I'm looking at a BNSF (originally A&P) railway map which states that one of the centerline curves is a "Morse Spiral." Anyone have a clue as to what this might be?
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Thanks!
Per this 1902 edition of the Engineering News and Railwy Journal, C.A. Morse was an engineer for the AT&SF who calculated spiral tables based on train design speed
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James - not sure how you found that but THANK YOU!
Wendell, thanks once again for making this kind of stuff possible - it truly is amazing!
Jim
No problem, grasshopper?ÿ ??ÿ
Having the side of the row be offset from a center line spiral is not so much fun.?ÿ The highway in front of my house has descriptions that way.
Most good row writers will avoid it (spiral offsets in the description).?ÿ The row sideline?ÿ may be just tangents and simple curves with the highway or railroad having a spiraled center line.?ÿ So you got to get the deeds for the row.?ÿ Sorry for stating the obvious but I've seen surveys that didn't.?ÿ In my county few public row parcels are plotted on the recorders map, even for fee owned public parcels.?ÿ When I asked why was told 'since they are not taxed no need to plot them.'?ÿ I'm like, well what about when folks are looking for their boundaries.?ÿ Most deeds will just except "any land in the row."?ÿ Seems sort of dumb to me. The parcels are not assigned a parcel number either.?ÿ You can find them in the abstract records if you know how to search, other than that they are about invisible.?ÿ Many section maps with a major state highway through them (fee title) and no evidence on the map at all.
A first for me, yet may be common, was a row on a mountain highway thru a parcel I did this year.?ÿ The dot plans have a spiraled engineers center line.?ÿ I found markers at the ends of tangents.?ÿ I was late on getting the deeds, but when I did they had a surprise for me.?ÿ The deeds extend the horizontal curve 1/2 way into the spiral.?ÿ From that point they have a straight line connect back to the end of the tangent.?ÿ So the horizontal curve perfectly parallel to the center line curve, no spiral and straight line, tangent matches center line. I liked it!?ÿ They didn't put a marker at the halfway mark so I did.
