[PRCo] Re: Penn Pilot

[Edward H. Lybarger]

The photos from West Penn territory cleared up several mapping issues very
immediately.  They are a great resource.

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Donald
Galt
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:04 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Penn Pilot

On 24 Jun 2008 at 12:18, Fred Schneider wrote:

> I'm glad, Don, to see that someone is having fun with them.  

Oh, I love old aerial photos.

Years ago in a used book store in Lancaster I stumbled across a soil atlas
of the county, with the soil information overprinted on just such photos. At
the time I was into my ancestors in the Earls and Salisbury townships, and
what made the atlas a "gotta" purchase was that historic property boundaries
- going back even to the original 18th century patents from the Penn family
- could be descried from the field lines in the photos, in a way that they
never showed up on topo maps.

Guess I need to dig it out to see whether it shows any traces of Conestoga
Traction, though I'm pretty sure it is based on a more recent edition of the
photos.

Right now I'm concentrating on downloading from Washington, Westmoreland &
Fayette. As far as I know, USGS never got around to mapping most the West
Penn areas of Westmoreland when the trolley line was around - everything is
either too old or too recent - but comparing these aerial photos with the
PennDOT historical maps answers most of my questions.

Don G