Hopefully you'll find this useful as a way to come up with route ideas. This seems to be a common problem that many people ask about frequently in the forums.
Route building can be tough. We look for stuff to build, try out ideas, and trash them. For me and probably a lot of us, this is a normal mode of operation. I can no longer count the number of routes that didn't quite make it past the sketch and first baseboard or two. The good thing with virtual railroading and modeling is we can do this without wasting anything but a few electrons and some time. Over the past two years, I have hit on a somewhat successful fictional route creation method. It's not necessarily what I would call earth breaking, but it works quite well. We've all used DEMs for routes mostly for prototypes and for fictional depictions of prototypical routes. This gives us a great base to with and it surely beats hand sculpting terrain especially with our fat-crayon like tools we have in Surveyor. Working with a prototypical route can be difficult especially if we know the area. I've run into this a few times, particularly when working on my own area. I find that I can never get it right. Working on a fictional route is a bit easier, but then again you've got that same stigma of getting things right because we try to match the topographic map or base images. What I'll be discussing here is a bit of everything from totally fictional to prototypical rolled into one.
What I have done, which I suppose is a variation on this theme, is to find other route possibilities where no rails were ever laid. George Fisher actually did this with his Gloucester Terminal and this what gave me the idea to explore this a bit deeper. I've recently expanded his route a bit farther by a few miles east and west quite successfully. There are many places in this world where there could have been a rail line, but for some reason the city or town was bypassed, or the line was abandoned before it was completed. This is where we can come in and build a route where none has existed before. My first solo foray into this was the Bristol to Sandy Point line on my old Enfield and Eastern, a route I actually started in 2003. I noticed that the landscape, just south of what is in reality Bangor Maine on this DEM, had the look about it that it could actually have had a rail line. A look at the Google image, which was pretty poor at the time, revealed nothing. The old topographic maps showed nothing but roads, but the landscape had that possible railroad grade look.
At this point, I took the old Fishlipsatwork DEM, with TIGER lines, and did a bit of walking. I got down at ground level and did some viewing, surveying the landscape, I suppose we could call it, to find the best route or possible route for a railroad. There were quite a few steep hills along the river. A few came right up to the shoreline on one side, but the opposite side was smooth and flat. I made note of this and placed some tall trees as markers to plot out my route. I noted where bridges were to cross and where I would have to make some cuttings. I suppose this is how it's done or was done in the old days.
I then started my track work with the connection with the prototype line heading into Bangor, which I've called Bristol. I named this Sandy Junction, and then laid track along the river. Some of the initial plan didn't quite work as planned, but I was able to revise this as I went along. As I crossed the actual roads, I put in railroad crossings on some, while others were over bridges and underpasses. This process took a few days for this 8 mile line from Bristol to the end of the extant landscape, and much, much longer to landscape. At the end, I put in a passenger station and a small yard. This took some fiddling, but I was able to get the tracks in between the existing roads without disturbing too much of the original landscape. At Sandy Point, which became the terminus on the branch, I put in a short line down to the riverside to serve a canning industry along with some warehouses, a factory, and some other small industries. The town its self makes up the hills surrounding the station and everything fits in as though the tracks should have been there. I laid my road network in the town area on the actual roads marked on the DEM. In reality this is part of Winterport Maine.
So for those people who are looking for route ideas, I hope you find this useful whether as an expansion to your existing routes or for starting a new one. I've used this technique a couple of times now including a recent addition to my Enfield and Eastern as I build the final many miles to the namesake cities.
John
Route building can be tough. We look for stuff to build, try out ideas, and trash them. For me and probably a lot of us, this is a normal mode of operation. I can no longer count the number of routes that didn't quite make it past the sketch and first baseboard or two. The good thing with virtual railroading and modeling is we can do this without wasting anything but a few electrons and some time. Over the past two years, I have hit on a somewhat successful fictional route creation method. It's not necessarily what I would call earth breaking, but it works quite well. We've all used DEMs for routes mostly for prototypes and for fictional depictions of prototypical routes. This gives us a great base to with and it surely beats hand sculpting terrain especially with our fat-crayon like tools we have in Surveyor. Working with a prototypical route can be difficult especially if we know the area. I've run into this a few times, particularly when working on my own area. I find that I can never get it right. Working on a fictional route is a bit easier, but then again you've got that same stigma of getting things right because we try to match the topographic map or base images. What I'll be discussing here is a bit of everything from totally fictional to prototypical rolled into one.
What I have done, which I suppose is a variation on this theme, is to find other route possibilities where no rails were ever laid. George Fisher actually did this with his Gloucester Terminal and this what gave me the idea to explore this a bit deeper. I've recently expanded his route a bit farther by a few miles east and west quite successfully. There are many places in this world where there could have been a rail line, but for some reason the city or town was bypassed, or the line was abandoned before it was completed. This is where we can come in and build a route where none has existed before. My first solo foray into this was the Bristol to Sandy Point line on my old Enfield and Eastern, a route I actually started in 2003. I noticed that the landscape, just south of what is in reality Bangor Maine on this DEM, had the look about it that it could actually have had a rail line. A look at the Google image, which was pretty poor at the time, revealed nothing. The old topographic maps showed nothing but roads, but the landscape had that possible railroad grade look.
At this point, I took the old Fishlipsatwork DEM, with TIGER lines, and did a bit of walking. I got down at ground level and did some viewing, surveying the landscape, I suppose we could call it, to find the best route or possible route for a railroad. There were quite a few steep hills along the river. A few came right up to the shoreline on one side, but the opposite side was smooth and flat. I made note of this and placed some tall trees as markers to plot out my route. I noted where bridges were to cross and where I would have to make some cuttings. I suppose this is how it's done or was done in the old days.
I then started my track work with the connection with the prototype line heading into Bangor, which I've called Bristol. I named this Sandy Junction, and then laid track along the river. Some of the initial plan didn't quite work as planned, but I was able to revise this as I went along. As I crossed the actual roads, I put in railroad crossings on some, while others were over bridges and underpasses. This process took a few days for this 8 mile line from Bristol to the end of the extant landscape, and much, much longer to landscape. At the end, I put in a passenger station and a small yard. This took some fiddling, but I was able to get the tracks in between the existing roads without disturbing too much of the original landscape. At Sandy Point, which became the terminus on the branch, I put in a short line down to the riverside to serve a canning industry along with some warehouses, a factory, and some other small industries. The town its self makes up the hills surrounding the station and everything fits in as though the tracks should have been there. I laid my road network in the town area on the actual roads marked on the DEM. In reality this is part of Winterport Maine.
So for those people who are looking for route ideas, I hope you find this useful whether as an expansion to your existing routes or for starting a new one. I've used this technique a couple of times now including a recent addition to my Enfield and Eastern as I build the final many miles to the namesake cities.
John
