TransDEM Tutorial - Basic Trainz Route from Scratch

This tutorial covers the basics of using TransDEM to create elevation data, overlays, and track splines for Trainz.
Useful timestamps:
0:01 - Intro
2:15 - Download starting map tile
6:34 - Create route path
9:00 - Download map images along route path
12:40 - Elevation data
18:30 - Join multiple DEM files
19:50 - Preparing Java OpenStreetMap Editor (JOSM)
22:42 - Download OSM data along route path
24:10 - Create railway data filter
26:25 - Download missing OSM data
31:30 - Create OSM data layer for railway
36:34 - Export railway data to TransDEM
38:27 - Create highway/road filter and OSM data
43:49 - Export highway/roads to TransDEM
45:07 - Export route to Trainz format
56:04 - Import route to Trainz using Content Manager
58:28 - Examine route in-game
1:04:10 - Off on a tangent on using Google Maps as a route reference
Links mentioned in video:
SRTM: dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2...
SRTM Map: dwtkns.com/srtm30m/
JOSM: josm.openstreetmap.de/
Original vector data tutorial: forum.transdem.de/viewtopic.p...
Trainz Importer for UTM: online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/in...
TransDEM Website: www.rolandziegler.de/StreckeUn...
Game Website: trs19.trainzportal.com/
Buy This Game: trs19.trainzportal.com/
Website/Forums: www.gamingstylez.com
Schedule: www.gamingstylez.com/schedule....
Twitter: / gamingstylez
Facebook: / gamingstylez
Twitch.tv: / gamingstylez
Technical Specs:
Intel Core i7 7700K @ 4.8GHz
32GB DDR3
Geforce GTX 1080
Sound Blaster Recon 3Di
Sennheiser PC 350
Rode Procaster dynamic microphone connected to a Steinberg UR22 audio interface w/ Cloudlifter.
Windows 10 Professional
All footage recorded with a StarTech USB3HDCAP and OBS on a second PC.

[@nicholasozorak2931]

I have my first route imported into Trainz: A New Era. Thank you so much for creating this video!

[@alessandrom1519]

Excellent tutorial, thanks for going so in-depth!

[@svargo1912]

came across your channel and I like the transdem mapping etc.... laying track adding roads etc.. makes time a lot faster for larger areas

[@kinniepalmer3172]

followed video and now have my route in Trainz 2019. put an engine on it and drive, oh wonderful. Thanks for a wonderful video. make more.

[@jessicatimm559]

I just got this tool and this tutorial helped me A LOT! Thank You.

[@erlakijeno3456]

Thank you for the video. Great help for my own route in Trs19.

[@chrismeemken6135]

Great tutorial...thanks for the time and effort you put into it.

[@casanova419]

This will help for a lot of people to learn how to use it.

[@anthonydavies6021]

Thanks for all your work. I created a similar result using Basemaps, except I laid the track manually as its an historic route and the track is longer there. However, the bit I hoped Transdem would for me is the relief/topology, so more research is needed. Also, how to get the topology to the 720 metre square scale, which Basemaps will do if you set the height to 3300 feet. Onwards and (hopefully) upwards.

[@freespirit9981]

DEM = Digital Elevation Model. I am a GIS minor from PSU Penn State University. Yeah Trans Dem likes UTM coordinate system. Looks like that DEM data set is 1 arc second which is one elevation point taken every square 30 meter block. or 30^2 also 30 x 30. So for selecting grid width you could prob put 15-20 and TransDEM will place and elevation between points. The new standard in DEM with Lidar data is 1 Meter or better. I leave all old abandoned rails in case I want to make a steam era map like mid to late 1800's. And just delete it later if I want to.

[@railfanmaximstill7279]

This will indeed help on my Trainz Fremont Nebraska route if I can ever figure out how to download it.

[@RedLink27]

Awesome! I'm from Nova Scotia too. For quite a while, I've been wanting to recreate the Dominion Atlantic Railway's old Yarmouth Sub in Trainz, or at least the section in Clare (Digby county). I'd like it to be as accurate as possible, so this might just be the way to do it!

