steamboateng
New member
Two years ago, I purchased TrainzDem from Herr Doktor Ziegler; that was V.1.3. Being a complete ignoramous in the language and methods of geological survey; projections, datums, algorithms, etc., I spent several difficult days reading and Googling (I'm a confirmed Googleholic!). I finally garnered enough understanding and courage to apply the program to Surveyor in TS2006. The results were outstanding. Notwithsanding complete surprise at the success of my own efforts, the efforts of Dr. Ziegler and his DEM program changed my outlook on creating routes in Trainz. Here I had the tools to model practically any terrain and route on the planet!
I quietly slipped my housebound shackles, skooted to my favorite liquor emporium, and promptly purchased a double six of a fine German brew. Stealthily slipping back to my computor, I heartily toasted a few to Herr Doktor that evening.
I'm and old guy; and being an old guy, I like old things (well, not all old things.....). I wanted to model a railroad verging on the heyday of busy routes, the demise of steam, and the rise of diesel (Rudolph Diesel, another German genius!). New England, with its manufacturing, agricultural and maritime economic base, was a good choice. (Besides, I live here!)
After applying TrainzDem to an area roughly 8 miles square in Surveyor and successfully recreating the rather mundane low hilly country north of Boston (Massachusetts) I found I needed to recreate roadbed that no longer existed.
But Mr TrainzDem and Mr. Google came through for me. I found, and applied historical USGS maps as UTM objects to the Trainz baseboards, recreating a New England countryside not seen since 1947! I simply applied track over the map boards, oten showing turnout placement as well as geodata.
The older raster maps were somewhat oddball, a scale of 1:31680 and using polyconic projection (?) on a 1927 North American Datum (?). But it worked. Once I established reference coordinates for the old maps, they fit nearly perfectly onto the existing DEM terrain. Ron Ziegler's program was versitile and accurate.
I have since upgraded to TS 2010 and a fancy new computer. I found I needed to upgrade TrainzDem also, to work with the laest Trainz editions. Through the magic of cyberspace economics and PayPal I have the latest TrainzDem version (2.1) installed and warmed up. I'm looking forward to recreating the same era in a vitual Trainz-world using TrainzDem and my imagination, as the tools to convey this era.
The purpose of this post? Absolutely none........except perhaps to say "Thanks, Ron", and lift a lager to you.
Regards all
I quietly slipped my housebound shackles, skooted to my favorite liquor emporium, and promptly purchased a double six of a fine German brew. Stealthily slipping back to my computor, I heartily toasted a few to Herr Doktor that evening.
I'm and old guy; and being an old guy, I like old things (well, not all old things.....). I wanted to model a railroad verging on the heyday of busy routes, the demise of steam, and the rise of diesel (Rudolph Diesel, another German genius!). New England, with its manufacturing, agricultural and maritime economic base, was a good choice. (Besides, I live here!)
After applying TrainzDem to an area roughly 8 miles square in Surveyor and successfully recreating the rather mundane low hilly country north of Boston (Massachusetts) I found I needed to recreate roadbed that no longer existed.
But Mr TrainzDem and Mr. Google came through for me. I found, and applied historical USGS maps as UTM objects to the Trainz baseboards, recreating a New England countryside not seen since 1947! I simply applied track over the map boards, oten showing turnout placement as well as geodata.
The older raster maps were somewhat oddball, a scale of 1:31680 and using polyconic projection (?) on a 1927 North American Datum (?). But it worked. Once I established reference coordinates for the old maps, they fit nearly perfectly onto the existing DEM terrain. Ron Ziegler's program was versitile and accurate.
I have since upgraded to TS 2010 and a fancy new computer. I found I needed to upgrade TrainzDem also, to work with the laest Trainz editions. Through the magic of cyberspace economics and PayPal I have the latest TrainzDem version (2.1) installed and warmed up. I'm looking forward to recreating the same era in a vitual Trainz-world using TrainzDem and my imagination, as the tools to convey this era.
The purpose of this post? Absolutely none........except perhaps to say "Thanks, Ron", and lift a lager to you.
Regards all
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