New mapping aid coming soon

[AntonyVW]

Hi folk
First off let me just state that I am not the creator of the program - Mutton is. Im just testing it out for viability for public use.

The program - currently named "Tiler" is designed to work hand in hand with Transdem. Its purpose is to take old maps and convert them into a format that can be overlaid into Transdem to follow the contours rather than forming a flat map underneath the Transdem map. I hope that the following images will help to explain things better than I can put into words.

tiler 1 by av.wright, on Flickr

This is the opening screen. First thing to do here is click on the setup button to prepare the program. (I will talk about the other buttons later). That brings up the following screen.

tiler 2 by av.wright, on Flickr

The screen is initially blank. To proceed click on the "create new" button.

tiler 3 by av.wright, on Flickr

First give the project a name. What you call it is up to you. Then at 2. enter the name of the town you want to map and click on the "search" button. (Ive used my home town as an example below).

tiler 4 by av.wright, on Flickr

After a couple of minutes you should see one or more options to select in the window below. On the right of the screen (section 3) you will see a map image and data relating to it. Going back to the bottom left of the screen - put in the details of where you want the data to be saved for your project and then click on the accept button. This will bring us back to the screen in image 1.
For now Im only concentrating on the top button named "old-maps.co.uk" Pressing that button brings up the following screen:-

tiler 6 by av.wright, on Flickr

This is where the action happens.
1) is where you select your project name. The more projects you have under way the longer the list - Im sure you get the idea.
2) These details will match the information you put in for where your data will be stored.
3) clicking on the "preview" button will produce a map image at 6)
4 & 5) clicking the buttons here will produce either a single map tile or multiple tiles on your computer. More on this in a moment.
and of course 6) is where you get to preview the map you are about to download. You will note that on each of the sides is a set of 3 buttons. these are used to get the portion of the map you are interested in.

A slightly more detailed version of 4 - 6

Once the "preview" button has been clicked an image of the map area selected will appear at 6).

tiler 7 by av.wright, on Flickr

This is my local area. If it does not cover what you want you can use the nudge buttons around the screen to be more selective on what is seen.
Pressing the button at 4) will produce a single image of that map. This image (and all other images) will be found at the location you set for collecting the data, and can be viewed with any image software (in win 7 right click and click on preview will bring it up on screen). You will also find a folder containing 234 mini images which have been put together by the program to create the map tile.
However if you want a more expanded image then click the button at 5) instead. This will produce 9 tiles with your selected area at the center.

Once you have these images your ready to continue with Transdem.

 

[AntonyVW]

reserved by op

In Transdem you are going to use the Raster Map menu -> Geo-reference with map corners only option. This will add the necessary geo-referenced details that Transdem requires to make the map usable.

So where do you find the information for these co-ordinates? Well you could do as I started off doing and writing down the information found in section 3 as below.

tiler 4 by av.wright, on Flickr

Or you could do as Mutton says in a post to me:

"you shouldn’t need to write down the coordinates as the import coordinates are saved in an accompanying *map*.mgr. These files are save with every preview size map and large scale map, it should make it a lot easier to use the program now" So simple. The coordinates are saved for you.
HOWEVER.
Its not quite a case of inputting those coordinates. You need to find the northeast and southwest corners of those images. Again this is nice and simple. Its just a case of adding or subtracting a couple of numbers. These numbers are provided for you in the documentation that Mutton provides with the program. Once these adjustments are made then the figures can be input to Transdem and the image can then be saved as a geo-referenced image.

Im sure many of you are already familiar with adding this kind of detail to Transdem. If not Mutton gives a brief overview of the process in his documentation but can be found in more detail in Transdem itself.

So what happens with the map once in Transdem? This is the whole purpose of the program - to lay the image over the Transdem landscape FOLLOWING the contours of the landscape as Transdem is now designed to do.

So I hear so what? - Transdem can do that. Well that is why this program makes the whole thing a lot easier to achieve. Instead of having to take snapshots of your map and figuring out how to stitch the images together and then find the coordinates of the map - the hard work is taken out of of the process. Each block of 9 tiles covers an area of approximately 2916m x 2070m. So by using the nudge buttons on the program you can then grab the next set of tiles along the route you are following and add that into your Transdem map. The tiles can overlap or be butted up to each other. So long as you input the correct coordinates to Transdem the route can quickly and easily be defined.

 

[AntonyVW]

I doubt I need to add any images of what the map looks like one added into Transdem, Geophil has already done that in his splendid documents. (But I can do if anyone wants to see its final placement)

Ive not yet mentioned using the second option on the initial screen. That of using the button marked "Britain from above". 2 reasons. Ive not yet tested it out and want to make sure Ive tested it first before talking about it. And 2 due to me spending so much time on the first section - there is little documentation about it at the moment. But basically you will be able to (as Mutton has said to me)
"To use the BFA side of things just go to http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/ and search or browse for an area you are interested in and on the page you will wind a photo ID in the form EAW00000 or EPW00000 just put that in the search box in tiler and press ‘get info’ and then ‘grab image’ the large image will then be combined and saved. The images are really quite large and can be zoomed into a lot to show quite a bit of detail. I find them invaluable when trying to capture the atmosphere of somewhere I’m modelling."
So it has potential to aid after the map is in Trainz. More on this later when Ive had a chance to test it.

What do I think of the program? Well first off the down side. Currently it is designed only to use maps from www.old-maps.co.uk. Whether it can be expanded to other countries will depend on a couple of things. How easy it will be for Mutton to find similar mapping websites for other countries, and what the demand is from us his future clients. That is about the only down side I currently see. There will (hopefully) be many out there that will say they would like to try it for their own local areas. That will be up to Mutton to make a decision on.
As for the positives. Well Ive spent many a night trying to get a decent copy of a map into Transdem and never been satisfied. One problem was not being able to use historic maps without a lot of work stitching them together first and having to work out the coordinates for it. Tiler takes all that work and with just a few minutes of work inputting the details of your area - can start producing the maps you want. Second benefit is the map follows the contours produced in Transdem as Geophil has recently updated it to do. So no more flat maps underneath your map in Trainz. No more having to swap in and out of using the transparent option in Trainz or moving the map tile up and down to see what you are working on. Another benefit is that Tiler can show you (and produce maps) based on maps from different time periods. In my example used above I used a map from 1885. I could just as easily used one from 1903 or 1927 or later - limited only by what is available on the old-maps website. By using them you can see how a route changes over the years - new features added or in the case of the UK - see the effect of Beechings axe.

Will it be useful? Id say a resounding YES to that. would you use it more than once? That would obviously depend on how many routes you want to build - but again Id say yes.
When will it be available? Best I can give on that at the moment is soon. Bug testing is now reaching a point where Mutton feels comfortable with me telling everyone about it. But release will be sooner rather than later.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Sounds very interesting !

I hate manually entering georeferencing maps coordinate numerals

 

[Mutton]

Thanks to Antony for previewing Tiler.

Firstly the name, I hate Tiler so if anyone can come up with something better then please let me know.

To add to Antony's preview, Tiler is a program developed to aid in creating layouts. Its' first task is to aid in the large scale import of detailed 1:2500 scale maps into Transdem and then onto Trainz. Its' second function is to download large aerial photographs from 'Britain From Above' to help with understanding the scenery of an area. I have discovered a third use of the maps and photo's which is that they are just so interesting to study.

For an example here's an example map of Crewe, mainly the North East of the station but most of the station is there. It's a 25MB download but gives a good example of what 1 map can cover.

Link ((r.click and select save as or save target as))

More news to follow.

thanks
muttion