Maptastic (ep 3): Mapping how railroads built America

[@mspr8243]

Love it guys! I am gonna try QGIS today!

[@FLudlow1]

Great video. Are the train routes as scraped off the Library of Congress maps available too, as shapefiles?

[@FTReporterClips]

Unfortunately no, as I explain in the video the Library of Congress has digitised versions of these old maps. These were then georeferenced in QGIS and the railways were then drawn by hand

[@FLudlow1]

@@FTReporterClips Thank you for responding, very much appreciated. Yes! I understand well the process of georeferencing and then scraping data off georeferenced maps, in this case by tracing the rail networks as polylines/polygons (this is what you mean by drawn by hand, I believe) - so I'm wondering whether FT will make those polygons/polylines similarly available, now that they have been created?

[@John-JoeMurray]

The boom in population in the southern states from 70's is partly due to the availability of air conditioning in domestic settings.

[@phildodd9942]

An amazing amount of work! Congratulations upon that! At least it is a starting point that you will no doubt go on to refine! You mentioned the railroads and the interstate highways, but only once mentioned the fact that nowadays many people fly. Secondly, since 2000 many people communicate via the internet instead of having to relocate for office work. Can your data show how big that flying and the internet have changed population changes? Thank you.

[@hongyishi9512]

I like trains :)

[@stevehardwick8681]

Is there similar data publicly available for the UK?

[@FTReporterClips]

Not that I am aware of

[@ervingm6466]

John Henry he challenged the man made drill. Said he made a path for the train he cleared 6 meters a day to build the lay the train tracks

[@mclab001]

For anyone who's interested, here are Steven's QGIS Tutorial videos: kzbin.info/aero/PL7HotvlLKHCs9nD1fFUjSOsZrsnctyV2R

[@dariusrucker7854]

Man no talk of Texas growth?

[@peteregan3862]

The Detroit 'city' area is only a small proportion of the South East Michigan metropolitan area - the Detroit population decline is not reflective of the metropolitan area. People moved to 'burbs' is the explanation - or the 'whites' did, leaving Detroit with a high proportion of African Americans. The 'whites' who live in the metro area, but outside Detroit city area refuse to call it Detroit. It is like saying Long Island is not part of New York.

[@TroyBrownTV]

I would love to see where black people live on this map

[@ringscircles142]

you could spend the rest of your life on this work

[@jaimhaas5170]

What is harder to overlay on a map is the growing number of homeless. Many "boomers" are actually becoming nomadic on very limited incomes. They will not show up on any of these maps.