TransDem Tutorial

ColPrice2002 said:

Because the UK lost a lot of rail lines in the 1960s, recreating these means using historical mapping - the historic mapping option doesn’t show some option, so I’m using 6 inch to the mile maps (around 1918 era). These are fuzzy as they display.

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Use OSM instead of google. OSM tend to have tons of historical and non-existant railway mapped out. often in the way of bike trails, nature trails, etc. a trained eye can spot a right of way on a map no matter what its currently called... and OSM tends to note historical information like *blah blah bike trail, formerly B&O railroad, formerly Pittsburgh & Western*, etc... plus the lines are already drawn, just select them and export.

Fierogt87 said:

Use OSM instead of google. OSM tend to have tons of historical and non-existent railway mapped out. often in the way of bike trails, nature trails, etc. a trained eye can spot a right of way on a map no matter what its currently called... and OSM tends to note historical information like *blah blah bike trail, formerly B&O railroad, formerly Pittsburgh & Western*, etc... plus the lines are already drawn, just select them and export.

Click to expand...

Yes, the historic topographic maps are great for this. When I'm creating a route in TransDEM, I will deselect the colored lines for tracks so that I can see the underlying map in order to see where the former RR grades are located. I also use the historic topographic GeoPDF maps. These have a bit higher resolution than the map tile modern versions.

I hate to say it, but the modern topographic maps are extremely dumbed down compared to those from only a few decades ago.

Thanks for the tips regarding mapping.
The problem in the UK is that a lot of the disused railways just “disappear”…
For example, there used to be a rail line around the coast of Fife, mainly freight (fish, coal, farm produce) with a passenger service as well. The line became uneconomic, and the track was raised. Although some of the road bridges still survive, the farmers reclaimed the area, now the line is barely detectable on the ground. Similarly, one station was levelled for a supermarket, next door a large secondary school was built over the route. In St Andrews, the station is now a car park and a faculty of the University.
Trying to reconstruct the details can be challenging - my wife clearly remembers a siding, turntable and slaughterhouse, today it’s a housing development..

Colin

ColPrice2002 said:

Thanks for the tips regarding mapping.
The problem in the UK is that a lot of the disused railways just “disappear”…
For example, there used to be a rail line around the coast of Fife, mainly freight (fish, coal, farm produce) with a passenger service as well. The line became uneconomic, and the track was raised. Although some of the road bridges still survive, the farmers reclaimed the area, now the line is barely detectable on the ground. Similarly, one station was levelled for a supermarket, next door a large secondary school was built over the route. In St Andrews, the station is now a car park and a faculty of the University.
Trying to reconstruct the details can be challenging - my wife clearly remembers a siding, turntable and slaughterhouse, today it’s a housing development..

Colin

Click to expand...

Yup the same has occurred here as well. You can see some traces of lines here and there and parts that are replaced by a parking lot or supermarket. Sometimes, the line is cleared for use by power lines, or a trail as has been done in my area where a rail line from Bradford to Newburyport and Topsfield has been made into a trail and in places used by power lines. The line itself has been gone since 1943 or 1944.

This is where the older ordinance maps, or as we call them topographic maps. Sadly, as I mentioned the latest generation of maps hides the details and abandoned rail lines and other important details are now missing. Using the GeoPDF format, we can load up older maps as long as they are encoded and are the proper size. On a particular route I've started, but sadly have to restart due to some technical issues, I found a very old map that showed a long-abandoned line that friend of mine's grandfather had worked on until a dam was built in the 1920s. When I imported the maps, the ROW fit right into place where it was visible, and it was clearly visible where it's supposed to be but no longer found due to modern construction as seen by current photos when superimposed on top of the DEM. Most interesting was a gravel pit which had removed part of a hill in modern times. The old map showed the hill complete where the modern DEM had big divots in the side of the hill.

ColPrice2002 said:

The problem in the UK is that a lot of the disused railways just “disappear”…
For example, there used to be a rail line around the coast of Fife, mainly freight (fish, coal, farm produce) with a passenger service as well. The line became uneconomic, and the track was raised. Although some of the road bridges still survive, the farmers reclaimed the area, now the line is barely detectable on the ground. Similarly, one station was levelled for a supermarket, next door a large secondary school was built over the route. In St Andrews, the station is now a car park and a faculty of the University.
Trying to reconstruct the details can be challenging

Click to expand...

