Any Hog Expert's Out There ????

[matruck]

Howdy Fella's.
Would anyone know if there is a tutorial on working with the Raw Hog terrain,i already have the route's with the tiger lines but am having trouble laying track,sum of the terrain where the rail lines run seems to be impossibly steep and for the life of me i cant get my head around how to solve this.
i have read dermmy's note's on how he approach's it,but when i apply height and/or apply gradient i end up with a railway line going through a mile high cutting just about.
Any help would be appreceated fella's.
Cheer's Mick.

 

[Dermmy]

HOG lines are approximate locations at best, if you get crazy cuts or fills, they are probably not where they should be. If you have a river anywhere near it is usually easy to figure out where the river should be - the lowest point in the terrain. If the rivers are say three or four grid squares up the valley sides then the rail lines need moved by the same amount.

If there are no rivers working it out is harder, I just try to find the line of least resistance, which is exactly what the proto construction engineers did!

Andy

 

[matruck]

Thanks

Thanks for the quick reply dermmy,i have tried your way of laying track then use the apply height and or apply gradient,but i cant seem to keep a consistant grade its all over the shop,i am working on fishlipsatwork's ctsr colorado route and i think i have bitten off more then i can chew,anyway thanks again for the reply.
Cheers Mick.

 

[ninailer]

I had the same issues when I started my route through the Ozarks this year. I got all the tiger lines on the baseboards and thought that the track laying part would be simple. Now I find that I'm running up and down the hills and hollows like a real surveyor. But that part has turned out to be a lot of fun. What has worked for me is to lay the track on the tiger lines. Then start from a high point on the route and set the gradient at some reasonable number, like 1.5%. I force that grade on down the track a mile or so. If the track ends underground, I know that the grade is too much and try again with less grade. If the track is still up in the air, then I try a steeper grade. That gives me a idea of whether that is a good average grade. Don't forget that you can weave the track back and forth to reduce the grade. I end up moving the track farther into gulleys and out around hills. And of course, tunnels and bridges take care of some grade problems.

 

[matruck]

Thanks Ninailer,i'm kinda getting the hang of it,i just found Soldier Summit,from green river to thistle in Utah,my god you should see the tiger lines on that one they are everywhere.Do you try to keep to the rule of laying your track in one direction whilst your building it.
Thanks Again.
Cheers Mick.

 

[geophil]

Assuming you haven't made any mistakes with MicroDEM and HOG, the location error is down to the limited accuracy of the TIGER map data source. The TIGER specs say something like 1:160000. That's too small in many cases. I would go for USGS 1:24000 top maps instead (and possibly switch to another tool ).

Here is an example - west of Soldier Summit - with USGS 1:24000 downloaded from MS Terra Server on top of 1/3 arc sec NED DEM (10m) from Seamless Server. Contour lines for the DEM are shown in addition to those of the 1:24k map. A perfect match. And the railroad runs where the railroad should run.



geophil

 

[Dermmy]

...Do you try to keep to the rule of laying your track in one direction whilst your building it....
Cheers Mick.

Not worth the trouble, and effectively almost impossible anyway. Even if you lay all your track in the 'correct' direction, every time you insert a spline point for junctions etc, you reverse the direction of the track. So now you have to figure out which bits are reversed and insert and delete another splinepoint to re-reverse the track etc etc etc

Just lay the stuff, if the AI can't cope the problem can always be fixed without reference to 'track direction'.

Andy

 

[matruck]

Thanks Geophil,i still havn't actually got my head around transdem yet,the tutorials worked ok but buggerd if i could get the track imported into it so i found fishlipsatwork's soldier summit and whilst i'm not after sumthing too prototypical just sumthing i can follow the lines(kinda like).
Andy you have just saved me a lot of headache's whilst i don't do much AI work i was trying to stick to sum rule's i thought i had read from here,i'm still following your guideline's though which have come in handy.
Thanks again fella's.
Cheers Mick.:wave: :wave: