RCAHMS Aerial Photography - Print Topic

While I was looking at this and zooming in on the locations (amazingly, they have caught my house again in the postwar images prior to my "house in the country" being converted at no cost to me into a "house in the city" :( ), I noticed feature now a active in Google Maps.

Although I freely admit I usually gripe about having advertising foist upon me, for once, it is a good thing and we can profit from it.

When you zoom in on the Google views, there are now icons, and even names over businesses, and these can be clicked for more info, such as full name and address.

One of the problems with the aerial views has been trying to pin down or identify who or what you are looking at, as the street may not be shown, and if you don't know the area, then you have no idea of what you are looking at, or of getting your bearings.

For once, it looks as if advertising material actually has some use other than nuisance value :)

Quoted from jmb

If only you could zoom in to see detail as with the NLS images.

Add the Zoomfox or Image Zoom add-ons to your browser and you can zoom any web page image with the click of mouse button - unless you're using the wrong browser of course ;)

The NLS versions aren't particularly hi-res, and the RCAHMS views zoom just about as well using these tools.

OK, I had not looked in that much detail.

I often either save and open from the saved file or just paste into an image viewing program.

MB

Oh, do I remember doing that more than once... or twice,, or... :)

Image Zoom scales the images directly in the web page just using a right-click.

One trick that's slightly buried in the notes/setup is an option to hold the right button and click on the image of interest, which toggles it between full screen and original size, making it very quick to see if an image has more detail or not.

Just tested the new Google maps feature on my local area.
There are very few businesses shown, presumably only those who have paid money, and the categorisation is often wrong. For example, an optician is categorised as "restaurant" - perhaps because they are called "Mango" ....?
More of concern is that many locations, paid or not, are in the wrong place. By about a mile in the case of Bothwell Castle. I suspect the use of postcode information here rather than real geographic information.
I have not spotted how to turn off this feature as it could become a huge nuisance if every business was shown. How could it cope with a 20 storey block with eight business on each floor? Arrgghh!
Navigator

Google makes its money from ads, you will never be able to "turn this off".

Deselect Labels to remove the info from the view.

I don't know what you're looking at, but Bothwell Castle is, and always has been spot on.

Can you post a screen grab?

Sorry, no screen grab facility on this netbook, but look for junction of Uddingston Road with Blantyre Road.

Close investigation shows a golfer symbol, so it is actually the golf course it refers to, and not the actual castle. So it is only about 3/4 mile out. Sorry Google, but logo is impossible to see without a magnifying glass. Zooming makes map bigger but symbols stay same size. clever.

I also just noticed that over 50% of the screen is now consumed by toolbars and suchlike (even with map full width). I suspect they ust have not realised people use small screens to view. However, I have managed still to not see the adverts - "none so blind as ........" - he he.

Navigator

Unfortunately, netbooks wind the clock back about 12 years as far as screen sizes go, so you get the real estate you pay for :(

As a programmer, I found the switch from a standard 17" screen to a 17" widescreen earlier this year such a loss of real estate that I was actually glad the PC concerned had to go back for a refund, and I went back to a normal screen.

The Google view (I have been following the API since it was introduced) is very much a compromise based on what they can standardise for the majority, so netbooks will come far down the priority list, unless a custom display format is introduced which can automatically knock down the screen controls in a similar way to the automatic handling of WAP screens, so maybe one day.

Way back at the start, there were all sorts of the debates and issues about everything, even the mouse cursor, and how it should change or be shown as various operations were carried out on the map.

We're currently running version 2 of the map API, but version three was released recently, with now and simplified features promised. It's still very much beta, with no update path in place yet regarding backward comparability, so you never know what will be in the "new" box :) New options are popping up all the time, but will be subject to much change if the birth of V2 over V1 was anything to go by a few years ago.

