Getting back into It!

[RCSD505]

After a 10-year hiatus I have decided to get back into the sim world! Prior to 2015 I had several routes in progress based upon my fictional Western Illinois & Iowa Railway, but life took me other directions and I set everything aside after just starting a new “Dakota Division” route based upon the then-DM&E Cowboy Line. I remember that I stopped working on it when I encountered the great white void not far west from Pierre, SD.

Now that I have a more established history for the WI&I I would like to get started on a new route for Open Rails using more modern methods. I have to say, I am a little intimidated reading through all of the new tools and things available now. I have gone as far as using the old Route Geometry Extractor to generate the tiles for the route and creating a KML file of the route itself, but the old DEMEX methods don’t appear to work.

Are there any best practices to follow at this point?

[frliss]

Welcome back. You sound enthusiastic and ready to go.

Fred

[RCSD505]

I am.. I debated on if I wanted to pursue the concept as a model railroad or if I wanted to jump back into MSTS/ORTS. I decided to go this route so that I could share it with more people.

[eric]

Cowboy Line would be nice to have.

You'll want to learn and use TSRE instead of using the MSTS RE. Demex will still work if you have the GeoTiff files, but TSRE has built in HGT file support which won't be as detailed, but is better than nothing.

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

[RCSD505]

This actually will not be the Cowboy line. I had initially used that route before I had the WI&I concept fully-formed, but this will actually be the old MILW between Chamberlain and Conata, SD, new grade between Conata and Chadron, NE, and then eventually on to Lusk, WY. Basically a version of DM&E's Powder River Basin extension that they could never get built. I was pretty happy with the way the old route was looking before I dropped the project, so I hope to continue on at this standard at least. I would like to take advantage of the 10M DEM for this route so I need to figure out how to get that working, I have been reading about some issues with it and DEMEX.

Pierre1.jpg
Pierre2.jpg

[eric]

Equally cool. The bridge at Chamberlain is a favorite.

[landnrailroader]

The issue with the DEM modules and DEMEX is easily fixed. Get a copy of Virtual Terrain Builder, VTB. With that you read in the Geotiff file, and then export as a Geotiff. The process removes something that USGS added a few years back and the exported files (so far) work fine for me. I don't remember if I was able to use 10M Dem though, I think I had to use a lower resolution than that. In any case, TSRE does a horrible job with cuts and fills, so if you can still use MSTS/RE, I would lay the track and shape the terrain with it, much better results.

Jerry Sullivan (retired from CSX, Southern, and as a docent on the Cumbres & Toltec)

[RCSD505]

The bridge track at Chamberlain (4890 feet!) will actually probably be the very first section of track that I place, and I will work east and west from there. I will have to approximate the bridge based on what available as there are no 375ft truss spans available, but there are 400ft spans. Close enough for me.

This is all assuming I can get terrain created. I have downloaded TIF files from the USGS website that I believe cover the whole area, but I am not totally sure I have downloaded the right thing. VTBuilder is throwing up errors when I try to import/export and the drag/drop doesn’t seem to work right either. This seems drastically different from the last time I did this 10+ years ago and I am a little lost.

[landnrailroader]

It has been about a year since I created a new route and I remember that some GeoTiff files, mostly higher resolutions, would not work but lesser ones would. The files that worked for me were the 1-arc/sec files. The 1/3-arc/sec would be better and I used to use those but for the last few years, those would cause illness on the part of VTB.

Jerry Sullivan

[RCSD505]

I am seeing the issue with the 1/3 Arc Second files. I would really like to use those but having random issues. I downloaded all of the tif files from USGS, downloaded and installed VTBuilder, and also the 64-bit DEMEX from the file library and keys. I was able to load and process six files with VTBuilder running it as an administrator and compatibility mode for Windows 7 and using the import menu, followed by export to Geotiff. These files both read in DEMEX and I was able to generate terrain from them. All of my other raw tif files from USGS will load into VTBuilder, but I am getting an error when I try to export them which generates a massive (800mb+) file that will load in DEMEX but is just black. I've also changed the compatibility mode over to Windows XP Service Pack 3 and that results in extremely slow import in VTBuilder. So... any ideas how to get past this? I feel like I am so close, yet so far away!

Error.jpg