Starting Out at Real Route Building

[km1989]

Hey All,

I have just read the Michael Vones Book and found it very helpful when making my fictional route now I want to tackle a real world route probably start of Oban to Glasgow but not sure. Looked at a few posts and noticed that I should start with Terraforming but when i tested this and then plotted my markers manually by taking the Lon/lat points and pasting them into the marker file. The hills generated by DEMEX are out of place and my route is all over the place. Also is there another way to plot the route other than using Google Earth and the marker file. I am using UK Finescale to plot the track. Can help me all advice appreciated.

Thanks

Kevin

[docmartin]

Hi Kevin,

Welcome to the forums! It is very good to see that people are still interested in building routes for MSTS so I hope you can make progress with yours. I have found with my WIP Chiltern route that patience and persistence are the key and that one mustn't become discouraged when you hit a seemingly insuperable problem. There are lots of great guys on the forums who will happily offer the benefit of their knowledge and experience to help you out. That said, I can't help you with your DEM problem but if it is any consolation, when I started out on my route using DEM data for the terraforming, I had the same experience as you. The DEM data gave me only an extremely approximate rendering of the actual topography. I am sure there are people in the community who can help you get the coordinates more accurate for the area of the world you are interested in. In my case, I decided to accept the rough and ready terrain the DEM gave me and am gradually manually correcting the terrain in the vicinity of the trackwork as I place roads - which I do not suggest you do until you have completed your trackwork and placed all your signalling and interactives - using altitude date from Google Earth. Any way, good luck with your efforts!

[km1989]

Thanks Doc for the welcome, I will take in your advice and thanks for it. Can I ask how do you plot your routes?

Thanks Kevin

[Buckeye]

Hi Kevin
There is another terraforming tool which was around before DEMEX and that is TSTools
I think it is still available from suppliers (try google)
However; DEMEX should give you a good basic start to your terrain and maybe TsTools could come later when you want to introduce more detail to the topography.
One tip for the first route; if you are using gradient's make the station area's and sidings level. This avoids later problems when placing station platforms and buildings.
Good luck with your route.
Buckeye

[km1989]

Hi Buckeye
Thanks for that tip i've actually held of buying TS Tools 2 because i've read a lot about it not working with Vista and I'm not wanting to buy it if it's going to cause me more problems. I actually can place stations on gradients it is a pain but can do done it with ma fictional route well it was only two platforms from a platform kit but at least its a start . Does anyone have anymore advice on plotting the actual route. I know how to plot it with markers but its proving to be a bit unreliable because its not lining up with the terrain. Also my markers I'd put at queen street made the station at the wrong heading. Thanks for listening guys
Kevin

[bigvern]

TS Tools sort of works under Vista but I had a hell of a struggle when I (briefly) toyed with the idea of going back to MSTS route building a few months back. The only feature I could get working was the marker plotting. Trying to create terrain from imported DEM just resulted in the programme crashing.

I believe there is a utility to convert Google Earth kml files (the ones created with pins in the "My Places" section) into MSTS marker files which might be slightly more accurate than using maps.

Bear in mind the 90m DEM for the UK, whilst better than the DTED we originally had, is still quite averaged in places particularly around lakes or where there's sudden transition in heights. However as contour tracing in TS Tools looks like a no go due to failure of the terrain export option under Vista (not to mention the horrendous eyestrain this technique caused), DEM is really the only way to go.

[docmartin]

I used TS Tools to place my markers using background maps. Not that accurate given the peculiarities of the MSTS coordinate system (IIRC you can either have DEM terraforming but with distorted route coordinates or accurate coordinates but no DEM) but then route building is all about compromises of one sort or another. Incidentally, one of the most useful features of TS Tools that I have found is the ability to reset the start position of the camera in the route. This saves a lot of jumping about as you progress along the route. Another possible advantage of TS Tools is the ability to cut the trackbed to accurate gradient contours - at least in theory. In practice, for me the gradient markers never showed up in RE and I had to put them in manually estimating the distance between gradient changes.

I believe you have to ensure that you have msjavx86 for TS Tools to work under Vista. When I got my new computer last summer, I opted to have the OS downgraded to WindowsXP but still found I needed to install that version of Java.

I agree with Buckeye about keeping stations on the level. I have put the trackwork in for one station on a gradient. It has 4 platforms and it was a real pain to get all the track connected correctly because different lengths of curved track on the same gradient end up at different altitudes and so you have to fiddle with the gradients by trial and error to get everything to match up correctly. And this is even before trying to place any of the station objects.