Working on the Railroad
I'm involved in creating historical gaming maps recently for the American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, and WW2. A problem, I've bumped into again and again is that there are railroads on the terrain. My solution has been more time-consuming than the entire rest of the map: Laying down a wide "rail bed", adding cross-ties as symbols along a line, removing the guideline, then laying on the tracks over the lot, and hoping I kept it even. After all of that it still looks pretty "sucky-poo" when reduced to 8-1/2x11 inches or smaller on some map on a printed page. I'm not happy with this process and result. I tried making an icon, but it distorted when angling it to make the curves and bends and looked even worse. This, admittedly, may be a result of my icon ability rather than the idea of an icon.
Thus my question is: Has anyone come up with a satisfactory method of creating a railroad, that they would be willing to share?
Skal,
Sven
Thus my question is: Has anyone come up with a satisfactory method of creating a railroad, that they would be willing to share?
Skal,
Sven
Comments
First set a good line width for your scale, (i.e. on a battle map with a 5 foot snap, a line width of 3-4 Inches is good). Then draw a set of double lines using the double line tool with a width of around 5 feet (Standard Rail Guage in the world 4' - 8.5" so 5 is good). Draw your lines, and what not. Then for each rail use the LINE TO PATH tool to join them to a single entity.
Then with some tweaking of the DRAW SYMBOLS ALONG tool, you can choose for example the Single Board/Plank symbol from SS2, Bitmap B DEBRIS catalog. Set your distance to example 2', and make sure the symbol scale is around 200% for ALL aspects of the SYMBOL SCALE AND LOCATION setting at the bottom of the option window, and set the SYMBOL SCALING radial Button to Y only (makes them boards standard width but twice the length), then chose one of the rails and BOOM, you have just drawn all the ties.
At the moment, with just a quick play, My ties are off centre, but that should be easy to fix by maybe putting a centre rail on all lines for symbol location purposes, but it is a QUICK and fast way of doing it...so far.
*EDIT*
Man I can tell, I have NOT had enough coffee this morning yet, as I just re-read your post, and what I am doing is pretty much IDENTICAL to what you said you are already doing. Man, what a Schmuck I am
http://www.nightsaroundthetable.com/maps/closedsc.htm#LMK
Yes Neon: pretty much the same result and creates an indistinguishable line when put on a page for a book or magazine. Dratsky Plus yes, I do exaggerate the sizes of roads & the like so that they show a little clearer in greyscale printed on a page.
Jaerfaph: I'll give it a try. I always hesitated because of the little note at the bottom that the track symbols will be put on the site in the future. But I'll download all the sets and see what I can make of things.
Stormcaller: I tried working with a bmp, but I guess my talent is limited in that as I try to use it, It goes all wonky when I change the basic direction/angle/vector.
Thanks again, & I'll let you know how it turns out.
Skal,
Sven
I tried again but modified my original technique. I draw my curved railroad rail in black or dark grey. I make a copy of it & move it slightly over so that the rails are parallel. I choose one rail & do symbols along (Pete Fenlon's ridgline symbol - dark brown varicolor) is a good hash for the railroad ties as long as I don't put them to close together. It does the trick well enough.
Thanks gain, everyone!
Skal ok Gud Jul!
Sven
Xtrkcad (http://www.xtrkcad.org/Wikka/HomePage) is free and allows you to export the plan as a DXF file - but it does have a fairly idiosyncratic way of doing things which can be a bit annoying as you learn how to use it.
Hope that helps,
David Shaw