insure notification of upcoming stations whos address coordinates may be a little ways from the tracks. I'm just lucky that I work in a job that allows me time to work on these things at work.

Congratulations to a job well done

Keep on keepin on

...to ONE and ALL! That includes you too Miss POI and JM!

ML

Hey, at least the train station POIs don't move around as often as some of the others do! :+)

dd ( former COW )

Ditto, ditto, ditto!

Miki

Did I miss someone? Is there a "secret" COW out there? :+)

dd

Oh, definately. While I still see much I want to do with them, the number of points, and locations for them, in my files is fixed. This works well for me as I can sometimes get bored easily and want to move on to something new. Doing continual updates and adds to the same file would get old real fast for me. But I tryly applaud those that can keep with something like that!

Quackinup, I completely agree with you. When I started work on the NC State Parks I only had their office addresses to go by. When I received my copy of Mapsource, I started looking up the parks and finding the entrance coordinates and manually changing them in the CSV file. It's a lot of work but more accurate POI files make for better trips.

Thanks for all your efforts.

nt

Congrats... Well done!

The only problem with mine is that I am designing it for the traveller on the train. If someone uses the coordinates I'm emtering to drive to the station they may be led to the wrong location (wrong side of the tracks). I think I will retain the street location and put it in column 5/6 of the csv so that the end user can swap that to column 1/2 if they prefer it (unless Miss POI's verification process strips out extra columns).

congrats to all.

Congratulations to both of you!

Thanks Quackinup for the Amtrak file. My wife was pretty excited to see that. We wish had a GPS and this file earlier this year when we took a trip to Yosemite via the SW Chief. I know we'll use it spring when we take a train to Albany.

Not sure what your using, but if it supports tourguides I'm planning on making those for several routes I will be travelling soon (including the Chief) so that it announces the stations by name as you approach them. If you could use that let me know what route you will be on and I will bump it to the top of the list with my routes.

One thing that has happened on my trips is that we have had to send people back sometimes and have used the train to do that.
Having a poi based file with the train stops will be nice as we won't have to run around like a chicken with his head cut of trying to find a train station.

Thanks man.

Thank you all for the great support you provided in answering questions. Miss Poi, indeed, a great great inspiration for us all!

Congratulations on the award, both of you.

My wife and I have been wanting to take a short train trip, and might do it this Spring. The Amtrak locations POI file will be just the ticket!

Congrads to both of you Sewisdom and Quackinup...
for a job well done now your in the Hall of fame

Kirk, if you have a unit that can use a TourGuide let me know and I'll set you up one. I just created one for my trip on the California Zephyr to Denver next week. It will announce the stations at a distance of about 2 miles out.

I love travelling on Amtrak and have been doing quite a few trips recently. You just have to know that there is a good chance that you will not get where you are going at the scheduled time. If you are ok with that, it can all be fun. My last trip on the Zephyr was last May and there was a freight train derailment in Iowa right after we left Chicago. We ended up diverting and travelling with the Southwest Chief into Kansas City and then heading back up to out original route. It put us behing about 12 hours, but they made up a lot of that. The bad part was that we went through the Rockies at night....thus my trip next week, to see that part during the day, and with snow this time!

Next May I will be flying to Orlando and riding Amtrak back, via DC and Chicago (still can't come direct on the Sunset Limited due to Katrina damage)