Help using DEM, TIGER, and HOG.

[Drumboy444]

Need Help acquiring maps

I opologize if this has been mentioned in the posts already, however I was up till 2 in the morning and spent a good portion of this morning after I got up trying to figure out my problem. I am trying to a trainz map from boston to Worcestor with the tiger lines and all. I have a greater boston route, and a providence to worcestor route, but want to merge the two.

I have successfully countoured some ground using the following document: http://www.virtualrailroader.com/DEM-Trainz.pdf.

I have been able to grab dem maps from here: http://data.geocomm.com/dem/demdownload.html, but the overlay information such as roads, railroads, and miscellaneous information I have been grabbing from http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html does not match up with the data I have grabbed from the previouse site. I have been learning that the topographic Quadrangles don't help me in narrowing down the other data because these don't seem to have anything to do with the DEM maps.

I know from what point I need to start on each route to join the two, but can't seem to properly create the map inbetween. I was willing to build it tyle by tyle merging along the way if I had to and then finally merging the three pieces together.

Is there a simpler way of going about this than I have been doing? Is there a place that I can go online to grab all of the data that I need in one place? And if I do have the tiger lines is there documentation that tells me how to add these to my maps. Again I can countour some ground using a map that I brought up in MicroDem, but was going to place the tiger lines in next. I just can't find all of the data in one place so that the correct tiger data matches up to the correct DEM map. Hope you know what I am referring to.

If you can help me in this matter or better yet if you know of someone who has this route with tiger lines and all, and wouldn't mind sharing it, this would help me alot as well.

Any help in this matter would be appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[Drumboy444]

Have one solution to my problem

I found one solution to the problem I was having. I am not so concerned about the land contour as I am about the placement of the roads, rails, etc. I found a forum that described how to create basemaps, which I use to trace over with my roads, rails, or anything else I want. They appear to be to scale so this solves the problem I previously mentioned. I am alset for now, so no one needs to reply to my last post, unless you want to for my future reference. Thanks though.

 

[geophil]

The classic MicroDEM/HOG approach works best with TIGER data as a map ground texture overlay, as MicroDEM will do the georeferencing for you, i.e. placing the TIGER lines on the proper spots on the DEM. (It's still a lot of manual work and I admit I never tried it myself.)

With Basemaps, and without a map ground texture (e.g. TIGER), it will be next to impossible to position the Basemaps matching the underlying terrain.

If you are looking for a quick and painless way to combine DEM terrain with topographic maps, you may want to consider TransDEM for Trainz. It is payware, though.