Looking for White River, VT DEM not DLS version
- Thread starter rwk
- Start date
There were a few railfan trips to the ball signal from North Conway and even the 7470 steam locomotive went there, with diesels at the rear of the train for the return trip. Here is a Conway Scenic diesel excursion train at the ball signal in Whitefield. This location is in a Trainz VT-NH loop route by gfisher I have. I want to connect it to the other MEC route I have but there is an elevation difference of 298 meters at Whitefield and 566.68 meters north of Crawfords station. I plan to use blank baseboards, but I will have to do a gentle slope from Fabyans Station to around Hazens.
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While this route isn't the MEC, it's terrain is very similar. The terrain height is very close to what you are looking for. This may extend your route a bit more and I know it won't be prototypical.
Check out their Saluda Grade if you don't have it already.
www.theswitchbacktrainz.com
Check out their Saluda Grade if you don't have it already.
The Switchback
www.theswitchbacktrainz.com
I understand.
Not really. There's no easy way to do it. To be realistic about it, you need TransDEM. The program costs around $30.00 a bit more or less from what I remember. It's not as difficult to use as may people claim it is.
The alternative is to use BaseMapz for the images and download the .tga DEM images for the area. Chop up the images into single baseboard sized chunks and raise each section up using height maps. If you try to use bigger chunks, it'll be difficult to select the baseboards you want to raise up. This will be a long process that's prone to errors and to be honest, I'd go for TransDEM. The $30 bucks is worth it in the end.
There is a way in TransDEM to adjust lateral differences by about a half a baseboard. This may be enough to line up the old HOG routes with the new TransDEM route.
I had TransDEM but lost access to it. I don't have the installer anymore. Do I need a newer version for 19/22? I think I would have to buy a new license from Roland. I know a person on here who could make a DEM for me. But how are hand built routes like Dry Brook & Esopus Valley done? The east end starts out at 0 elevation but rises in elevation to the west. There is a tool in Surveyor to make sloping land and adjust the steepness of it. My old email got hacked months ago so I can't access any of Roland's old emails to me. The hacker changed the password and changed the recovery email so I'm unable to reset/change the password. It was an MSN email. I just created a new Outlook email then. I just might try that Basemapz program. Will it work with a screenshot of a topo map? Does it apply map images to baseboards? That would help me get the distances right instead of measuring everything manually in Google Maps with the ruler tool and using the 1 mile asset in Trainz that is divided into four 1/4 mile segments as well as the ruler tool in Trainz. I tried Basemapz. It does what I want, applies a map or satellite image to multiple Trainz baseboards that the program generates, I use Greenshot to select part of the map that I want then save it as a screenshot then use that screenshot in Basemapz. It's sort of trial and error, though and a lot of Trainz baseboards take a while to generate. And it's meant for model railroad sizes, like Z through G it doesn't have full size railroad as an option. And there seems to be a bit of white at the edge of baseboards, but I can adjust the amount of feet to make the map closer to the edge. i just want to make the map the correct real world scale. I can though put something on my main route like a piece of track to mark a spot then measure that spot across to a spot on the map and see if it lines up. Once it lines up, then I will delete the baseboards I added on to the main route and then merge the Basemapz route to my main route and create multiple sections and merge them. It is a pain in the rear and Basemapz doesn't generate any mountains or anything like TransDEM does. I'm going to see if this guy is going to make the DEMs I need, he hasn't replied to me yet.
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Contact Roland via the TransDEM website and explain to him what happened. You'll probably need a new version any way if you haven't used it in a long time.
The only way to interconnect routes like that is to use tween boards. At one time, I connected the P&B to the DG&E with about 50 tween boards to bring the grade up easy between the routes. It worked pretty well and I put some other towns in between along with rivers and a highway running parallel to the route at one point.
BaseMapz scale has nothing to do with the scale of the baseboards. Trainz uses 1:1 no matter what "scale ruler is chosen. You may want to post a separate thread over in the Surveyor's forum on this. The alternative is to use the old base maps. This requires chopping the topo-maps into 1024 x 1024 blocks and replacing the basemap.tga (or .jpg) image with the map image named the same. You then place these objects under the terrain, and lock them into place using a locked layer. Since you need to see them, you press the F9 key to show the grid.
After all the baseboards are in place you lay your track. To raise the terrain, you take the measurements on the topomap and convert that to meters and raise the land up to that point using the topology tools. Using splines helps a lot here to smooth the sides.
The process is long and it will take you a very long time to get the terrain in place.
I tried BaseMapz and I managed to get a several mile section that appears to be the closest to the actual mileage, 110 baseboards in a square. I can trim excess boards later. i did this as a test, and I merged the BaseMapz route next to my route extension with raised blank baseboards, where I had 4 mile sticks to measure the distance, and a spline of straight track so that I could see the distance from point A to B when zoomed out. I just looked across the row of baseboards to the BaseMapz module and saw that where the mile sticks ended on my blank baseboards part was close enough to where this train station restaurant (Fabyans, NH) is on the BaseMapz map. I can just make out the rail line on the map to place the track accurately and a highway near the track is bright yellow, so it will be easy to place the road there. On the south part, from Bartlett to North Conway and south I'm just going to have it at 0 elevation and probably use BaseMapz for the rest of the route. Is there no way to overlay a map image on existing baseboards, though? I can just delete the existing baseboards that I created and merge the BaseMapz ones in. Maybe I could make the Mt. Washington Cog Railway as well by making a huge mountain by hand near Fabyans at the north end of the route. I think a small 0-4-0 tank locomotive and one of Pencil42's yellow arch roof 1800's coaches would work for Mt. Washington Cog. They also have these diesel locomotives that look similar to ones PWeiser has.