Sydney Cityrail 2020 Project (In Development)

Hey Roy,

That link to the train-operating-conditions is quite useful, platform lengths, etc. I may have to apply a few adjustments to my route after reading through it.

I keep telling myself "This is just a hobby - if I make a few mistakes, who would know." lol

I don't suppose they had a similar publication dated back to the 1950s ?

Google Earth has been kind to me, showing the obsolete trackwork in the Darling Harbour area,... but I'm not really convinced that I've got it right just yet.

By the way, have a look through elstoko's NSWGR assets, particularly his catenary, which are set to the correct height; and his range of pro-track. Ranger_51 has the NSW signals, which also include wall-mounted tunnel signals.

Cheers,
Roy


I did find this 1939 Network map which you could find of use
https://i.imgur.com/vxlKxNN.jpg

A few differences from todays map and you would need to add in the Ropes Creek Line which was added in 1942, but then closed in the 1980's.
You can see the now closed line going to Camden.
You can get some data from that line by going here https://www.nswrail.net/lines/show.php?name=NSW:camden
which shows coordinates for each of the stations that were eventually closed 1963

The black lines show the lines that were not electrified in 1939. You could do some research to find if any of those lines were electrified by 1950.

Riverwood Station would also need to renamed to Herne Bay railway station


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Thanks Roy,

I was actually interested in the goods line track layout from Eveleigh to Darling Harbour, then to Johnsons Bay and Rozelle yards.

I've used Google Earth Pro showing the obsolete track, which will have to do.

Cheers mate,
Roy
 
Thanks Roy,

I was actually interested in the goods line track layout from Eveleigh to Darling Harbour, then to Johnsons Bay and Rozelle yards.

I've used Google Earth Pro showing the obsolete track, which will have to do.

Cheers mate,
Roy

i am currently looking at adding DEM for the entire Sydney network and in a youtube video I was watching it mentioned using JOSM for Openstreet and the interesting thing was that in the video JOSM had shown where obsolete track was..... will let you know if it shows this for Eveleigh to Darling Harbour and Johnsons Bay and Rozelle yards.

My DEM map will likely be covering 130km wide by 130km height.
 
i am currently looking at adding DEM for the entire Sydney network and in a youtube video I was watching it mentioned using JOSM for Openstreet and the interesting thing was that in the video JOSM had shown where obsolete track was..... will let you know if it shows this for Eveleigh to Darling Harbour and Johnsons Bay and Rozelle yards.

My DEM map will likely be covering 130km wide by 130km height.


Thanks mate,

However, please don't waste too much of your time with it, mainly because I've already laid the track for the area, and I was curious to verify what I've done, was close to the mark.

I'd also looked at OpenStreetMap some time ago, with 'walking pages'. This was a far more complicated system than using Google Earth Pro, which has a simple 'walk-around' built-in.

Although today, I tend to use 'Google Maps' instead, because it has additional 'view-points' that GEP doesn't have and it has sharper images.

Good luck with your route.

Cheers,
Roy
 
Instead of my painstakingly creating the entire Sydney route one track piece at a time, I may be able to use Trainzdem to lay not only the rail track but the roads as well at the same time as adding the height terrain to the project.

This could save me 12 to 24 months of work and allow me to go straight into designing the buildings and scenery for the project.

I am still pondering whether I should have this project broken down into smaller parts such as the T4 Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line.
Adding rail and road is one thing but adding the scenery as well brings up one question.

Would the resulting route even be playable without the latest super computer?

If the project is broken into smaller segments then each would be connected to the yards at Enfield, Chullora and Clyde.



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Sure Transdem will lay some track, but you still have to apply the gradients, points, signals, track in yards, catenary (that will do your head in) etc. I've never seen Transdem make roads, but I could be mistaken. The South Coast line I am producing with Taggy has taken years to get to the point of adding scenery. Even with working on it constantly it would still take 18 months at least to complete the scenery. As far as needing a super computer goes, yep, you probably will. My 2 year old mid range desktop struggles at times.
My-Trainz-Screenshot-Image.jpg

A route this size, if done properly to a high standard, would be a minimum 3 year build as it contains lots of fiddly urban areas. My advice Roy, would be to start small, develop your pallette and style and once done move onto the next piece. You can merge them all together later. I'm used to working with big routes, but for some they can be daunting. Don't bite off more than you can chew and you won't lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.:)
cheers
Graeme
 
Sure Transdem will lay some track, but you still have to apply the gradients, points, signals, track in yards, catenary (that will do your head in) etc. I've never seen Transdem make roads, but I could be mistaken. The South Coast line I am producing with Taggy has taken years to get to the point of adding scenery. Even with working on it constantly it would still take 18 months at least to complete the scenery. As far as needing a super computer goes, yep, you probably will. My 2 year old mid range desktop struggles at times.

