What's the biggest/most complex project have you done in Surveyor?

Probably my current project - Set in Victoria, Australia, based on the Victorian end of the Mainline between Sydney and Melbourne between Melbourne and Seymour. 2 Gauges, a hybrid of American and British safeworking & trackwork plus there's a mountain range to cross. Numerous 2% or more grades, plenty of grade changes, oh, and did I mention 2 gauges?

Melbourne Yard (about 1/3 of the main yard in Melbourne)

Melbourne Hump Yard

Jolimont Suburban Train stabling (all needs overhead)

Heathcote Junction - 2.08% gradient either side of the peak. Notch 8 all the way up then Notch 8 dynamic braking down the other side

A general overview of the Melbourne area. We used to have a hell of a rail network

Cheers
Jamie

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Probably my current project - Set in Victoria, Australia, based on the Victorian end of the Mainline between Sydney and Melbourne between Melbourne and Seymour. 2 Gauges, a hybrid of American and British safeworking & trackwork plus there's a mountain range to cross. Numerous 2% or more grades, plenty of grade changes, oh, and did I mention 2 gauges?

Now that is my definition of masochism
 
Sounds like a fun project Richard
maybe you can show some screens in the Screenshot area of the forum, there are a few UK threads there

Sorry... another noob question here, but how do I post in the Screenshots forum? Sez "you cannot post replies" or something when I go there.
 
Update - more masochism !!
I'm currently adding another 100Km (approx) to my NSW North Coast route which covers Grafton to Qld Border ( in various ections) and the Murwillumbah branch which sadly closed in 1975.
The additional section covers Coffs Harbour to Grafton. Slow but steady progress which was interrupted by building NSW Great Northern line, (another closed section) from Armidale to Wallengarrah. I may look at a section from Tamworth to Armidale after current WIP's are done.

Sadly there seems to be more Km's of closed rail branch lines in NSW than that which remain open, Ive done several of them as previously mentioned.
PG
 
Hello,

My what I call my lifetime route is 160 miles long. It is a combination of my Hungry Horse River route (hand built from a layout map from Model Railroader) merged with my Feather River route using Fishlipsatwork's DEM map. I have all the track and roads laid and am populating the towns with buildings etc. Like JC this has been an ongoing process since 2004. Nice hobby to have.

Jacob
 
Clearfield County, PA - Circa 1910

Back in July 2013, I successfully created an 1800+ baseboard layout in TransDEM of parts of Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. It included a crude generic track line so I could orient myself once in Surveyor. My ancestors lived in that locality and I was fascinated with all the different railroads present in that area at the same time. Here's my config.txt description:

Code:
Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. With railroad lines present in the era 1900 - 1920:

 - Pennsylvania Railroad
 - New York Central System
 - Pittsburgh & Susquehanna Railroad
 - Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway

There were also at least 3 little short line railroads that brought coal and other materials from the mountain valleys down to the major railroads. Here's my TransDEM output:

Code:
TransDEM Trainz Export ---  © 2006-2011 Roland Ziegler

Geodetic Datum = WGS84
UTMZone = 17T

UTM Southwest Corner Easting  =  699440
UTM Southwest Corner Northing = 4510800

UTM Northeast Corner Easting  =  744080
UTM Northeast Corner Northing = 4549680

Extension East-West   =  44.640 km
Extension North-South =  38.880 km

Trainz World Origin = N 40° 53.782'   W 78° 21.790'

Baseboard UTM Grid Offset: x = 0 m,  y = 0 m

# Trainz Baseboards East-West                        = 62
# Trainz Baseboards North-South                      = 54
# Trainz Baseboards total                            = 3348
# actually created Trainz Baseboards after filtering = 1810
# hereof in 5 m grid                                 = 742

Actual Elevation Range Minimum =   311 m
Actual Elevation Range Maximum =   748 m

Unfortunately, I never got past the route creation stage. It was definitely overwhelming every time I went in to Surveyor. It was the ultimate "Bit Off More Than I Could Chew" project. Here's a graphic I made as a map to work from:

Clearfield RR System Map.jpg

I just now found a backup of the route and I am surprised it loaded into TRS19! :)

Andrew
 
I am currently working on my version of Fostoria Ohio with ~150 miles of main line. I have set aside yet again, my Stockton to Milpitas (California) which would also be about 150 miles of main line ( parallel Western and Southern Pacific routes) but with selective compression is more like 70 miles. The Fostoria one consists of 3 sixty mile double track lines. 2 CSX and 1 Norfolk Southern, that cross in Fostoria.
 