The icons etc aren't really clever. All the elements live on separate layers over the various map layers, and are fixed in size. To make them zoom, which I don't think many people bother to do now (we did try it in the early days) as it means preparing graphic sets of all the components for every desired zoom level, detecting those levels, then hiding the "old" icon and showing the new one - way to much work for anything but a big app.

I find it a bit of a coincidence that the Bothwell Castle Golf Club icon is squarely on top of a fairly new development of flats, and suspect a little foul play.

Google clearly have no knowledge of the course, and will plot the icon at the co-ordinates given by whoever submits the data, so it's not their fault if it's not where expected (unless they have finger trouble of course), and it would need someone to complain and highlight the position, with a correction.

I checked the postcode, and it's spot on for the clubhouse, so that's not the reason for the position - unless an error was made in the submission.

As Apollo says, it depends what the user puts in - and it may be the person inputting info about the Golf Club used a home address, and (s)he lives in that block of flats....?

I would prefer to always use my nice old 28" colour CRT monitor, but together with the CPU box, keyboard and mouse, and a convenient way of producing 250v ac on the move will not fit in my bag the way a 9" screen laptop will. Progress does always seem to follow a path of making things bigger to add functionality, then when not much else can be added, switching to reducing the size for novelty (i.e. newness). I remember the first modem I used took up three shelves in a 19" rack unit - now it is just a wee chip in the computer. I don't even have a 19" rack anymore. Sob Sob.

Google is by no means the worst for screen clutter - have a look at the Glasgow Herald!

To return to the basic theme of the site - what info does anyone have about the alleged tunnel in Bothwell which allowed miners to go between their housing and the colliery across the road from the Golf Course without having to disturb the sensibilities of the gentry by walking across the main street? The nearest I have got to it is speaking to someone who spoke to someone who knows where it is/was.

Navigator

Wow! 9" I can appreciate the standard mapping hassles at that - and I thought 10.5" needed a magnifying glass last time I was in PCW...

But (apart from the ridiculous prices that seem to be way OTT for the reduced facilities) a small laptop that actually works with today's web is neat. I still have a couple of similarly sized machines from the past, but they are just a joke, and can't be practically interfaced to the wireless world (or even wired in practical terms), which is a pity. Such is progress.

I don't know about any particular stories regarding Bothwell and a colliery, but dependent on the seams they were working, there is no reason to doubt the possibility of such a tunnel, even if the suggestion that it was to prevent disturbing the local wealth is probably little more than an urban myth that may have been made up later. Tunnels in those days were long, slow laborious tasks by manual labour, with a pit owner wanting maximum output per miner, and unless the local gentry were finding their slumber-tunnel, the owner would not have had his men wasting their time on an unnecessary access tunnel.

If it was there, it was there for a reason, and that reason would have been productivity.

Most of the modern day pits were connected by miles of tunnels underground, and miners could move between pits without wasting time by coming to the surface. My cousing used to be a tunnel surveyor for the coal board, and reckoned he could go anywhere in Fife without seeing daylight. Not nowadays though.

This might fall within the Captain's area, if we're lucky.

It always amazes me that screen resolution hasn't increased the way memory, processor speed etc has. I just can't get a big enough screen - this one is 1920x1200 and I still feel like i need more...

After The Navigator's not about Bothwell Castle Golf Club, and the observation on the position of the marker, I happened to have a look at a few nearby business locations, and a number of these are very badly placed.

It looks, until some pattern appears (if anyone has the time, or cares), as if those submitting the entries aren't too good at pointing at them in maps, or the postcodes as being used, as per our earlier observations with regard to QinetiQ Ardeer. And there's always the good old-fashioned typo to contend with - I noticed that some addresses were shown with incomplete postcodes.

One to watch?

I have to confess I tend not to look at the left pane of Google Maps - it's usually a waste of map space that I dismiss to get a bigger map view, and usually contains little of interest, unless I've called it up specifically.

However, I did notice that it does have a specific option to add a business so that it will appear on Google Maps, and the location is indeed down to the user/person who posts the entry.

