Reader Mike Hawes requested that I do the Google Earth overlay trick with last weekend’s Aldridge Northwest 1914 map, so I’ve done just that. This was a very difficult one to align, as something seems erroneous about the drafting of the canal to the south west. I suspect either drafting error, or an imaging distortion. Since so much has changed under this map, it’s a bugger to line up anyway. Trust no apparent correlation between surface features and draft to be accurate, or be an verbatim depiction of what lay where. Having said that, it should be accurate to 5m or so.
You can download a copy of the overlay (7.1Mb) for use within Google Earh by clicking on the link below…
The overlay applied in Google Earth. By downloading the overlay, transparency of it can be adjusted. Click for a larger version.
Aldridge North West 1914.kmz – hosted at Box.com
There are instructions on how to use overlays like this one in my previous post “Mapping the past’. Note that you can also use this file as a basemap in most modern, mapping handheld Garmin GPS units – GPSmap 62 series, Colorado, Oregon, Dakota etc. Again, I can’t guarantee accuracy, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Just take care not to fall into the canal whilst using it…