A route this size, if done properly to a high standard, would be a minimum 3 year build as it contains lots of fiddly urban areas. My advice Roy, would be to start small, develop your pallette and style and once done move onto the next piece. You can merge them all together later. I'm used to working with big routes, but for some they can be daunting. Don't bite off more than you can chew and you won't lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.:)
cheers
Graeme

Well said Graeme.

We all have different limitations to what we can do or achieve. Some people may be faster than others to complete a route, but then,..is the quality there.

Meanwhile time is running out for all of us and the important thing is, to give it your best shot while you can.

For one brief moment last October, I thought I could backdate my Sydney Central route and have it ready for Christmas. Well. that didn't happen. It's now 7 months past that date, and I still can't put a finish date to it.

My problem is, I keep looking for extra bits to make it better. I've still got to learn when 'enough is enough' and enjoy what I've got.

Cheers,
Roy
 
Sure Transdem will lay some track, but you still have to apply the gradients, points, signals, track in yards, catenary (that will do your head in) etc. I've never seen Transdem make roads, but I could be mistaken. The South Coast line I am producing with Taggy has taken years to get to the point of adding scenery. Even with working on it constantly it would still take 18 months at least to complete the scenery. As far as needing a super computer goes, yep, you probably will. My 2 year old mid range desktop struggles at times.

A route this size, if done properly to a high standard, would be a minimum 3 year build as it contains lots of fiddly urban areas. My advice Roy, would be to start small, develop your pallette and style and once done move onto the next piece. You can merge them all together later. I'm used to working with big routes, but for some they can be daunting. Don't bite off more than you can chew and you won't lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.:)
cheers
Graeme


Thanks for the tips there...... I wasn't actually aware that you could merge 2 routes together so I will look at that. It took me 3 or 4 years to build the rail and roads for the entire network a decade ago and I had also mapped out and created the Sydney Harbour as well using latitude and longitude to create the edges of the water.

Of course Transdem was not around back then.

Yes Transdem is able to create as many roads as you like and you add them to a layer on their own separate to rail. Using Open Street in Transdem you select either the Primary roads or you can include secondary roads as well.

The tutorial I watched created both road and rail for a 100km route for Nova Scotia, Canada with terrain and map added to Trainz 2019...... this all done in a 1 hour 11 video.

The screenshot below shows him working on adding highways which are then added to Trainz as splines at the same time as the track is added. He then decided to add in extra roads and he did this by also selecting motorways to bring into Trainz.

For those who want to watch the Youtube video you can see it below......
To look only at where he created the roads go to 38:25 in the video


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I just wanted to mention that at this stage I am building my route in TANE with the option of crossing over to the Trainz 2019 down the track.
My current PC is barely able to use TANE at the moment and I am looking at upgrading my hardware in next 6 months.
What I am using at the moment is sufficient to add in the road and rail network for the project.

Roy...... I have had a look at your route that you sent me and it is impressive.
My laptop was struggling with it though as I only have 4 Gig of memory and will look at it again when I get my new machine.
 
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The following post is the start of a series of posts showing steps along the way of creating the T9 Northern Line for Sydney........


At this stage at 1:56 AM Friday morning I have plotted a rough outline in Transdem of the T9 Northern Line which will be the first route to be added to the project.
After drawing a rough but not detailed line showing where the rail line goes I then mapped the images from Open Street along the entire T9 Northern Line rail.

The picture below shows the result when zoomed into the Chatswood area and you can see the blue rail line does not match the rail line in the map...... but thats OK...... early stage of the project and this will be fixed a little later when I do the UTM tile objects.

Next is the fun part where I get the DEM elevation data specific to the T9 Northern Line route.

Progress:
I started the T9 route around an hour ago and am now 22% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.
That was a fast start.


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Now at 2:52 AM Friday morning and am at a step where I can get some sleep.
Have downloaded the elevation data and applied to Transdem so the T9 Northern Line now has the correct elevation data applied.

