Sudden deep trenches while merging.

I merged boards onto routes lots of times, but I've never seen anything like this before. This is in TS2012 on my Norfolk GER route I've been working on for the past two years.
I added on a five board section to the end of a new secondary main line section I've been building and when I came to start blending everything together I found the 'San Norfolk Fault'. This isn't on the merged join, but one layout board section width into the new merged section. This impressive trench ran across the edges of three layout boards in a dead straight line. It wasn't so difficult to fix, just a bit tedious and I did notice that there was a split in the surface of the layout board mesh just at the top edge of the 'V' trench' in a couple of places. I was able to smooth it all out so that the splits can't be seen, but now I'm wondering if they're going to stay like that. Any content creator want to whip me up a digital tube of 'Superglue'.

Anybody know why I might have ended up with this trench after merging? As I mentioned I've never seen anything like it before and I've done a lot of merging sections and shifting sections around on my Norfolk route over the past two years.

This is an issue that has occurred during merging in various Trainz version dating back to <who knows when>. The trenches occur along the baseboard boundaries. Other well known symptoms have been random needle spikes and deep holes (just one or a few grid squares in size) and textured lines along the baseboard boundaries (but this only occurs when merging bare baseboards).

The solutions, unfortunately, are using the terrain height tool or the texture brush.

..Not to mention random black spots in the ground texture. As pware said, it's an ancient problem with the Trainz vertex-based grid, unresolved since at least the UTC days. I recall there was some kind of procedure or trick you needed to do to prevent it. I will need to go way back in my archives, unless someone else remembers it first.

EDIT.

OK, I found my notes. This worked in the past, but a lot has changed with the ground file format over the years, so it might not work now.

1. Start by making a blank 2-baseboard map. Think of it as a guide to help align the merging of your 2 Route maps.
2. Merge your Route Map 1 to a long side of the guide map such that it only joins to 1 of its 2 baseboards.
3. Merge your Route Map 2 to the guide, positioning it such that it joins both the guide map and the other Route already attached to it.
4. Once done, you can delete the 2 baseboards of the guide map and save your merged route, hopefully without trenches or other artefacts.


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Thank you very much. I will certainly give that a try and see if it cures the problem. I have one more planned merge for this section and it would be very nice if I didn't have to do any repair work afterwards.

I've not seen the black spots before, but the textured lines, deep holes and random needle spikes have made an appearance once or twice.

I don't often merge routes but when I have in the past I used the method that Dino advised above, I am sure he or someone made a post about it in the long distant past.

Whilst talking about baseboards, a method I use when starting a new route ( a habit I can't break ) I make sure that there are too many baseboards, they are less problematic to remove than add and often I am glad that I did add them.

I used the two baseboard guide patch for the final merge I needed to do on this section of my layout and all was well with no more deep trenches appearing across the layout boards. I was going to delete the two guide boards, but I realised that if I painted them with a grass texture they would give an impression of a distant landscape. The landscape on the scenic boards that are joined onto them rises slightly above the ground level of the guide boards which very nicely creates the illusion of a distant landscape that seems much further away than it really is.

To fix the trenches, if they're located on hills, is an absolute pain in the backside, but it's quite doable. Use road splines like strips of bandages or paper, lock them down by clicking on the spline points, and then level the terrain underneath. This will bring up the trench to a reasonably close height to where it should be. You then can use the leveling tool to smooth over the extra bumps if you feel it's necessary.

KotangaGirl said:

I used the two baseboard guide patch for the final merge I needed to do on this section of my layout and all was well with no more deep trenches appearing across the layout boards. I was going to delete the two guide boards, but I realised that if I painted them with a grass texture they would give an impression of a distant landscape. The landscape on the scenic boards that are joined onto them rises slightly above the ground level of the guide boards which very nicely creates the illusion of a distant landscape that seems much further away than it really is.

Click to expand...

I'm super happy that the old "2-board shuffle" still works. Of course it would be even better if N3V addressed the root cause of the problem and made such tricks unnecessary. I wonder if they ever will.

Fortunately it wasn't too bad to fix John. My layout is set in Norfolk up near the border with Lincolnshire so the countryside is mostly gently rolling where it isn't flat. I tend to use the push button to turn off the ground textures so I can see the underlying landscape mesh when I'm knitting things together and then turn the textures back on for any final smoothing out that might be needed. I have heard of the road spline bandage technique, but I haven't tried it out yet. Something for me to play with later on perhaps.

Dinorius_Redundicus said:

I'm super happy that the old "2-board shuffle" still works. Of course it would be even better if N3V addressed the root cause of the problem and made such tricks unnecessary. I wonder if they ever will.

Click to expand...

Most probably not. What percentage of Trainz customers are serious landscape bashers? - I would imagine it's a fairly small number so the priority to fix the problems is likely to be very low on the list.

And thanks again for the tip. It might be an old one, but it's still a goodie.