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Reproducing the 3'ng East Broad Top in Huntingdon County Pa circa 1925 has been my current project for many years. Several stops and restarts with new dem and track data and often with a lot of time lost in between. Most of the existing scenery is old and not likely to be updated to current Trainz standards. It will never get finished but I keep working on it now and then. Of course the scope has increased to include the 3'ng McKelvey Brothers Logging RR and a much larger section of the PRR main line from Lewistown thru Mt Union to Huntingdon.

I actually started out using 90m dems with HOG and then 30m and then a mix of 30 and 10m. I switched to TransDem when TANE came out and the current terrain is based on 10m data and I'm sticking with that for this go round. The route is filtered to 5 baseboards ether side of the track and checks in at 3109 total boards. A pic of the route superimposed on an image of the dem data is shown here.

Bob Pearson
 
I have been trying for a long time to model central Idaho and the Treasure Valley with the INPR DEMs someone posted on the DLS. I have been at it long enough to start to believe I am no kind of route builder. I am way too picky about prototype, and spend hours looking for things that often just aren't there, so I make very small progress.
 
Building a route for Utah Belt fanatics, it's getting big!
No DEM terrain or anything, all my imagination :)
 
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I have been trying for a long time to model central Idaho and the Treasure Valley with the INPR DEMs someone posted on the DLS. I have been at it long enough to start to believe I am no kind of route builder. I am way too picky about prototype, and spend hours looking for things that often just aren't there, so I make very small progress.

That sounds like a great project in beautiful country.

I'm the same way and end up fretting over details, buildings, and placement of objects. My piano playing is the same way, by the way, so the creative process must go hand in hand. I spend as much time at that as I do route building some days as I zero in on exact details at the highest level I can.

It's for this reason that many of my DEM-based projects end up in partially completed states as I go back to them over and over and work until I can't think and move on to another, and end up getting frustrated too at the lack of progress. It amazes me how some people can move so fast at projects and still come out with outstanding details. I must be getting old...
 
I hear ya John. I have started Piano four times in my life and had to quit for various reasons. We now have a Yamaha keyboard and I am trying to take it up once again. And I have a Fender acoustic 6-string guitar in my closet that I put new strings on a year ago and still haven't had it out more than half a dozen times. Can't keep callouses that way! Where does the time go? Six months after retiring, even my wife says I have no spare time, what?
 
I hear ya John. I have started Piano four times in my life and had to quit for various reasons. We now have a Yamaha keyboard and I am trying to take it up once again. And I have a Fender acoustic 6-string guitar in my closet that I put new strings on a year ago and still haven't had it out more than half a dozen times. Can't keep callouses that way! Where does the time go? Six months after retiring, even my wife says I have no spare time, what?

Like any thing, this requires discipline and setting aside a set time. My practice is at 11:30 to 12:30 on most days. I found that I can't put in more than an hour because my brains go to mush. I mentioned that to a teacher I had, and he said I shouldn't be practicing more than that anyway. After that I then Trainz for a bit, or work on other projects I might get roped into. Keeping up a routine even when retired, makes things go a lot smoother overall. What doesn't help is having others intervene in your routine. :)

Right now I'm working on the Wanaque Valley area in New Jersey and New York. The New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad ran from Passaic Jct. up to Sterling Forest, NY. The line served small towns and some businesses including some iron mines. The mines closed, but the other business remained and so did the tourist trade. This all came to an end in the mid-1920s and 1930s when the line was covered with a dam when the Wanaque Dam and Monksville Dam were built. There ROW was replaced on the northern side by a small highway and the area in the south below the dam is a trail or power line ROW. The dam obliterated the middle portion, but that does appear in low water. Conrail used to run a short bit of the line back in the 1970s and 80s up to a scrap dealer and some other businesses, but that's gone today.

Overall it's been a fun project, and while not a particularly long route it's been interesting. A music-friend told me about the area and I then looked into it deeply. His grandfather was a brakeman or engineer on the Erie Railroad which eventually got control of the line, and bringing this back to life will mean a lot for him. He currently resides in Greenwood Lake, NY a town located at the very top of the big lake the line was named afterwards. Where his house is today, was once a hotel with ferry connection that led back to Sterling Forest.

