Hills and Stuff

Durham is anything but flat, and Bishop Auckland - being on the foothills of the Pennines - is definitely no exception. With that in mind, it was pretty obvious that building a model on a flat board then trying to put the hills in afterwards is really not going to work.

Enter Digital Elevation Mapping (DEM) - a technique for geographically mapping spot heights of terrain - and a tool called TransDEM. When I learnt about this it was obvious that this was the way to go. Although georeferencing of maps etc. is somewhat tedious TransDEM takes much of the gruntwork out of it can (even better!) can export the basemap to Trainz itself as a starting point.

I used modern Ordnance Survey maps as my reference, together with freely available DEM data provided by the Space Shuttle Programme. It's not hugely accurate (30m if I remember correctly), but it's a good start. The first step, however, is to georeference suitable maps to provide an overview of the route:


When the Trainz baseboards are generated, this map will actually be imprinted onto them, which acts as a useful guide while building the route. Here's how it looks with the DEM data overlaid on the map:


Once the export to Trainz is completed, the map will be overlaid on the terrain. Here’s a (very early) version of the area around Newton Cap viaduct in Surveyor, with the underlying map clearly visible:


It is quite hard to get your bearings at first, but helpfully the georeferenced map data is easily visible in the Surveyor map view:


TransDEM can not only create the baseboard terrain, but also the basic trackwork. For detailed mapping, it also allows “UTM Tiles” carrying street maps etc. to be created and positioned in place within the model.

Just to wet your appetite, here’s an early version of the area of Bishop Auckland station itself, with most of the trackwork in place:


Overall, a very useful and interesting tool. :)