Creating a digital copy of a track plan

 I drew out a track plan at 1/4 inch to a foot. The front, eastbound track is black, the back, westbound track is red and the branchline is blue. The benches are green.

A photo was taken and loaded onto my old PC. opening it in Paint. The first thing I did was add all the town names in 16 pika and the industries in 10 pika text. Printing a copy shows how dark it prints out.

Next using either the eraser, or the select and delete functions, I deleted all the open space around the benchwork. This turns it into a white space.

 

Next, using the same functions, I selected areas with only straight track or the bench edges, erasing sections but leaving references at each end. It is then a simple mater of selecting the proper colour and the straight line function, to replace all the erased pen lines with nice straight, printed ones. Curves were done with the curve line function. All the industries were also redone. All this erasing removes all of the graph paper lines so they are carefully added to the outside of all the benches.

The results are a nice clean printout. As it is saved it can be altered at any time, without having to redraw the whole plan. Copies can also be made for other members.