Not sure if you guys are aware of it, but Google has a FREE download software called Google Earth. Now you may be familiar with the online Google satellite maps, which are cool, but nothing like Google Earth. Here's the deal: you download the software to your computer, and it gives you virtually REAL TIME scrolling and zooming thru satellite images. For example, let's say you enter the address of a freight yard you're familiar with. The software AUTOMATICALLY scrolls and zooms to that location, kinda like you had real time control of a satellite lens to rotate and zoom into a location. And if you grab the image with the mouse and shove it the direction of the track, it automatically keeps scrolling in that direction. Very cool. You can also save locations in a file, make a whole directory of favorite places, and go back to them instantly. Or you can use the measure tool to measure straight line distances. If you haven't tried it you really should. Great way to learn about yard design, figure out existing or past routes, find great viewing sites, and I've even used it to measure structure dimensions, platform dimensions, distances between tracks, etc. By the way, it also has provision to share the stored locations with others, and it has a library of, for example, dining spots, lodging, etc. Might be nice to have folks on the board put their heads together and build a database of interesting locations.
Google Earth: A Mixed Blessing First of all, those with dial-up access to the Internet will not have much fun. The amount of data Google Earth requires to move will make it painfully slow to operate. 56K users will be much better using http://maps.google.com and switching to Satellite or Hybrid mode. Google Earth is incredibly handy for urban and suburban lines. Where Google Earth runs into trouble is the rural lines in areas that are low-res. You typically see this in the "false green" areas that Google Earth contains. You can see river drainage and farms (circles circles circles!), but you have to have a very keen eye to track a railroad through these low-res areas. And you can just forget about turning on the "Railroads" plotted in Google Earth's database. They are far too clunky to actually follow the grade, and they are often off by hundreds of yards for the grade location. That said, you can do some incredible things with it. If you're into mountain railroading like I am, you can follow lines and look at the topography by changing the axis of viewing from vertical to a more horizontal view. The scale is fairly realistic, much better than Delorme and other map softwares I've used that show topography. Additionally, you can actually find trains out on the lines in the high-res areas and you can even tell if it's coal or containers. Low-res, you can't even tell it's a railroad, let alone if a train is there. To illustrate my points, I've uploaded a few snapshots (under fair use). This is a high-res view of the Moffat Tunnel, west of Denver. Yes, that's snow on the ground. You can see the service road approaching the tunnel, the rail line going into the tunnel, and the water coming from the pilot-bore-turned-water-tunnel. Pretty good for 1920's technology. Next, you can see that Google Earth shines in showing topography. This is the approach to the entrance of the Moffat Tunnel, looking East. Backing up a little and drifting north, which is very easy and intuitive in Google Earth, you can see both the current forest service road and the old railroad grade used to climb to Rollins Pass. The large horseshoe on the lower level was bypassed by the forest service road using a switchback. Shifting the view Southwest and moving further up the line, you can see, again that Google Earth does well on showing topography when viewing the eastern approach to Rollins Pass summit and the Devil's Slide area, once popular for passenger trains to stop at. What Google Earth does not tell you is that this area is not accessible from the forest road up from the east side. Google Earth does not show that the road is closed from below the Needles Eye Tunnel (extreme left of the photo below) and that there is no alternative route to continue over the pass. Only a careful search for railfan trip reports will tell you this. In short, Google Earth does not replace good, old fashioned research into where you want to go. You should at least Google (search engine) the area for trip reports. ** Since Trainboard wont let me show five images, only four --WHY?!?-- you're going to have to click the link to view it. http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/500/Rollins_Pass_-_Devil_s_Slide_and_summit.jpg Finally, the last shot I've uploaded shows two things. First is Rifle Notch Loop, in the right center of the screen. This is where the line looped over itself and went through a tunnel to continue it's decent of the west side of Rollins Pass into Middle Park. Again, this is only accessible from the western approach of Rollins Pass (near Winter Park). The other thing this image shows is where Google Earth switches to low-res mapping. This is because residents of the area put up beams to scramble the satellite signal to protect their privacy Just kidding! Actually, Google hasn't got a high-res image (yet) for a lot of rural areas. This can severely limit it's use to railfans.
Yep. I like maps.google.com. I'm contemplating an Ntrak module featuring a specific building. I did a screen capture of the general area on the highest resolution and pieced things together to get a pretty large image. A little photoshop enlargement so the rails are 9 pixels apart (1 pixel = 1 mm) and a rotation to get the tracks horizontal and I had my base image. Then I made a transparent layer with Ntrak dimensions and moved it around here and there until I got everything I wanted to model in the space. Another great research website is http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/index.html Besides some great old pictures, there are scale drawings of some buildings! Beats hours with a measuring stick!
