Union Pacific Rolling Stock Diagrams Page
This page was last updated on March 16, 2001.
A test of reformatting a typical freight car diagram sheet for use via a web page.
First, I tried scanning an entire diagram sheet. Doing a flatbed scan in 150 dpi resolution of a diagram page resulted in a 1.5 meg TIF file. An image file this size is too big for access via the web, especially with my web space limited to 50 meg.
Next, since the data on the original scan was somewhat illegible, I tried scanning just the dimensioned portion of the diagram sheet, and inserting the image into a Word document. The data from the diagram sheet was then entered in the form of a formatted table. This file, using the TIF image, ended up being 549k. Using the JPG image made the file 451k. Both files are too big to share via a link, but they look pretty good. But again, they are too big for web access.
This effort shows that while scanning the diagram sheets and cleaning them up is a great idea, it is simply too big of a project for any one person, or any one organization to undertake. There are hundreds of individual diagram sheets in each of the major categories: freight cars; passenger cars; steam locomotives; and diesel locomotives.
So, going back to square one, I took the original 150 dpi TIF file and converted it to a 600-pixels-wide JPG image. Click here to see the 84k image file.
Then I tried sharpening the same JPG image. Click here to see the 102k image file.
Let me know what you think.