[@BizarreAdventuresYouTube]

it's been done, I already made the full DAR map for window JCT to Yarmouth including the Truro sub. The map is on DLS and titled Dominion Atlantic Railway

[@robertbalazslorincz8218]

the two dislikes are from HP_Trainz when they realise people now can make their own Marias Pass for TS 2009 instead of getting scammed due to inproper information

[@galesburgdude9131]

for anyone wondering where to get the SRTMs, copy the SRTM link and put it in the Wayback Machine. Set the date a few years earlier than the current year and boom.

[@pstr_93]

thanks! good idea!

[@nichols15]

I wanted to use this to cover the commuter railroads out of NY like the metro north and LIRR

[@nonstopmaximum2141]

If you zoom in any further than 14 on map tile services and import into Trainz, the map will be unrecognizable because it's too small and detailed to be converted into textures. Although having it on 14 is already a challenge by itself since the map and textures are a bit too large for the DEM data and will overlap onto unrelated terrain.

[@highv0lt6ge]

I appreciate your video. It's by far the best tutorial for TransDem. I'm having trouble with the 'Create UTM' part. After installing the Trainz Importer that option remains greyed out in my Transdem. Any ideas?

[@martink8080]

Excellent work, it really helped me in creating some new Trainz maps. The only thing that seems to be an issue is when I get data from JOSM I sometimes get an error message that I've downloaded too much. If I wait a few days, I can get more data. Wonder what the actual limit is and what the reset timeout is. While OSM is great for details like roads, buildings, tracks and water,, it would be really helpful to also have elevation data via contour lines. I've been told that Open Topo Map has that data. Can OSM and OTM data be easily combined? Could you make a new tutorial to show how to do this?

[@garrettmonnin3090]

Does anyone know how to set up the necessary folders for export? I'm having trouble with mine...

[@edyallreadygalaxy717]

Great!👍🏿💪🏻

[@parrotyee]

Have you made a video on how to make a route with transdem? I'm going to use T:ANE. I'm looking forward to replicate a rail line which doesn't exist today (a foot and cycle path) which used to connect to St Albans Abbey Station. A quick look on that station and St Albans Green Ring on Google Earth will show the hidden art of a historic railway. Btw if your tutorial on how to use it is old, could you make an updated one? The latest I've found is from a year ago. Yours sincerely, PY

[@westvirginiarailproductions]

How did you buy the program? I want to buy it but I cant figure out how to buy it.

[@kpen9764]

How does one download transdem tool, the email on the transdem webiste dosn't exsist.

[@railfanningmichael3970]

How to download TransDEM Trainz Edition? Please do a tutorial on that

[@westvirginiarailproductions]

how could i purchase transdem? the website is super confusing.

[@hadikayanuar1367]

i cant installing trainz dem, please help me

[@bnsf4715]

Is TransDEM safe because my Norton 360 says that the setup exe has a medium file risk

[@iceman977th]

Tip of advice on JOSM.. I'm building a very large layout (130+ miles of mainline plus several branches) so JOSM is giving me fits downloading all the data sets because I end up running out of Memory after about 300.. I did two things.. make sure I installed Java 64-bit, then I started a shortcut with a Target of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath\java.exe" -Xmx8192m -jar "'YourJOSMLocationHere'\josm-tested.jar" which allows JOSM to use more memory, and so far it's working fine. the download & import is actually going faster too, I think.

[@shawnmohr1989]

Can you also add in textures from josm like tunnels bridges and have the track already grade height.

[@RRBuilder611]

not really

[@shawnmohr1989]

Watch this video so many times but my question is can You make a video tutorial on how to do TransDEM for Trainz with google earth pro. It would be much easy for people like me to understand since there's no video's on youtube that are english to show you how to do TransDEM route from google earth pro images.

[@southernpacific-gq7vw]

i am a lot of missing tiles in game even thought they show up in trainzdem.

[@Shaun.Khatch1]

How do I download transdem? Where do I go and who do I email ??

[@superflashlightrailproduct1355]

How did you buy TransDEM?

[@glaze_tpf9791]

SRTM is gone

[@Shaun.Khatch1]

Which tansdem do I download I went to the site there is a million of them

[@Shaun.Khatch1]

Can you please help me find the right one to download

[@kalasahan007]

When is the next video

[@garrettmonnin3895]

I am having loads of trouble with even the first step. I imported the sample settings folders and nothing happens. This video seems to be geared towards those who already have the system up and running, and I am very new to this and have no clue what I am doing.

[@runandhidegamer]

In transdem settings import the file Map Tile Sample Settings Apr 2018.xml...this adds the data to the map source provider options.

