Everybody wants a DEM...If you had a DEM the size of my route...you would change your mind. Some parts of Pennsylvania have a very twisted and mountainous topography. While other places in Pennsylvania would not be worthy of a DEM, as the topography is relitively flat or has a bland rolling countryside.
Trainz and Model Railroads, are just scenes and lines on a map, it doesn't have to be real.
A real life to scale line of the Pilbara region might just be humps & bumps in a neverending rolling plain ? I am not familiar with the area though !
I am sure that an Ohio or Indiana DEM would be equally mundane as it is relativly flat.
To make a RR scene or conglomerate of scenes, you need not go into the obsessive compulsive chore of replicating the RR line exactly inch for inch.
If I had to do my route all over again...I would condence the many, many scenes, and only replicate the really important highlights like: Phila Greenwich Yard, Zoo Interlocking, Paoli Yard, Lancaster (Strasburg RR), Harrisburg-Enola Yard, Lewistown, Tyrone, Altoona, Horseshoe-Muleshoe Curve(s), MG Tower, Cresson, Cassandra, Johnstown, Bolvair, CP Conpit, Pitcairn Yard, Pittsburgh. And all in condenced and merged @ 200 baseboards.
Sometimes I think driving a real to scale RR line from Phila all the way to Pittsburgh would be repiticious scenery, much too lengthly, and quite boring in full scale.
We have a local group of railfans (Yahoo Groups-Altoona Johnstown) who year in and year out, they chase each and every train up and over the mountain, writing down all the car numbers, and take note of exactly which way #3365 is facing now, and taking millions of redundant photographs of exactly the same looking train that someone has photographed a million times over and over...WoW...just WoW...talk about Obsessive Compulsive...it's just a train...a fun hobby...not to be made so overly serious.
