Tips For Building Prototypical Routes?

epa

Angry Trainz Nerd
I'm considering tackling my first prototypical route. This route will be the 40-50 miles of the BNSF Arkansas City Subdivision from Mulvane, KS to Newton, KS. I have a problem though. I have never built a prototypical route before and I have no idea where to start. I know the route forwards, backwards, and sideways since I spend a lot of time around it in real life, but I'm not sure how to accurately represent it in Trainz. I don't really want to use DEM because I have never used it before and I'm not really sure how, and TransDEM costs money.

So I ask, what are some good methods to accurately recreate real life routes in Trainz?

Thanks
Matt
 
Lay track, and only track, for the first year, and don't texture, no grass no twees, just a few buildings for reference marks

Finish laying mainline from one end to the other end, first

If your track and grades aren't right beforehand, and aren't complete, your route will suffer
 
Matt,

Without a DEM the route will be quite tedious to build if you want a truly realistic prototypical terrain. Instead of using imported data, you'll find that you will have to transcribe heights carefully and tediously using measured points and then interpolating the height across the map.

Laying the track would be similar as well, though a bit easier since track tends to be linear in terms of height over distance unlike the topology that the track is laid upon.

Though TransDEM costs money, you would find it to be more than worth its cost in the long run. Given the current exchange rate, it's about $35 give or take a few bucks, and once the investment is made it pays its self off much fast than you think.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but this is something to consider.
 
Transdem is pretty much essential for a prototype based route, well worth the investment.

As regards processes, I would counter that laying all the track first can be a mistake. Track laying is relatively quick once up to speed, for relatively simple linear route you can probably place 5 to 6 miles in an hour. Scenery placement and decent terrain texturing is the booger. In hilly/forest areas where you can use a lot of copy and paste, you might get a mile done during a couple of hours editing. Triple or even quadruple the time taken when you arrive in populated areas or a complex station/yard. So far better to lay 5 or 6 miles of track, do the basic scenery placement then rinse and repeat - otherwise you just end up staring at 60 miles of Transdem textured tiles with lots of nice trackage laid, wondering where the heck to start.

The bigger the route, the more prone it is to getting distracted or losing interest. Even a project close to your heart can start to drag after a couple of months, particularly when ideas for other routes start forming in the back of your mind. So for a first project - start small, maybe something 10 - 15 miles which will let you practice and develop technique, but without becoming a behemoth that is never finished.
 
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Alternatively build a short section of the prototypical route you want and then do another section of it. You can then merge them. That's how the S&C route was done for its release in TC3. It commenced with the Hawes Junction route which was done in three separate sections. Nine further sections completed the route from Skipton to Carlisle.

Actually I don't agree that Transdem is virtually essential. Contour tracing and HOG give more than adequate results. Good enough for S&C and PLL anyway.
 
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While I wouldn't say TransDEM is essential, I would yet recommend it. Hog is a suitable alternative, but not nearly as efficient or accurate.
TransDEM, used correctly, will save you countless hours of tedious terrain building. It also features the ability to overlay geo-referenced maps and terrain, or generate tiles as reference maps which can be later deleted. Once you get the hang of it, you can complete the entire Trainz mapping process for a 60 mile route, from downloading dem data and maps to a workable Trainz map with data overlays (or tiles) in less than an hour.
 
If the area your are modelling doesn't have TIGER data, you can trace the tracks, roads, streams, fields etc. on Google Earth, convert it to a shape file, and create your own TIGER data. I'm also using Excel to calculate grade heights using the track chart.
 
Google Earth can be set to display the metric ground heights, you just zoom in on the roadbed, and pan forward, and when the height jumps to the next digit (ie: 101 m to 102 m), place a Placement Marker, and re-name it "102 m" ... when you have measured where the numerals jump upward on your entire route, save the "your places" ... just type those metric heights into Trainz surveyor apply track height
 
I have used TRANSDERM for my Moosonee (250km) and Medicine Hat (100km) routes. I thought TD has messed up on a hill with track on it so I checked the real world height where the track was online and it was 780m, then I went onto my route and it was 780m, I was shocked. I lived there and never realized the trains climbed such a hill coming out of the yard. TD is a bit of a beast to learn, I did a HOW TO for another guy, I still have it.
 
I have been following this thread and I can see that it might just be worth it to get this program, as I want to make some realistic routes and it seems really handy. Thanks!
 
I'm sure that's a decision you won't regret.
As mentioned above the learning curve is steep, but that's largely due to the terminology you have to contend with. The program itself is quite easy to learn and simple to use. The hardest part is associating the cartographic lexicon with the program processes as you progress.
Good luck with the program.

Regards
Mike
 
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