This is where Open Street Maps come in handy. All these lines were extracted from OSM and imported into Google Earth. They can be imported into Trainz just as easy. You can easily see some realignments with current and historical rights of way

The problem in the UK is that a lot of the disused railways just “disappear”…
For example, there used to be a rail line around the coast of Fife, mainly freight (fish, coal, farm produce) with a passenger service as well. The line became uneconomic, and the track was raised. Although some of the road bridges still survive, the farmers reclaimed the area, now the line is barely detectable on the ground. Similarly, one station was levelled for a supermarket, next door a large secondary school was built over the route. In St Andrews, the station is now a car park and a faculty of the University.

Click to expand...

I was able to find the 'East Of Fife Line', as well as many other abandoned and rased rights of way in Open Street Maps. The line is clearly marked, even where it passes through car parks and condominiums...

I have bundled them up in a GPX file on my google drive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_7CS-KxqXQKrO1BIVrEwBjv5Jz8SPNYn/view?usp=sharing

This is the map I want to create to bring the Fife routes up to date. You say that Open Street Maps was the source for this ?? I will need to do a bit more work to get anywhere near the skill you have shown here. I would like to rebuild the Thornton - Leven branch as they are doing at the moment and bring it back into use.
craigdon

craigdon said:

You say that Open Street Maps was the source for this ?? I will need to do a bit more work to get anywhere near the skill you have shown here.

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Yes, all the ROW data came from Open Street Maps. The tutorial I posted in this thread a few days ago shows my method of finding the rights of way, and getting them exported from OSM and imported into Trainz.

It doesn't take much, I only first used TranzDEM and JOSM this past January.

Fierogt87 said:

Yes, all the ROW data came from Open Street Maps. The tutorial I posted in this thread a few days ago shows my method of finding the rights of way, and getting them exported from OSM and imported into Trainz.

It doesn't take much, I only first used TranzDEM and JOSM this past January.

Click to expand...

Just a very very minor point - The East Fife Central Railway (later known as the Lochty Branch) is shown on your Open Street map as running from a point near Cameron Bridge, and terminating some 4 miles north at a location near to Lethams Farm. The line actually continued eastward for a further 10 miles to a location in mid - Fife known as Lochty.

BR closed the Lochty Branch in 1964 but the last mile or so was reinstated in 1967 as a preservation railway and remained open until 1992

I suspect that this method of generating different routes (rail, road, rivers etc) is wonderfully time saving, but for historic data is missing some details. I overlaid the gpx file onto the historic Fife mapping, the line is really good, but some details aren’t present on the open maps historical option (for example, local spurs for freight, passing loops.

all credit to Fierogt87 for the technique

Colin

ColPrice2002 said:

but for historic data is missing some details

Click to expand...

Of course, nothing fixes everything... but having even a fairly good idea of where the main is, makes adding the rest quite a bit easier. I did notice some rails in images of the distillery at Cameronbridge that weren't in the GPX.

pitmilly said:

Just a very very minor point - The East Fife Central Railway (later known as the Lochty Branch) is shown on your Open Street map as running from a point near Cameron Bridge, and terminating some 4 miles north at a location near to Lethams Farm. The line actually continued eastward for a further 10 miles to a location in mid - Fife known as Lochty.

BR closed the Lochty Branch in 1964 but the last mile or so was reinstated in 1967 as a preservation railway and remained open until 1992

Click to expand...

This was only meant to be a demonstration of the capability, rather than a complete railmap. I had to stop somewhere...

Just to say thanks for showing such a straightforward way of getting the routes.

The mapping is only able to show what was input at the time of creation. Anything “mini” or private May not have been recorded - like your example of the distillery.

thanks again,
Cokin

ColPrice2002 said:

Just to say thanks for showing such a straightforward way of getting the routes.

Click to expand...

Sure thing!

Fierogt87,

Hi,

Am just a little mystified by what I'm reading and am hoping you can help clear the fog.

