Railworks America

Is there anyone here that knows how to get a specific decal. I would like to learn how to build a route and use some of my buildings on it. The New Orleans rail system in 1958 is what I would like to create.

How does one go about getting a decal like that, as well as aging it back to 1958. I know that the city has changed a lot during now and then.

As well if you have any pictures of the city, like from the era I can follow from those to build the actual buildings for the route, since I am a scenery building maker. If you can get any pictures of the vintage buildings down there that will also help.

If I am successful I would like to make the route freeware.

Try to find a project similar to this one:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2889&p=25914&hilit=quebec#p25914

Often a group of railfans will draw such maps of long-gone railways in a particular city or region.

For buildings, city plans and pictures and other scenery, remember that only an insignificant fraction of available documentation has been digitized and available on the Internet. Most of it, especially old material that is of little interest to the general population, is sleeping on library shelves in city archives, museums and public libraries.

Research begins at your local public library. They won't have the New Orleans material you're looking for, but they will (hopefully) have links to Louisiana library catalogs that you can search. They should be able to help you find the material, then get it for you in interlibrary loans. Magic!

Real librarians live in the hope that someone will give them a request like this. That's what they are trained for. Lending you the latest Harry Potter bores them out of their minds.

Thorough research, now, involves you traveling to N.O. and sifting through dusty shelves, talking to museum curators, etc.

Good luck!

I know this is an older thread, but I have a similar issue and have not been able to find a solution. I want to recreate a route that was torn up in the late 1980's. Things have changed so much that I can't identify the former roadbed on Google Earth. However, I have found a historic 1938 map of the area. Would it be possible to use a jpeg from the 1938 map to create a decal to place on my DEM data? If so, can anyone direct me to a guide for this?

BTW, for my first route, I'm recreating the Ware Shoals Railroad in South Carolina. It was a 5-mile route running from interchanges with the Piedmont & Northern and Southern Ry. at Shoals Junction to the Riegel Textile Mill in Ware Shoals. The WSRR owned one locomotive, a GE 44-tonner. If you're interested, there's a good article on the WSRR in the May 1976 issue of Trains magazine.

Thanks,
Harry

You just have to know the wight and height of your picture (map) in real dimensions and then you just have to edit two lines in the .xml file. I could do that for you if you want

Kevin

When you say width and height, you're talking about real miles, right?

yes

Your public library, especially if they subscribe to ProQuest for Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, is a great resource.

Also check to see if the state has a historical map service. For example, Iowa has the "Iowa Geographical Map Server" where you can view aerial photos going back to the 1930's. http://ortho.gis.iastate.edu/

I am currently using this to get photos from the 1930's of the route I am working on, then taking those images and using the "image overlay" feature of Google Earth to display them. I then plan on using RWDecal to get those images onto the route for track placement. Here is an example.

I did check in the USC Library and there are no Sanborn Fire maps available since Ware Shoals is such a small town. I'm not sure if South Carolina offers a historical map service, but I have called and talked with the local librarian. She has promised to direct me to their collection of maps and pictures with the hope of finding some more info. I am hopeful that there will be some aerial photos of the mill complex so I can get an idea of the building/track layout. Even though many of the SC textile mills are similar, this one was laid out differently. This short line has several interesting points with two railroad junctions parallel to each other and a pretty steep grade over a long trestle. It should give us some good operational scenarios.

Harry