Railworks America

FYI, the National Seamless Map Server has been taken offline in favor of "The National Map". I am slowly figuring out what needs to be done to get the data and will document it after proving it out on a couple of my test routes.

http://nationalmap.gov/viewer.html

If anyone else has any input or has already figured it out please shout out.

Trevor

Here is some futher info that I am digging through to figure this out.

http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/help/9.0% ... %20Tab.htm

Yeah, I saw that last month - time flys - I was hoping to grab more DEM before having to lear a new system

BTW, has anyone noticed that the last few month the Seamless Server did not display rail lines? Makes it harder to figure out what needs downloading )I don't always use the ReDem automatic feature).

TDHenderson wrote:FYI, the National Seamless Map Server has been taken offline in favor of "The National Map". I am slowly figuring out what needs to be done to get the data and will document it after proving it out on a couple of my test routes.

http://nationalmap.gov/viewer.html

If anyone else has any input or has already figured it out please shout out.

Trevor

Lol, that figures. I was just contemplating adding some more terrain to my route. I guess I'll shelve that idea for a bit.

Hack wrote:BTW, has anyone noticed that the last few month the Seamless Server did not display rail lines?

It does. You just have to zoom in about 5 or 6 times before you can see them.

Zoomed in 6 times.


Zoomed in about 10 or 12 times.

Thanks Ed. However, I was referring to the NED layer extent that used to show the basic US rail network. It looks like the one you mention above is from the Topo Quad layer.

Sorry Marc. I just looked at the first page I came to.
I haven't even been able to find the NED layer.

That's what worries me, Ed, that we're going to be jumping through more hoops to get the required DEM.

For crying out loud - what an absolute pain! Who designed this goofy thing?

Steps to downloading DEM (pardon me if I missed anything):

1. Go to the National Viewer page: http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/
2. Zoom to an area encompassing the sections you wish to download (Tip: double left-click your mouse pointed at the area you're interested in until you reach the desired extent)
3. Click on the "Download Data" button in the upper-right of the viewer
4. Click the link in the popup window "Click Here to download current map extent
5. From the new popup, check the box for "Elevation" and from the drop down menu to the right select "BIL_16INT" and click the "Next" button
6. In the next window, select from the available packages and click "Next"
7. The selection will appear in the left menu - click the "Checkout" button
8. Enter your email address to receive the links to the data download

Whew!

TDHenderson and Hack. Thanks for getting this topic underway. Good information for route builders. Much appreciated.

Here is more option to Marc's excellent instructions. This involves selecting a "reference area" which lets you select a smaller area. This helps a bit when doing a large area, but will result in more individual files to download and merge with MicroDEM.

Marc, hope you don't mind but I used your instructions and expanded a bit for this method. Here is the text version, am working on a .pdf to upload here (can't attach, too big)

1. Go to the National Viewer page: http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/.
2. Zoom to an area encompassing the sections you wish to download (Tip: double left-click your mouse pointed at the area you're interested in until you reach the desired extent).
3. Click on the "Download Data" button in the upper-right of the viewer.
4. Drop down the list in the popup window labeled "Download options", select either Index 24K for smaller areas, Index 100K for larger.
5. You will now see green lines on the map which relate to the areas shown on 24K or 100K Topo maps.

6. Click in one of the boxes bounded by the green lines. You have now selected that area to download. Continue until all of your areas are selected. Notice how each section is now highlighted.

7. In the results pane on the left, click Download for each reference area and continue with the steps below.
8. From the new popup, check the box for "Elevation" and from the drop down menu to the right select "BIL_16INT" and click the "Next" button.

9. In the next window, select from the available packages and click "Next".

10. You will now see the area you selected in the Cart tab. Notice how the area I selected is now outlined in red.


Continued in next post

Trevor

Continued from previous post.

11. Click on the Selection tab and continue with all the areas you previously selected. Once done you should see something like the below picture.

12. Click the "Checkout" button
13. Enter your email address to receive the links to the data download.

Trevor

This is very interesting. On my route I need to DEM the mountains across the Bay from my track, and now it appears I can download just those areas. Now how would I get ReDem to transform those areas for me?

PapaXpress wrote:This is very interesting. On my route I need to DEM the mountains across the Bay from my track, and now it appears I can download just those areas. Now how would I get ReDem to transform those areas for me?

I've started work on a .pdf to guide us through this. I have all the ReDEM help pages saved off and will add those in, so hopefully the guide will be from beginning to end of the entire process.

But to answer your question, I would think you would process each separate .BIL download through ReDEM. I am going to try and use MicroDEM to "stitch" all of the separate .BIL files together into one, so you only have to run the terrain generation process once in ReDEM.

Trevor

All good stuff. Thanks Trevor.