Aside from the GPX file on your Google Drive I am wondering how, by using my own copy of Open Street Maps, I might access and download a copy of the railway map showing the Fife Coast Railway from St Andrews to Leven that accompanied your #46 posting. Your #48 post to Craigdon implied that all the ROW data came from Open Street Maps but so far, my searches of OSM have yielded details of Scotlands railways as they exist at today's date but nothing that relates to the abandoned railway network of earlier years. Am I looking in the wrong place?

Pitmilly

pitmilly said:

Fierogt87,

Hi,

Am just a little mystified by what I'm reading and am hoping you can help clear the fog.

Aside from the GPX file on your Google Drive I am wondering how, by using my own copy of Open Street Maps, I might access and download a copy of the railway map showing the Fife Coast Railway from St Andrews to Leven that accompanied your #46 posting. Your #48 post to Craigdon implied that all the ROW data came from Open Street Maps but so far, my searches of OSM have yielded details of Scotlands railways as they exist at today's date but nothing that relates to the abandoned railway network of earlier years. Am I looking in the wrong place?

Pitmilly

Click to expand...

Using JOSM is detailed in my tutorial, starting at page 16:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fqV8jQFhyR6D7BhlvdyH4F6JJjvLVmSM/view?usp=sharing

Pitmilly hi!

try the following…
if you know where an abandoned line ran, zoom in until you see high detail. Move the cursor slowly, and you’ll find the abandoned line.
create a filter for the abandoned rail category, use the “I” option of the filter and the line will display.

alternatively, if you know the name of the line, create a filter for that.

Colin

ColPrice2002 said:

Pitmilly hi!

try the following…
if you know where an abandoned line ran, zoom in until you see high detail. Move the cursor slowly, and you’ll find the abandoned line.
create a filter for the abandoned rail category, use the “I” option of the filter and the line will display.

alternatively, if you know the name of the line, create a filter for that.

Colin

Click to expand...

Hello Colin,


Many thanks for your suggestion – yes, I now have Fife’s abandoned railways showing on the OSM maps - and the fog has lifted, at least in part.


Open Street Maps is totally new to me. I might have heard of it but had no reason to use it and wouldn’t have thought of it in the context of Trainz or TransDEM. However, I shall now give it some serious study.


Your post #43 re The East Fife Railway brought back a host of memories.


My in-laws lived in St Andrews throughout the 1970’s and early 80’s and I had numerous opportunities to explore the Fife lines when much of the infrastructure, if not the rail, was still in place. I rode the Lochty Line behind Union of South Africa before it was transferred elsewhere. Membership of the North British Railway Study Group and an O gauge layout followed. This was based the fictitious fishing port of Pitmilly, supposedly located at the mouth of Kenley Water near Boarhills. The O gauge has gone but I now have a TRS19 WIP covering part of the same area.

Regards

John Webster
aka Pitmilly

Fierogt87 said:

Using JOSM is detailed in my tutorial, starting at page 16:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fqV8jQFhyR6D7BhlvdyH4F6JJjvLVmSM/view?usp=sharing

Click to expand...

Hi

Thank you for getting back on my query. I now have the abandoned track layout showing on the map.

As I have said elsewhere, for me, Open Street Maps is new programme and I clearly wasn’t pressing the right buttons.

The fact that your programme is able to use OSM in conjunction with TransDEM and at the end of the operation lay down a route with the complete rail layout for Conway Yard seems a very convincing demonstration of its worth and I shall give it some serious study. Very many thanks for sharing it with us.


Regards

John Webster
aka Pitmilly

John,
one thing I’ve noticed is that usin JOSM, open maps and finding historic (abandoned) rail is great for the “main” line, but doesn’t always include the sidings and industrial bits.
For example, using the historic Scotland website and the 6” mapping:-
St Andrews’ goods yard tracks aren’t shown, Anstruther Wester has a set of sidings, platform, turntable on the mapping - but not on the open map. My wife remembers this, but not Open Maps.
I suspect that a detailed modelling would used the JOSM technique for the main route, but need enhancements for sidings etc.

cheers,
Colin