[@onionhat9141]

Hey Great Tutorial but I have a problem. I tried to download the recent TransDEM link but for some reason everytime when I try to put it into one of my drives it keeps showing me this error script then closes it out is there anyway to fix this? Thanks!

[@kiranator]

Did you purchase TransDEM or did you just download the TransDEM Trainz Update. Because you need to purchase the software before you can use it, and only trying to use it with the patch wont work.

[@onionhat9141]

Kilo yea now that you say that I just noticed the purchase don’t even know how it took a while to even notice it lol

[@Nigel-Mac]

Wow so funny I was looking to make a route with this strategy. And the funny thing is I'm from Bridgewater and wanted to make a map of Cape Breton. When you first said nova scotia I was like. WHAT🤣🤣

[@nbsrfan]

I thought the same thing! I'm from Saint John, NB though. I'm just in the process of learning how to use Trainz for route building. I have been working on the Sydney Sub for TS2022 for a couple years. Lots of work to route building!

[@SentientElectricLamp]

Excellent tutorial, though i do have an issue. I imported a route into Trainz, basically meant to be a railfanning route of Bryan, Ohio. However, that's not all it will be - it's also supposed to include nearby places like Edgerton and Stryker, going from the Indiana/Ohio border to outside of Archbold. Well, upon seeing it after importation, many baseboards are simply not there, and only Edgerton and Bryan are available, however, they are split far from each other on the baseboards. Is there a step i wasn't exactly paying attention to, because i believe i followed every step right. If further elaboration helps, i did have the zoom level for getting the JOSM detail set at 13, though i don't think this had a factor. Fixed 1000 m grid width was not ticked, so maybe that was the cause? I don't know, though i'd appreciate any help on this issue i can get, especially as i plan on doing a bigger route than this (BNSF Delta Subdivision, if you're curious. At least, the southern half between Sikeston and West Memphis)

[@iceman977th]

So you're not seeing the textures on yours? I'm running into that issue now.

[@SentientElectricLamp]

@@iceman977th Actually, the texture did pop up on most of them, except a few baseboards, and since they were on the edges and weren't necessary, i removed them. It just split into two parts because i screwed up the filtering when i was exporting it.

[@iceman977th]

@@SentientElectricLamp Oh okay, I'm having an issue with textures not loading in on my route I'm working on and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Following step by step and it's not working now. I had no problem before.

[@jacklazarski1362]

Whenever I try to download the program, I just get a whole bunch of errors

[@victorstrains]

You might be downloading the updates to the program. The full program is 30 bucks or something

[@oviistingaciu387]

The transdem is not freeware :(

[@fr3350ul]

There's no TranzDEM freeware version?

[@PGE_BC]

Nope

[@norbertdx]

31:2 I'm thinking in the near future year a group of programmers will have a program that works with Streetview and place "like" buildings in place using the same idea. Draw your box (poly or grid) and it will populate everything. There is already a way to manually do it and place it in Blender, now you just need a program to do it automatically.

[@jhd421]

Great tutorial, however for some reason when final route imported into TS19 everything but the rails are not there Dont see where I have gone wrong. The rails show in transDEM before exporting into TS19 Thank you for the great effort put into this.

[@Byte_11]

Hey how are you i hope you are doing fine

[@menardsgaming1220]

this is a nice tutorial but where the hell do I get the map data? that website you sent isnt a valid URL anymore and I cant find any map DEM data that works.

[@yvonetubla7682]

you gotta go back in time

[@nicholasozorak2931]

USGS Earth Explorer. You'll need to create a free account to use it.

[@Specter1065]

Can i just pay you to make a terrain map for me?

[@dog_house875]

Holy shit I work for Cn out of Moncton I have runs from Moncton to Halifax lol this is awesome. I came here to create Gordon yard out towards Truro lol

[@maxhemenway]

I Broke My Trainz Game

[@sirstephentophamhattiii3340]

I know better, a better way I can get over 200 miles route plus everything that comes with it at 500mb file.

[@stuartthurstan]

3 minutes into the tutorial you're not sure and suggest reading the documentation. That's not how tutorials are supposed to work dude.

[@alexilauto1419]

Would have been nice if this were free..... but whatever

[@NCXDesigns]

given how much coding this tool involves, $30 is a steal. also, you don't have to use it...