I ran into this a few months ago. Was retracing a plat bisected by a railroad and bounded by a highway. The platting surveyor pulled the degree of curve off the plans for both and 'fixed' the center line radius to match his calcs. He then proceeded to pincushion everything on site and call the remote controlling monuments wrong.
Bottom line, you cant follow the footsteps by disregarding the acts of the original surveyor. That includes the manner of expressing calculations and the reasons behind it. Degree of curve by chord definition made layout very simple. That translates to easy retracement. If you review your right of way in light of the way it was established things will come together for you.
StLSurveyor, post: 438508, member: 7070 wrote: About 4 years ago I sat in a RR Surveying class at the Kentucky (KAPS) conference, he was a CSX guy. A question similar to this came up and we were told that RR ROW will typically follow the Arc definition - Chord will only apply to the rails (CL).
It is my understanding that BNSF follows this scheme also - and it seems to be the case on the ground.
