Anyone Willing........

[kevman479]

I am trying to create a route that is close to home. It is not an exciting route but it is close to my heart because of family. I am making the old Monon Railroad. I have about 50 miles of track laid just for practice. I know how to place and make the signals work. and the AI. I don't have grade listings for the railroad itself. I am now working on the elevations so I don't just have flat track all over. I have been trying for a month to get this. I have even had my son help me but nothing we do seems to work. I don't care it I have to delete the track I have and do the elevations first. Most of Indiana is fairly flat but we do have the foothills around and even a tunnel or two along the route.

At this point though because I can't understand how to get the elevation data into TS I am about to give up. I have followed step by step all the forum threads I can find. Would anybody be willing to help with this. I don't have a lot but might even be willing to pay someone to do this for me if need be and depending on what it would cost me.

I am planning to lay about 575 miles of mainline and branch line track. plus several (about 15) crossing railroads (about 2 miles on either side of my route). this would be for AI effect as well as interchange yards. There are a few places I want a little wider because of large yards I want to attach to. I know this will take years to complete but that is what I am looking for. (What can I say I am on old man on a fixed income with lots of time on my hands). I have found that the lowest point is roughly 575 FT above sea level and the highest is about 975 FT. (these are approximate).

Anyone Willing to help?

Thanks Kevin

[dejoh]

Start small. Maybe try the Hamond, In. area first. Lots of industry and interchanges with (at the time the Monon was around), New York Central, C&O, Pennsylvania Railroad and EJ&E.
Also, very flat in the area.

[artimrj]

575 miles?? !!!! Good luck with that. Should be done by 2020. Maybe. It took 4 of us to do the NERW which is only 50 miles long, 19 months to complete. 2400+ man hours in it. I suggest you do a small portion at a time and actually finish that part then add more. Laying 575 miles of track then doing the scenery will be an enormous task.

[kevman479]

Thanks and Yes I am starting small. It is a town 1 mile x 1 mile so I can learn the scenery and all. This way I can figure out how far from the track I want to model and in what detail. And yes to do the whole thing will take me years and I don't even know if I can get it done in my life time. LOL.

[barnez]

In a built-up area you only need to be detailed: roads, accurate buildings, etc for a couple of blocks on each side of the tracks. Any further and the details get very obscured - no real need to obsess over the placement of each building or road (or even to have roads) just some generic low rez fill to make the space appear populated.



-barnez

[Toripony]

In a built-up area you only need to be detailed: roads, accurate buildings, etc for a couple of blocks on each side of the tracks. Any further and the details get very obscured - no real need to obsess over the placement of each building or road (or even to have roads) just some generic low rez fill to make the space appear populated.



-barnez

Unless your route is in a narrow hollow and the towns extend up the hillsides immediately on both sides of the track where everything is in plain view like an amphitheater. Advice: don't build WV routes unless you either really love doing detailed scenery or you don't do any at all, lol.

For flatland routes with small towns, plop trees throughout the neighborhoods so that beyond a couple of small-town blocks from the tracks all you see is a few rooftops among the trees.

Back on topic, none of this chatter is helping you get your terrain loaded. I haven't done it in years, so I'm afraid I can't help. Hasn't anyone here loaded terrain lately?

[kevman479]

HA HA, lol, don't laugh I do have two amphitheaters that the tracks run by.

A couple of blocks? I was thinking what I could see from the cab. I know some people follow a train using a world view from high above but I don't. In the towns would be the higher buildings in the back ground here and there. The Monon stops before the two Big cities of Chicago and Louisville. Although Monon does offer Passenger service to these two I Will be doing something else there.

The couple of miles on either side of the tracks is for the crossing tracks of other railroads and the exchange yards. Eighty-five percent of this route is boring old farmland and trees.

And please tell me if i am wrong, My goal is to set this up to run passenger service with the AI while I run locals. It is the locals I am interested in. There are a lot of small one and two car spurs along this route for the factories and grain silos. I think it was CSX had a maintenance shop in the town just south of my start point and while they didn't have a roundhouse and turntable I plan on putting one there for effect.

I remember when the locals had to be at a certain place at a certain time because of the passenger trains and through freights coming through.

Don't get me wrong I do appreciate the advice. My goal is like my HO layout, just enough for effect the rest can be painted.


Kevin

[Toripony]

You're right, some folks do fly above the train looking around at the scenery... sometimes I do that if the landscape looks interesting. However, if your area is flat, boring farmland, I think players will be more inclined to stay closer to the train. You know the old human curiosity of "Wonder what is over that hill?"... well, if there's no hill, then there's no curiosity so the mind tends to focus on things closer. In my route, I've placed a couple of Easter eggs back in the holler or over the hill... special places to me and fun for anyone who might find them.

