Railworks America

HI,
I am planning to make a route, now that many of the stocks have been completed. I see there are few tools available for route building like DEM,RWdecal etc. But as i have no experience of route building other than just laying tracks, i have no idea of what other tools are required to start building a route. Can anyone here please tell me what tool i need to have..Also do i need Google Earth installed? if i do, then do i also need to have the latest version.

I strongly recommend Redem for converting higher resolution SRTM/DEM data to a format Railworks can use. Railworks can only handle 1 arc second data directly, so redem allows you to use 1/3 and 1/9 arc second terrain data. The higher res data gives you much more accurate terrain and will make it much easier to see exactly where to place track.

What area is the route you're looking to model? It's worth doing a search beforehand to see what SRTM/DEM data is available for it.

It all depends on how picky you are about the terrain. I have not used those redem and rw decal utilites yet. I just get the proper SRTM for the area I am doing and use that. It may not be the greatest but it is good enough and eliminates the head ache trying to get the other ones to work. This forum has a lot of help seekers on this topic. I guess once you get a handle on it everything is OK, I never bothered to try and get there.

If your route is prototypical you may want the googleearth thing. You do not have to install googel earth (I beleive), you just need to apply for an API code to enter it into Trainsim, then turn it on while your editting. We used it on the Lafayette route to place the track and buildings and roads, the best we could. It also helps with vegetation and water. I'd say for a proto route it is a must to make life easier.

We also discovered there is a zoom feature on it and if you zoom in more, you get an almost photographical representation of the area.

Thanks for the help..But may ask what is SRTM and how can i get it

SRTM = Satellite Radar Topography Mission
DEM = Digital Elevation Model

Basically, these are two types of data/files that can be used by Railworks to create all of the terrain on your route. These files are available to the public, and are generally hosted by government sites of the country in question.

Unless the route you are building is perfectly flat and has no surrounding elevation, I would consider this process essential to a realistic or prototypical route.

What area/country are you planning to model?

BoostedFridge wrote:What area/country are you planning to model?

I am planning an NFR(North-east frontier railway) in the north-eastern part of India. I am afraid that SRTM or DEM might not have any data this region

Not sure about the rest of the world but I got my data from http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/ which is just for the US. Check see if India has this. USGS is the US Geographical Society which is part if the Government.

aksingha wrote:I am planning an NFR(North-east frontier railway) in the north-eastern part of India. I am afraid that SRTM or DEM might not have any data this region

http://www.digital-geography.com/announ ... Yh9K0Yl99M

According to this, you might be in luck. Allegedly in January of this year, this type of info would be available for that region.

Yup, you're in luck. There is 1 arc/second data available for most of India now. I did a quick check, and .BIL format data is available for the entire area.

You just have to register an account here -> https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/register/

Then go to the map here -> http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

Click on the 'search criteria' tab, then click on the map on an area along your route. A 'pin' will appear on the map. You need to make a 'box' of sorts with these pins of the area surrounding your route. It does not necessarily have to be square, but you want to keep the rail line you are modeling in the middle of it. (see picture) Use as many 'pins' as necessary.



Once you have boxed in the area around the ENTIRE route that you intend to model, click the blue 'Data Sets' Tab near the bottom left side of your window.
This will bring up a list of the different data types available for this region. You want to open the 'Digital Elevation' dropdown, then 'SRTM', and then check the box next to 'SRTM 1 Arc Second Global' [or a higher resolution such as 1/3 or 1/9 arc second if available] (see picture)



Then click the blue 'Results' button and a list of the necessary DEM files for the region inside your 'box' of pins will be displayed.

Click the 'download' icon on each file displayed. (you need to be registered and logged in at this point) This will download that file. (see picture)



Once you have the files, I would recommend following the excellent tutorial by 'BNSFsubdivision' here on Railworks America. That will explain the steps you need to get the files into Railworks.

Good luck with your route!

That is a really nice tutorial. Thanks for the time you took to post it. I am going to add that to the web site learning center when I get a chance.

Thank you Bob! I'm just trying to give back a bit to the site and community that has helped me so much.

I'm going to edit one line of the tutorial post to make it universal for both international and domestic use.

BoostedFridge wrote:Yup, you're in luck. Good luck with your route!

Thank you very much for the help.

Thank you for the detailed explanation..That was really helpful.
I found a pdf instruction file by BNSFsubdivision..and following the instructions i have got the .hgt files and have put them inside DEM/SRTM folder(They were not present inside RW folder, so i created them). But i am not sure if the generated terrain is correct,or maybe i am in a different location. Also i tried to use the googlemap overlay, but no success. The blue circles keeps rotating and nothing happens. Is there something i am missing.

aksingha wrote:Thank you for the detailed explanation..That was really helpful.
I found a pdf instruction file of BNSFsubdivision..and following the instructions i have got the .hgt files and have put then inside DEM/SRTM folder(They were not present inside RW folder, so i created them). But i am not sure if the generated terrain is correct,or maybe i am in a different location. Also i tried to us the googlemap overlay, but no success. The blue circles keeps rotating and nothing happens. Is there something i am missing.

I understand if you have the latest version of TS2015 you should be able to copy and paste the api code in there. Otherwise it's recommended that you copy and paste the code into something like notepad because for some reason Google uses some strange font that is really easy to misread.

buzz456 wrote:I understand if you have the latest version of TS2015 you should be able to copy and paste the api code in there. Otherwise it's recommended that you copy and paste the code into something like notepad because for some reason Google uses some strange font that is really easy to misread.

I just checked it and the API is correct..and the problem is still there..I waited for 10mins but the map won't show up.