Progress:
After adding the elevation data as shown below I am now 35% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.


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At this stage I could import this into Trainz....... but the next step will be to get Open Street to add in the road and rail splines which will give me a starting point for the next step of the project.
 
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Progress:
At 4:11 am and I just reached 43% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.

As you can see from the picture below the Chatswood Interchange and railway station has suddenly got very detailed.
This is after getting Open Street to give me comprehensive data on everything there is within 500 metres of any part of the T9 Northern Line railway.


Edkw9uX.jpg
 
Looking at the lines used for the trains as well as the Metro I create a filter looking specifically at the railway lines and when I invert the filter it shows me just the railway line and Metro and allows me to check there are no gaps.

In the picture below the brown line is the current Metro Line heading to the Hills District and the Red Line is the Metro line being constructed over the next year or so.

At this stage I turn off the rail line I created earlier on and seen as a blue line in post 31 as this was not accurate and was just a rough guide. Now I have Open Street giving me a highly detailed track layout for the entire T9 Northern Line.

At this stage I make sure that the entire T9 line is surrounded in black. If any of the yellow lines intersect where the rail line should be then I have lost detailed track info for that area. Luckily all of my T9 rail line is shown .

At this point I note that Open Street has 354,990 objects of interest that were gathered together along the T9 line .

Now that I have the rail tracks ready to import into Trainz the next step is to grab the roads.

Oh.... by the way this is the point I backup so I don't have to download the Open Street data again.

Progress:
54% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.




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Roads !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

10 years ago I had started adding the roads along the rail track one road piece at a time. I learned then this was going to be a nightmare.
Today at 5:36 am....... roads generated by Open Street now ready to be imported into Trainz....... and these available in Open Street in the blink of an eye..

Wow!!!

The picture below shows Highway Residential road.

To pick up more roads I will also add in layers for :
- Highway Primary
- Highway Secondary
to pick up more.

Progress:
68% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.


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A quick picture showing additional roads added...... if too much for Trainz to handle I will remove

Progress:
At 5:58 am and I just reached 72% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.

AplLqO0.jpg
 
Ok...... finally got to 6:19 AM Friday morning and the below picture shows the status of the roads to be imported into Trainz.
No errors.

So at this time the next stage is to create a new route in Trainz with elevation data and correctly placed roads and rail track.
That will be done tonight when I return from work.

Total time on getting elevation data, road and rail to a stage where it can be imported into Trainz = 4 hours 26 minutes

Progress:
At 6:22 AM and I just reached 77% of the way to having the elevation data and rail and road splines added to the project.


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I just wanted to mention that at this stage I am building my route in TANE with the option of crossing over to the Trainz 2019 down the track.
My current PC is barely able to use TANE at the moment and I am looking at upgrading my hardware in next 6 months.
What I am using at the moment is sufficient to add in the road and rail network for the project.

Roy...... I have had a look at your route that you sent me and it is impressive.
My laptop was struggling with it though as I only have 4 Gig of memory and will look at it again when I get my new machine.


Hi Roy, You are doing some fine work on the T9 section of your route (eh, do you ever get time for a sleep?) Keep it up mate.

Regarding my route,... It's understandable that an average laptop or CPU would find it difficult to load. The basic route itself is nearly 15MB and each of the sessions are 900KB. However when the assets of the Sydney Harbour Bridge begin to load, it can slow a driver consist to a jerky ride; unless you have a good video graphics card installed.

For your information if updating. When I first installed Trainz TS2010, I only had a 4GB video card which was okay for many other games, but slowed down on Trainz routes. It was then I did a rebuild of my desktop and installed an 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070. I also found Windows 7 worked far better than Windows 10, so I maintained the older version. Smooth railroading since then.

Cheers mate,
Roy
 
With this mornings test finished I am making some additional changes and modifying the route which will include the following:

- The T9 Northern Line going from Gordon to Hornsby via Strathfield.

- Addition of the T1 line from Berowra on the western branch to Emu Plains.

- Addition of the T1 line from Berowra on the northwestern branch to Richmond.

This will include the:

- Hornsby Maintenance Center
- Flemington Maintenance Center

and the Eveleigh Maintenance Center
 
Have extended the rail network to Emu Plains, Richmond and Berowra and checked the new areas are still covered by the elevation data I have created.
Now extracting the Open Street data for each of these new areas.


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