Hi

If you want to see trenches then try putting the Clovis Sub route by "dermmy" into TANE. When I first installed it I thought I'd stumbled into a WW1 battlefield. There were scores of them ranging from 10 meters square holes up to trenches hundreds of meters long. It took me days to repair them all, mainly because it was such a boring process. However it was well worth the effort for this excellent route.

Regards

Brian

Well I've never had it happen that bad Brian. One layout I was working on recently had masses of pyramids in one valley so it's now unofficially named 'the valley of the kings'. I've seen the occasional square hole as well, but this was the first time I've ever seen long trenches after merging a route.

Love the new logo in your sig Annie :hehe:

Thanks Graham The logo has a two fold purpose. Firstly it celebrates those of us who aren't gold or silver subscribers or plus endowed and are happy to run the ordinary 'Classic' version, and secondly I'm thinking about putting together a couple of small routes to go on the DLS so I'm making it plain what version of TS2019 I'm using because there are so many now ( sooooo many....... )

Trenches and holes were an issue with Microdem / Hog created routes and terrible for merging I had a large trench just North of Snowdon when I added another dem for the northern part of the Welsh Highland, took many hours to rebuild the mountains, I have a lot of patience!

KotangaGirl said:

Fortunately it wasn't too bad to fix John. My layout is set in Norfolk up near the border with Lincolnshire so the countryside is mostly gently rolling where it isn't flat. I tend to use the push button to turn off the ground textures so I can see the underlying landscape mesh when I'm knitting things together and then turn the textures back on for any final smoothing out that might be needed. I have heard of the road spline bandage technique, but I haven't tried it out yet. Something for me to play with later on perhaps.

Click to expand...

That's too bad. The area is very similar terrain wise to where I live in New England, which is a combination of Lincolnshire, Coltswolds, Midlands, and Wales all at the same time depending upon how far north and west you go. This is quite difficult to repair, I know! I spent about 3 hours one day chasing down great voids in the earth that made the terrain look more like the top of a bran muffin than my familiar New England landscape.

clam1952 said:

Trenches and holes were an issue with Microdem / Hog created routes and terrible for merging I had a large trench just North of Snowdon when I added another dem for the northern part of the Welsh Highland, took many hours to rebuild the mountains, I have a lot of patience!

Click to expand...

However it happens Malc it's certainly frustrating. I've done a lot of route merging before with nothing worse than the occasional outbreak of pyramids, but suddenly I got deep trenches instead. Did I go through some kind of route builder's level up experience or something? I certainly know it's something I don't want to see again for a loooooong time.

Rebuilding all those mountains though Malc, - Ooooo that sounds just plain horrible.

That's too bad. The area is very similar terrain wise to where I live in New England, which is a combination of Lincolnshire, Coltswolds, Midlands, and Wales all at the same time depending upon how far north and west you go. This is quite difficult to repair, I know! I spent about 3 hours one day chasing down great voids in the earth that made the terrain look more like the top of a bran muffin than my familiar New England landscape.

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Help my layout has just turned into a bran muffin! Sounds like some kind of dreadful horror story John.

The other annoying thing I've had with merging layout boards is junction levers suddenly going missing. Not many, but just odd random ones here and there. It's something that doesn't really get immediately noticed until either an AI driver pops up a message to say they can't map their path or if I'm doing a trip working shunt and suddenly find that a point lever in the sidings I'm working in isn't there anymore.

KotangaGirl said:

The other annoying thing I've had with merging layout boards is junction levers suddenly going missing. Not many, but just odd random ones here and there. It's something that doesn't really get immediately noticed until either an AI driver pops up a message to say they can't map their path or if I'm doing a trip working shunt and suddenly find that a point lever in the sidings I'm working in isn't there anymore.

Click to expand...

Yes. I've run into that mess before after I merged in an ancient ca. TRS2006 era route into a T:ANE route. Like you said it was a random thing, making finding them very difficult.

I am glad, however, that a truly rotten other bug has finally been nipped in the head. There was one much related to track-objects which would occur if spline points were added, and it did on occasion occur when routes were merged in TS2010 and into TS12 until SP1 HF4.

When adding in a spline point, all the track-objects would apparently disappear from view. Thinking that the signals, speed limit signs, and other things like bridge abutments disappeared, we'd add more and get the route up and running, or so we thought. As we'd move down along through our routes adjusting track, we'd come across a whistle post up against a signal and a speed limit sign. That's stupid, must be a mistake. Move that whistle post only to find other whistle posts stacked up against more, which are also stacked up against a whole bunch of signals, also stacked up so you can only see one, and everything was stacked up against other track-objects, and all clamoring on top of more bridge abutments than we have brains for. The issue looked as if all the items were placed on a wire that was lifted straight up and all the items ended up at one end like a string of beads!

This was a bit more than frustrating. Even today as I edit older routes as I refresh them, I'm still finding these pile ups and end up going through the route chasing down these things for miles upon miles instead of doing what I planned to do like rebuild a town, or upgrade some track to something better.

Wow, - I'm glad I've not struck that bug John. From what you've written it sounds like it's a real nightmare to put right.