After I got the DEM and some topomaps into TransDEM, I took some screen captures of the area. He recognized the beach area near his house right off. I then matched up some locations with some photos he gave me of his granddad standing near an Erie locomotive. Unfortunately, I didn't have that particular locomotive so I substituted the loco with a K&L Erie J-1.

The biggest problem, however, has become finding out what existed where. In Sterling Forest, there's barely a sign of the old railroad yard and station. I can kind of make out the possible location by using Historic Aerials www.historicaerials.com, but I can't get in close enough on the 1930s aerial. The topo maps that predate the flooding are too low resolution so they don't show details. The rail line, for example is shown as single tracks and stations as squares in various places. Grrr.

Using a ca. 1944 topographic map series, I was able to piece stuff together. I lucked out too with the dam because the older topo lines are still shown where the land was obliterated by the dam. Using some artistic license, I did some sculpting and got the riverbed back into place and the railroad grade along the route by using the topo lines to get the heights and then interpolating the slopes in between. It's not perfect, but it gets things into place that can be tweaked later when I get to that point. Once I figured out the heights, everything came together like a puzzle. The grades all smoothed out to 1 to 1.5% and the overall route just fit together.

I still have lots of trimming to do once I get things together, but this will be a great route once completed. If I can get my friend to buy Trainz, I'll even share it with him.
 
Still working on my fictional city, now it has been undergoing work for one year.

The city starts with a south coast, from which there is a central line, 17 miles long, going from ports on the south coast (shipping and airport), going up into the central business district, then into suburbs, and to a main junction area where it converges with other lines. There is the West Line, which goes up into the mountains and is 33 miles long. To the east is the East line which is about 61 miles total. These two lines have several towns along them. North from the Main junction is a North line, which has a slow stopping line and a non-stop high speed line, which goes north east, out of the county and is 280 miles long. This goes to the only other city in the route. Basically I've now done all the scenery and rural areas, and will be focusing on filling in all the urban areas though lots of that has been done already. Total size, is about 2200 boards, totalling something like 485 square miles. The route has lots of industries, and scenic features, like mountains, lakes, coastlines, beaches, islands, even a volcano, savannas, swamps, forests, farms, towns etc. There's at least 50 major train stations and tons of trains but I've lost count how many trains there are. We have three tram systems and two monorails as well, probably other stuff I forgot about. Oh yes, a narrow gauge railway that goes along the beach.
 
My actual work is a fictional route around a city. Is a 19 x 29 km area with a circle line about 80km long crossing a main line S-N and another W-E which uses an underground rail link coupled for 3 or 4 km with a subway rail. It's still a work in progress. The name of the railway is the one in my signature.
 
Well I have taken my route now up to about 500 miles into neighbouring counties of my fictional country. It was going to go to a city even further, but that will have to be done on a separate route because it's starting to tax my computer too much. It takes 10 minutes to load and 3 minutes just to quit the program at this point. Not only is it a long way but also quite detailed, and has lots of trains on it. So, it's pushing the limits of my current computer. It has been a cool project though.
 
My current biggest project is the (fictional) Icarus Shinkansen v2.0. route (v1.5 is on the DLS). Now you could say it is 'just' 130 km from North to South (about 81 miles) but 130 kmh of Japanese landscape is something. Because of the incredible building density of Japanese cities this has taken years by now. Basically the one city flows over into the next. If you want to compare it in real scale frame (for comparison) it is a Shinkansen distance of Tokyo to Atami. And I challenge someone to do that. Some already have tried and failed ( the real route I mean). So for that reason I stay at a fictional layout with a nod to setting a real Japanese feel. See my Flickr if you want to see some pics:https://www.flickr.com/photos/pagroove/

I think I am building this route for 6 years now. It includes a Shinkansen, Japanese Mainline and branch lines. Several metro lines and tram lines.

So yes in retrospective I should have gone for some simpler projects. The most difficult thing is try to come up with different areas with the limited building set on the DLS. I have restricted to only make use of DLS content but lately some of Non-DLS Content have made it into the rout which must be eliminated when v2.0. goes up the DLS. Most difficult thing with these kind of newer routes is that the building process is going slower than N3V Releases new Trainz Versions.

But I am still having fun. But for this year I really have to set myself some goals to make it to a v2.0. So I have to concentrate on the bigger picture rather than stay super detailing certain areas.
 
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