DEM of CSX below Washington

[rwk]

Is there any DEM from Washington to Richmond and Richmond to Florence, SC? I have DEM from Florence to Charleston and Charleston to Brunswick, GA and Jacksonville, FL to Orlando, FL. I'm trying to create the Amtrak Auto Train route. If there is no DEM for those sections, I will use blank baseboards and just judge the distances and look at regular and satellite maps. The route is about 700-800 miles long but since I have some sections already I will only have to do a couple hundred miles or so of blank baseboards. Basically most of the route north of Florence and between Brunswick, GA and Jacksonville, FL. I'm doing this in Trainz Plus.

 

[schweitzerdude]

What do you mean when you say you have a DEM for part of the route? Has that DEM been used by someone else to create a Trainz route, which you have?

Because DEMS for virtually the entire world are readily available on the internet. Here is one source of SRTM (space shuttle) data I have used. There are several other data sources out there which are more detailed, but I have not used them.

30-Meter SRTM Elevation Data Downloader

But what you really need is a way to create a Trainz route from whatever DEM you use. This requires buying and using TransDEM Trainz Edition yourself. The other solution requires someone who owns TransDEM to make it for you. I believe TransDEM is not licensed for commercial use (for $). But I could be wrong.

But the area you are modeling is so flat that it probably doesn't matter. And using TransDEM, although it works well, is complex software so just learning it for a one-time project would probably not be a good use of your time.

 

[JCitron]

There are other things to take into consideration including distance, data, size, and time to build the route.

The data download for that will be huge and so will be the chopped-up route after the section is trimmed. An issue I ran into is TransDEM created a route that was too big to load into Trainz. I think it was in TS12 at the time. T: ANE loaded that route okay but I could barely move around even with the 10-meter grid. And finally, the amount of time needed to put the level of detail in that's acceptable is uncalculatable, let alone making the already large route even larger. At the moment, I'm working on a short route in northern New Jersey. Finding the appropriate assets for that short route has been an all-time-consuming adventure on its own and I've barely started landscaping. This was in addition to laying track and sculpting out a river valley that was flooded by a dam, and I've hardly made any progress even with working on the route for weeks.

 

[rwk]

I had TransDEM but I would have to buy it again to install it again. I no longer have the old install. I emailed Roland a while back. I guess he upgraded it or something. The DEM routes I have are blank routes by fishlipsatwork. As long as the elevations aren't too far off, I could probably use blank baseboards in between. I have a bunch of Amtrak stations by davesnow, and some from an Amtrak site by PerRock, and the Selma, NC station by the late bendorsey. John, I'm going to work on it in sections, like northern Virginia and Lorton to Richmond, then Richmond to Florence, SC, then merge with the fishlips DEM, and merge the two fishlips DEM's together at Charleston, SC, then create more blank baseboards to Jacksonville, FL and finally merge the Jacksonville to Orlando DEM blank route. I think there is a Jacksonville, FL station on the DLS as well. The Auto Train terminal in Florida is in Sanford, FL which is north of Orlando. I think using flat baseboards for parts of the route will keep the file size down and the slowdown to a minimum. It doesn't have to be exactly to scale on the flat baseboards parts. I'm just doing the section from below Washington, DC to Orlando. I found a route from Wash DC to Richmond on the DLS but it's way too short and has a bunch of missing assets which are either payware in payware routes by N3V (RoysTrainz, tume) JR (Wearsprada) or by authors which I have no idea where the assets are, I would have to use kuid index to find them. But, I'm not using that route anyway, I'll build one myself with blank baseboards that's much longer.

 

[JCitron]

That's a good way to go about it.

 

[schweitzerdude]

I had TransDEM installed on a computer that had a hard drive failure. All my data was backed up, but I lost several programs that were not backed up. So I bought TransDEM again.

Shortly thereafter, I got an email from Roland saying basically "you already bought this." I explained what happened. He replied "I won't charge you again."

Thank you Roland.

 

[blueodessey]

I had TransDEM but I would have to buy it again to install it again. I no longer have the old install. I emailed Roland a while back. I guess he upgraded it or something. The DEM routes I have are blank routes by fishlipsatwork. As long as the elevations aren't too far off, I could probably use blank baseboards in between. I have a bunch of Amtrak stations by davesnow, and some from an Amtrak site by PerRock, and the Selma, NC station by the late bendorsey. John, I'm going to work on it in sections, like northern Virginia and Lorton to Richmond, then Richmond to Florence, SC, then merge with the fishlips DEM, and merge the two fishlips DEM's together at Charleston, SC, then create more blank baseboards to Jacksonville, FL and finally merge the Jacksonville to Orlando DEM blank route. I think there is a Jacksonville, FL station on the DLS as well. The Auto Train terminal in Florida is in Sanford, FL which is north of Orlando. I think using flat baseboards for parts of the route will keep the file size down and the slowdown to a minimum. It doesn't have to be exactly to scale on the flat baseboards parts. I'm just doing the section from below Washington, DC to Orlando. I found a route from Wash DC to Richmond on the DLS but it's way too short and has a bunch of missing assets which are either payware in payware routes by N3V (RoysTrainz, tume) JR (Wearsprada) or by authors which I have no idea where the assets are, I would have to use kuid index to find them. But, I'm not using that route anyway, I'll build one myself with blank baseboards that's much longer.

Trainz