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Hi all, A few questions for all the route builders out there. I'm in the planning stages of building the Southern Pacific Coast route and have almost all of the DEM data downloaded. My question is what do you folks do to examine an area which is far away from you? For example, I'm in the Los Angeles area and I'd like to have the Roseville yard as the northern most point of my route. However, Roseville is a few hundred miles away so it's not like I can just drive there. Along the same line there are areas where the track goes one direction and the road goes in another. Other areas are just not easily accessable for one reason or another. So how do you build up those areas? One thing I tried was using a couple of those map sites such as mapblast.com, but they aren't detailed enough and it's hard to tell how accurate or up to date they are. Another thought I had would be to use what would amount to aerial photographs, but I'm not sure where to go for those. Any suggestions? I suppose that one could simply put out a call for photographs of a particular area(s), bridges, buildings, etc. Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Thanks
Matt

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Building areas you can't see or get too [View All], kazba, 03:42 AM, Jul-15-02, (0) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, SP9800, Jul-15-02, 06:10 AM, (1) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, ccyko, Jul-15-02, 06:23 AM, (2) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, flarrfan, Jul-15-02, 06:40 AM, (3) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, gxm149, Jul-15-02, 08:36 AM, (4) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, Railfan727, Jul-15-02, 09:35 PM, (6) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, kazba, Jul-16-02, 03:17 AM, (7) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, tark1054, Jul-15-02, 07:04 PM, (5) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, kazba, Jul-16-02, 03:27 AM, (8) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, MarkMyers, Jul-16-02, 09:12 AM, (9) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, kazba, Jul-18-02, 12:58 PM, (10) RE: Building areas you can't see or get too, MarkMyers, Jul-19-02, 03:42 PM, (11)

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I am familiar with the Cal-P (the section of the railroad between Oakland and Sacramento). I live within hearing distance of it in the East Bay.There had been a person working on the Coast Line, and I think he had made some decent progress. His name on the forums here was Daylighter, but I can't find any posts from him since February. Does anyone know what happened to him?There are also two or three groups or individuals (I being one, in fact) who were planning or working on building the Cal-P. In my case, I think the past tense is appropriate, as I have stopped attempting to build it. I am not sure about the other groups.

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You can use the lat+long coordinates of the place you want to go, and enter them into the camera box. Then you press the 'jump' button, and you're there.-Chris
MSTS Chicago Elevated

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On my route, I used Terraserver images to go with my knowledge of other accessible locations to create an ambience. I think if you go into prototype route building with the idea of duplicating reality, you will inevitably be disappointed. The terraserver satellite pics give a good sense of what an inaccessible area may be like, though they certainly don't give you a true ground-level view. terraserver.micosoft.com.How about finagling a cab ride and take a video camera along?

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Terraserver is great for getting aerial pictures of areas that you can't get to personally. It is a great tool for building routes. just go to http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com I hope that is what you are looking for and that it will help you in building your route. Good luck on it, George.

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I'm making extensive use of Terraserver photos on the Indianapolis Line. In fact, when I start working on an area, I download all of the photos for that area (right-click on the image, then save it as a .jpg), then "stitch" them together in PSP to create a continuous photo of the area. It shows the general topography (forest, residential, farmland, etc.), and the exact placement of roads, tracks, and water.The images are to scale, to boot!I use a 3-D "ruler" and "protractor", plus some good old-fashioned trigonometry, to translate mesurements and angles from the photos into the RE. The tools I described are available as measure.zip in the file library.Bruce Bridges

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Gentlemen, Thanks for the reference to the Terraserver. I tried going there this afternoon, but I had a terrible time getting things to either load up or load up all the way. Got lots of server not found or responding. Server must of been busy. Does anyone know of any other sources to goto? What I did manage to get to come up is exactly the thing I was looking for. I'm not planning on exact realworld tranlation, but more along the lines of what Bruce is doing with his Indianapolis line. Just a general layout of where things are. As it is, I'm already having to change some of the track layout changes so as to avoid making closed loops. I'm sure that other changes will come into play because of the limitations of the sim.Thanks again for the info.
Matt

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What Circa will your route encompass? I am doing a L A area Circa 1900. Have a lot a stuff if you are in that era.
tark1054

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Tark, My route will be predominantly 1970-1980's era. I'm more heavily into the modern stuff. However, I would guess that it could be used into the early 1940's or 50's. Compared with today's trackage, I'm having to add a lot of track that is no longer in existance, but the right-of-way is still there.Matt

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LAST EDITED ON Jul-16-02 AT 09:15 AM (EDT)

This is a little off topic, but I have to ask. How much of the SP/UP coast route are you planning on modeling? I only ask as I grew up in the San Luis Obispo area, with the pleasure of having to walk down the tracks, and pass through the SLO Amtrak station on my way home from school every day. Always managed to be there when the northbound/southbound Coastliner's made their stops there everyday. Spent a lot of time talking with the porters, and the engineers. A little kids train heaven. I have been wanting to model the SLO/Cuesta Grade area for quite some time, but I'm not that good with the DEM files. (Ok I'm no good with the dem files). Just was curious. I had found the SLO station in the Track Objects section, and it brought back a flood of good memories, just seeing it parked along a track section. I have photos taken of the area (from the "new" pedestian bridge)if anyone is interested in my uploading them. And some photos of the daily Pushme/Pullyou service there.

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Well, the current route plan spans from Los Angeles Union Station to the Roseville yard with the major sities in between. Of course, this may change depending on what the Route Editor will and won't let me do. Based on what I've seen in the Routes section here, I think it's very doable. The plan is to start in Los Angeles, since that's where I live and that's the area I'm familiar with the most, and work northward from there. I do plan to include SLO and it was nice to see that SLO station, it'll get some use on my route.

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That is very cool. I hope that you will be sharing your work with others here, I have been over Cuesta Grade (on the Daylight) one time, and would love to do it in train sim. I had been trying to do the SLO to Santa Cruz run in MSTS, but I am just no bloody good with the dem files...

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