Route research.

N

nicky9499

SSoTW Bot
Hi people. I need some information for a US route and will appreciate anyone who's willing to help.

These huge, round green circles with a single path leading into the center - are they crop fields? If so, is it reasonable to place grain elevators beside them?

From Virtual Earth, the Mojave (___?) looks like a very wide river of.. sand. With patches of shrubbery in places. Did it really use to be a big river?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
 
Crop Circles...oh No...Aliens ! Run for your lives !

Well they aren't alien crop circles...but they are rotary crop water irrigation sprayers.

And the Mojave was once a great inland sea, eons ago...what difference does that make in Trainz today ?

Its just a vast expance of desert and schwubbery, where trains run really fast, with the AC unit on full tilt in the daytime, and at night there is frost on the RR ties.

There are some routes and DEM's of the area.
 
Last edited:
nicky9499 said:
Hi people. I need some information for a US route and will appreciate anyone who's willing to help.

These huge, round green circles with a single path leading into the center - are they crop fields? If so, is it reasonable to place grain elevators beside them?

From Virtual Earth, the Mojave (___?) looks like a very wide river of.. sand. With patches of shrubbery in places. Did it really use to be a big river?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
Click to expand...

Could you post a screenshot of what you are observing?
 
Don't forget Google Street View (accessed via Google Maps, not Google Earth) can give you a 3D interactive view from most of the main roads and many minor ones in the USA (Australia and to a more limited extent, UK too). Ideal for checking out what something actually looks like as opposed to the top down view and provides a welcome reference source for areas covered in the vicinity of railway lines.

Shame we didn't have a facility like it 5 or 6 years ago!
 
cascaderailroad said:
Well they aren't alien crop circles...but they are rotary crop water irrigation sprayers.

And the Mojave was once a great inland sea, eons ago...what difference does that make in Trainz today ?

Its just a vast expance of desert and schwubbery, where trains run really fast, with the AC unit on full tilt in the daytime, and at night there is frost on the RR ties.

There are some routes and DEM's of the area.
Click to expand...

Just a curious landform I find it. Nothing but a long ribbon of sand. It would be quite impractical to model the Mojave in full scale, although yes notch 8 running for long distances is quite fun (but then again we have MSTS for those kind of things).

Seth, here is the screenshot you requested:

removed.

Also, it the overall grade over Barstow, Hodge and Hesperia an overall upgrade, downgrade or just about __m elevation?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
 
Last edited:
nicky9499 said:
Hi people. I need some information for a US route and will appreciate anyone who's willing to help.

These huge, round green circles with a single path leading into the center - are they crop fields? If so, is it reasonable to place grain elevators beside them?

From Virtual Earth, the Mojave (___?) looks like a very wide river of.. sand. With patches of shrubbery in places. Did it really use to be a big river?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
Click to expand...

Yes they are crop fields. Grain elevators are located at some distance from the Center pivot irrigation circles, the grain when harvest, is trucked to the grain elevators.
 
Austrilian-The Great Long Straight

How bout an actual DEM of the Austrailian-Long Straight-497Km (309 miles) without a curve:sleep:
175px-Looking_east_on_the_trans_australia_line_from_cook.jpg
 
Nicky9499 Any chance you can do a crash course in posting photos on forums? Posting that massive screenshot from Google Earth is just plain crazy. For starters:

It's a Bitmap Image - something you should never use.
It's 1,600 pixels wide - twice the width of an average monitor
It's 3.5 megabytes in size

It should have been 800 wide max (read the guidelines) and as a JPG file it would have been more like 100kb not 3500kb.

Why am I complaining? I use mobile Internet and it costs $60 a month for 5gig up and down. I'm not alone.

Can you please consider others when posting.

Ta
 
BRAVO

Bravo...Nicky9499 is only but one of a FEW on the forum that ACTUALLY know how to EDIT their own posts. He could also re-edit in a new set of up to 10 NEW photos, or entirely re-edit all the typewritten wording in his previous post.:cool:The A/A box tool is a great tool. Try it !
 
