Conversion of map to POI

I assume you are aware of the POI file "Scenic Railroads". This may include the live steam railways. I hope so since I have a little of the same interest.

Creating POI files can be intensive but a lot depends on what you have to work with as a start.

The easiest way to start is with an Excel or similar spreadsheet program. With this you need a minimum of 4 columns, Longitude, Latitude, a POI Name, and a description. Those are the basics.

Without worrying about the first two (that comes later) you need to be able to extract addresses from your source material. You will need the number, name of the street, city, state or province, and postal code. This data is fed into a geocoder that returns the GPS position information.

Enter a descriptive name for the point in the third column, the address information in the 4th column. When you have entered this data, take the address data and feed it into a geocoder engine such as GPSVisualizer. When this engine runs, it outputs a file containing the address and the coordinates. Input the longitude (the negative value) into the first column and the latitude into the second column for each line.

Save the resulting spreadsheet file as a CSV (comma separated variable) and you have a basic POI file. The first few records (locations) are the most difficult. It gets much easier the more you do.

For the locations on your map that give GPS coordinates, you can create a POI file with a text editor or a spreadsheet program using the format adopted by POI-FACTORY. Be sure to save the data as a comma separated value (CSV) file.

I would be surprised if anyone has a program that would read the coordinates imbedded in the map file and output them in a format that would be useful for POI file.....
-jgracey

Hours of tedious editing (or not so tedious if you have the right personality).

Your map gives Latitude, Longitude, Name & Description (address) when the pointer rests on a location. Copy and paste these into the format described by a_user. No geocoding required - you have done it yourself by copying the latitude and longitude.

If no one is working on this, I will undertake it. I'll wait a few days to see if anyone speaks up.