Railworks America

I started work today on a route map for the SOO Line. Is this style appealing and useful? After I get the core of the maps done will add a summary of the industry to help the scenario developers out. It is not meant to be to scale, only a representation of the major areas of the route and the industry served.

I want to put out something that the scenario developer will find useful.

Thoughts and comments?

Trevor

A route map is always a good idea!

IMHO the tracks on the map would be look much easier to identify if represented by lines (maybe in different colors for the mainline, sidetracks, etc.), and not symbolized as "tracks"; maybe you could add mileposts and speed limits to the map, that would be very useful. For designing scenarios, it would be great to have the track markers symbolized and named. I´ve added a little scribble; so you can see what i am thinking of (maybe better than my english explanation )

Exactly the feedback I am looking for. I am going to re-work with colored lines instead of the tracks and see how that compares. It will be easier to lay it out that way too, based on my experience with the first version. Should leave me more room to add detail to the maps as well.

I'll take some time and find the markers, speed limits, etc and see how I can incorporate those. At this time the route does not have mile markers or signals (the real route did not have them as of a year ago based on comments by the author, might be different now). The mile markers I am looking into, the signals are planned (from what I read today) for Phase 5 of the route release.

Which brings up a question to those who write scenarios, how does AI deal with a lack of signalling?

Trevor

Hello Trevor,

Maps are the one thing that we have huge difficulty in obtaining for 99% of all the routes that have ever been created in Railworks.
In the UK we have a great guy called David Parry who has designed some operational route maps for a couple of our freebie and payware British layouts, and I can show you his page on the UKTS library if you wanted to download one and have a look at how he has done his maps for us, they may give you some inspiration and ideas, etc, etc.

http://uktrainsim.com/filelib-search.ph ... hor=dparry

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

I used to do quite a few maps (I called them schematics) so I am somewhat biased, but I believe that simple is better. The word schematic was appropriate because there was no scaling in the maps which allowed me to get the data on a fewer number of pages. I would rather turn through seven pages rather than 35. Other people prefer larger, more complex offerings but that's my two-cent's worth. You can see my approach in some of Rich Garber's work in RailWorks (it ain't pretty).

Don

Thanks all for the input.

Ex-Railwayman, those are beautiful maps/schematics! I am going to look at those further for sure.

Don, thanks for your input as well. Your work is very clean and useful and most appreciated. I do like your use of the term schematics instead of maps as that is a more accurate description. These are not meant to be to scale. If you want that level of detail, find and buy the track diagrams.

I really like what Tori did with her maps for the C&O Alleghaney route as well. http://alleghany.weebly.com/maps.html .

Trevor

TDHenderson wrote:I really like what Tori did with her maps for the C&O Alleghaney route as well. http://alleghany.weebly.com/maps.html .

Trevor

MadMike did the same kind of "schematic" for his Mount Hood WIP: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1000&start=60

Here is version 2. This is cleaner than having the tracks in my opinion.

I still have to finish adding the mile markers (not in the route yet, should be with V3) and speed limits.

Trevor

Yeah, that maps looks very useful! Good work

OK, here is my last sneak peek until I get this finished up. I still have to see how to incorporate speed limits. This is the first two pages of the route schematic with the Alcoa plant included.

Unfortunately I had a hard drive failure and did not have the source backed up. Bad me.

Will have to start it all over again, but will use the same format I used for the Montour map that is available here.

But I can't say at this time when that will be. Probably not for a few months.

Trevor

Look forward to it's release. Really like the Montour map. It helps a lot when running a scenario.

Just an observation. You said you lost your map when your hard drive crashed. Could you not d/l your last map that is up on this site and work from there?

Jay

Not sure if I can, I was doing it in Visio then saving as a PDF file. I can try and see if it works.