In my hills, the landscape dominates the view so I've "scened" it from far to near... trees on hills first, buildings closer, then trackside brush and scenery last. In a flatland route I would take the opposite approach... start near and work out toward the sightline. Honestly, I don't think very many players will ever see anything you model that can't be seen from the cab. Besides, in real life we seldom look past what is within a couple hundred feet of ourselves. Things blur beyond that. Beyond that point, you're just decorating it for yourself. And that takes a LOT of time. I cannot emphasize "a LOT" enough.

You sound like me in that I want a model-looking layout and I want to play around with the locals that I used to watch in my neighborhood. What I want to warn you about is getting so lost in the modeling that you never get to play... that's what's happened to me. I'm now very burned out on doing scenery and just want to get it all behind me so I can play on it for a year straight! My head is full of scenarios that I haven't had time to build. My scenario list is full of starts that are not even 1/4 made.

I'm suggesting that if you ever want to play on your route (or share it), simplify, simplify and do it before you get too far along. In the beginning I went to extremes detailing my small town and now that I've worked out toward the ends of the route I find that it's almost mandatory to keep up the same level of detail. Don't get caught up in that trap. I also think you'll be surprised how satiating 60 miles of track with yards and industrial sidings can be. In the end I bet you'll spend most of your play time near your home. Think this through... if you make a scenario for your train that runs 120 miles, you will also have to add AI traffic and static consists for that 120 miles to make it feel realistic. Writing more than a couple of those huge scenarios can also become less than fun.

I highly recommend using ground textures liberally for scening the landscape beyond a few hundred feet. Take a look at your local area from a tall building... look out across the landscape as if you were looking at a painting... what do you see? Bands of color, shades of green, brown, yellow, the play of light and shadow... "paint" that with ground textures and save yourself a lot of time. It's also really surprising how much of our view is inhibited by trees, too. Even I never noticed how much until I started building in this game. If I started my route over today, there's a lot of stuff that I would leave out because now that all the "layers" are filling out, some of what I did back when I was learning is now hidden. Rather than spend time placing buildings a half-mile from the track, I wish I had spent that time on "motion" near the tracks. Car traffic, people, lighting, sound... those things add more life to the route and provide more entertainment.

Spend the most time on your track... that's what you'll be looking at the most. Invest in track details... realistic looking turnouts, the right signals, detail bridgework, culverts, M.O.W. shacks, properly placed switch stands, etc. That's what you'll see the most when you're driving around.

[barnez]

What Tori said.

Which was a longer & more detailed explanation along the lines of my suggestion.

All that said - is this route strictly for you, or do you plan to post & share? I ask because this has at least some effect on scenery: you said that you stay in the cab. If the route is only for you, put in just as much scenery is important. If the route is to share, yes, a lot of players use exterior cameras. So - a bit more further out scenery is nice (where there actually is something to see)

Again however, don't sweat any details more than a couple of blocks from the tracks. Be very general with anything further than 1/4 mile away from the tracks (closer than that really). Utilize asset blocks and vegetation and don't worry about little things like roads and fences. Save those for right along the tracks.

Sorry we've strayed from the original question, but like Tori I haven't imported terrain for quite some time and a lot has changed in the process



-barnez

[hertsbob]

Very wise words, Tori.

If the main focus of the route is on the 'locals' then that's where it must be; at least to being with. Start off with the local route closest to home and see how you get on. There's no doubt you'll be surprised how long it will take you!

Anyway, back to the question. I don't think you mentioned where your DEM was from, and we haven't had the conversation about checking whether you're starting co-ordinates are correct yet.

[xxuntitledxx]

Start off with the local route closest to home and see how you get on. There's no doubt you'll be surprised how long it will take you!

I second that, I started with the Norfolk Southern/CSX/Conrail Lehigh Line which is technically my "Local" route... and so far it's 8 months in and I am just barely getting to scenery work, I still have a lot of track work to do. Only about 30% of the mainline is done, not counting sidings and other odds and ends. And I'm redoing my terrain as we speak. So it's a lot of work.

[kevman479]

Thank you all for the encouragement. Yes I do have the co-ordinates. I know this because Google map overlay is setup and working and the picture I get is spot on. I did find and manage to get SRTM files into TS, Not sure if these are rendering right because I am getting an elevation of 205.7 FT. Google earth says 675 for the same point. So I am getting closer.

I got the files from http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/Cove ... s_org3.htm These downloaded and all i had to do was put them in the right folder and press import.

It does work enough that I already know my next question will be bout grades and setting gradients. But for now I am am trying get files from USGS to download and I can try those for elevations. Got that from a thread on here.

Thanks guys

Kevin

[kevman479]

I am Happy. I got the elvevations in

The above is right. Google Earth is in feet while TS is in Meters. 675 ft is 205 meters.

[hertsbob]

Happy days!

[arizonachris]

Google Earth is in feet while TS is in Meters. 675 ft is 205 meters.

See? it's those darn Yanks over in the Colonies, messing things up again, being different from the rest of the world.

Oops, wait, I think I'm one of those Yanks. Glad you got it figured out, Kevin.