This is the entry page to the feature:

Welcome to the Local Business Centre

One common problem with both Google Earth and Maps is that people put on markers without zooming in to get an accurate position so they are vaguely over the right town. I have also seen a lot that are in completely the wrong position, you can add a comment but they never seem to get corrected - I think there used to be some pictures of Casteal Eilean Donan somewhere around Fort William.

MB

Quoted from The Navigator

To return to the basic theme of the site - what info does anyone have about the alleged tunnel in Bothwell which allowed miners to go between their housing and the colliery across the road from the Golf Course without having to disturb the sensibilities of the gentry by walking across the main street? The nearest I have got to it is speaking to someone who spoke to someone who knows where it is/was.

Born & bred quite nearby but have never heard of this. I've found it quite difficult to pinpoint where this pit (Castle Colliery) was but a description of an accident in 1920 (4 dead) puts it on the road between Uddingston and Bothwell. I'd guess it was around the area where the gas works were then - to the left of the road as you go from Uddy, Hamilton library will have editions of the O.S. which will identify its location I expect.
The tunnel might have been an underpass type of thing under a road or railway that the men walked through going into the colliery.
As for the offending the gentry thing .................

You are a bit out there, Captain.

The pit in question was located in Bothwell village, beside the railway line to Hamilton. The site was occupied by Scott-Mobac/Hewden Stewart for many years after closure, the last of the pit buildings only being demolished a few years ago to make way for blocks of flats (what else!). Part of the first waste tip forms the "wildlife haven" beside the current doctors' surgery in Uddingston Road. They ran out of space to dump waste and started a second bing on the opposite side of Blantyre Road. Waste was carried in tubs by an aerial cableway not unlike a modern ski gondola system. This tip was eventually used for brick manufacture, and the site occupied by the new Bothwell Primary School - now being replaced by a new build on the same site.

The tunnel, if it was such, apparently led from the miners' rows located between Fallside Road and the Shettleston to Hamilton railway line. It would have had to go to a depth of at least 35' to pass beneath the railway line which is in a cutting at that point. The other end was located "somewhere in the colliery" but it would have had to lead back to the surface so that miners could access the lamp room, be searched for contabrand, and enter the pit cages to descend the shaft. All-in-all it seems implausible, but it could just be true. . . . . .

Navigator

Have you guys had a look at old-maps.co.uk? It should be shown there. if you havent tried it before, it doesn't work with IE8 unless in compatability mode.

I've stuck a nearby point in the Map Sandbox which gets you to old-maps without too much pain - and the other map options, below the Google map.

There are a number of pits nearby, even gravel pits.

Sometimes old-maps has actually shown some underground tunnels, but I don't see any here, though I don't know if I was really looking in the right area.

Don't forget this page will clear itself 24 hours after the last edit made to it.

You can see much of the mine on the NLS aerial photos, just on the edge of the coverage.

MB

Some proper location information. The miners housing (Castle Square, etc) were around NS704588, while the shafts of the colliery were (are, hmmmm!) close to NS702586. Both areas covered with modern housing.
Navigator

I've changed the Map Sandbox content to the values given above, and placed the colliery location as the coordinates for the other map links.

In old-maps this shows it to be Bothwell Castle Colliery Pit No 1, with th e Caledonian Cottages to the north west, where the second marker lies.

If the miners had just followed the railway track to get to work, they couldn't have made any more noise walking that the locos and trucks of the time would made to disturb the sleeping gentry. Doesn't seem much point in having a tunnel under an active railway of the time.

Quoted from The Navigator

You are a bit out there, Captain.

Yes I was indeed. I think I was 'blinded' by the location being described on the accident report as between Uddingston and Bothwell and never bothered to consider it was within Bothwell. I'd say the 'tunnel' must have been the through and alongside the railway where it goes under the main road which would tie in with what Apollo suggested and by the looks of the locality there were miner's rows situated to the N.E. of the pit.
The old NBR line under the road line has been converted to a pedestrian path last time I looked.

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