Well as noted the blue screen with Transdem can be relatively easily fixed. I'm sure the root cause is just something in the settings the program puts by default in the config file on setting up the bare route for import. Hopefully Roland/Geophil can sort that fairly easily, though it would be more reassuring to hear that from his good self. Hey, crazy thought, maybe Zusi 3 is getting near release and he's revamping Transdem for that!! (I wish...). Transdem was, after all, initially conceived as a means of getting terrain into Zusi before the application also supported Trainz.
Can't really comment on HOG, only used it in the very early days when it was primarily a contour tracing app.