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hi Vern

hi vern
how do i get to google street view in maps?
i can get to the map where it has terrain or satellite, but i cannot see a street view

thanks
ron
 
G'day misterchugg,

Allow me to step in for Vern here, Ron, to tell you that in order to 'see' Street View from Google Earth (presuming you are viewing the 'maps' you mention from that source), you need to enable "Street View" in the "Layers" section of the sidebar (it should be the fourth item in the list under the 'Primary Data' tree entry). Simply check the 'Tick box' and numerous images of cameras will appear over your map where Street View is available. Double clicking on any given camera will force Google Earth into zoom mode and to the 360 degree view offered by that particular camera...

...from that point on, the world is your oyster...

Jerker {:)}
 
GE

Using the GE ruler/km/path/tool & Windows snipping tool you can capture a 1km x1km square image and put it on a "basemap square "a" jpg" image
 
Hi all. I've tried making the round crop fields by painting alternating shades of green and reducing the radius (defined by a temporary object) by a little each time. It looks kind of weird but I'll post a screen soon and see what you all thing.

Topography question: what is Barstow's elevation, the average gradient to Hodge and Hesperia, the elevation of Cajon summit, and the elevation of San Bernadino? Are there any sources I may refer to to acquire such information?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
 
Let's see:

The Cajon pass at Summit is ~3820 feet. San Bernardino ~1100 feet.
Victorville, at the Barstow end of the grade is ~2700 feet. The rulling grade on the Barstow side of the grade is about 1.6%. 1.8% near Summit. On the San Bernardino side the ruling grade is 2.2% except ~2% West bound and ~1.2% East bound between Baseline and Verdenmont, and West bound between Summit and Cajon is 3%.
The elevation of Barstow is 2108 feet. Hesperia is ~3200 feet. Hodge is ~2280 feet. The railroad distance between Hodge and Hesperia is 31.5 miles.

I got most of this from my copy of "California Region Timetable 20" from www.altamontpress.com . The rest I Dogpiled. www.dogpile.com .
 
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Thank you SuperFudd. I understand in general that it is a light upgrade up till Summit Valley Road, then climbs at 1.6% gradually to 1.8%. At this point it starts descending the San Bernardino side of the grade at a steep 3 in 100, correct?

As promised: here is a preliminary screenshot of the round cropfields on a test board. Only link posted for bandwidth concerns.

http://api.photoshop.com/home_f63e3...be-px-assets/eaa7c5ecbaeb41418bec5b2ac5bb9e5a

After texturing, at maximum brush radius:

http://api.photoshop.com/home_f63e3...be-px-assets/9689c11d6a96461b9d491a8bfa9b516f

Tell me what you guys think. :)

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
 
Think again

cascaderailroad said:
Well they aren't alien crop circles...but they are rotary crop water irrigation sprayers.

And the Mojave was once a great inland sea, eons ago...what difference does that make in Trainz today ?

Its just a vast expance of desert and schwubbery, where trains run really fast, with the AC unit on full tilt in the daytime, and at night there is frost on the RR ties.

There are some routes and DEM's of the area.
Click to expand...
This desert is believed to support between 1,750 and 2,000 species of plants. It occupies well over 22,000 square miles (57,000 km2). Referred to as the High Desert, it contains the lowest and hottest place in North America. And if you have ever been there, you would be amazed at how many creatures live in it! To say it is just sand and shrubs is like saying New York is just concrete and tar! So much most do not see the trees for the forest!!
 
New York is essentially made up of concrete and asphalt. :hehe:

Anyway, this High Desert being the lowest and hottest place in America (Mojave of course) - any ideas on average temperature in the day and type of vegetation? Yes, I know lots of scrubs and shrubs, but in terms of trees what type? To infer from VirtualEarth and the few photos of the area I could find on RailPictures.net, there's:

LOTS of sand/dirt
parched, dry shrubs and scrubs
equally parched, squat trees
and pretty much not alot of anything else.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
I'll provide a few photographs if I'm not understood.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
 
Yep, mostly just sparse scrub. Do a Yahoo for Mojave Plants to get some sites with details. Not too many trees. There are a few around the occasional spring, but that's about it.
Your circle field looks like the pictures I saw. Very nice.
To get elevations, go to Google Earth. The bar across the bottom shows the elevation of the pointer. If you set the units to meters you'll have the settings for the Trainz layout.

:cool:Claude
 
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