Templot 2

[roythebus]

I must be a glutton for punishment. I recently went along to the Folkestone & Hythe MRC with my partner Lisa to see what it's like. I got chatting with the chairman who showed me their lovely Alkham Valley EM layout, bereft of track. It was built by theit late chairman to EM and left it to the club.

 

As I'd had some experience with the original Templot I "volunteered" to have a go at planning and building new OO track. they gave up on EM and felt OO would be far easier to find stock for! So this week I've settled down trying to get Templot to work on my Macbook pro. Not an easy task but following some of the advice on the Templot forum managed to get it to run via an app called Wine.

 

We went to the club on Monday evening and done a rough sketch of the track full size with some datum measurements of certain bits of track from the board edges, then went back home and spent the day drawing it onto Templot. I found the new version a good bit easier than the original which I used about 8-10 years ago. Martin seems to have done away with the control F6 type buttons and transferred them to mouse actions via a toolbar. I certainly welcome the "make slip" facility, this saves an awful lot of messing about with partial templates.

 

Anyway, the first rough cut plan has been printed and will be tried on the baseboards this evening. BTW, I'm using 16.2 OO, C&L or Scaleway plain track which the club has in stock, and C&L point parts if they become available again. There's 18 points worth to be bought, and I need another 10 points worth for my own layout.

 

Alkham is a lovely layout, typifying the scenery of the area. The only problem was the builder used steel rail which has rusted whilst in store.

[Kelly]

Most of the c&l track range should be available. The website currently has a few issues it appears, but phoning Phil or seeing him at a show should get you what you require if he has stock.

[BG John]

A bit late now, but could you have taken square on photos of the baseboards, stitched them together, and imported the result into Templot, scaled to the right size?

[roythebus]

True, but all the track had been removed! I'm trying to work out how to import a track plan to Templot on a Mac, some of the functions don't appear to work as intended.

 

Anyway, I sent all of Tuesday tinkering with the track plan, took it to the club this evening and it more or less fits. there's some sweeping curves on the main line which have to be adjusted, and the goods yard entry is at the wrong angle. As I've also got the original tracing with me at home it shouldn't be too difficult to get it right.

 

Also the club has a budget for the layout which has to be spent by the year end, so have to order C&L fairly quickly!

[BG John]

True, but all the track had been removed! I'm trying to work out how to import a track plan to Templot on a Mac, some of the functions don't appear to work as intended.

I realised that, but if the buildings and scenery are still there, you can draw the track to fit. I've got ideas for a model based on a real location, where the track was removed about 70 years ago. The buildings are still there, and the landscape hasn't changed much, so I'll import the satellite view from Google Maps, and draw the plan on that. The only significant difference is that we'd be working from different scale aerial photos.

[roythebus]

Why not download the original OS map which will have the track shown on it? Far easier.

[Siberian Snooper]

Why not download the original OS map which will have the track shown on it? Far easier.

 

In fact you can now do that quite easily in Templot now, since Martin added the map option a couple of updates ago.

[BG John]

Why not download the original OS map which will have the track shown on it? Far easier.

 

In fact you can now do that quite easily in Templot now, since Martin added the map option a couple of updates ago.

It's not in Britain, and my incompetence at foreign languages means that I haven't yet managed to discover if there is an equivalent of the OS, or suitable online maps .

[martin_wynne]

It's not in Britain, and my incompetence at foreign languages means that I haven't yet managed to discover if there is an equivalent of the OS, or suitable online maps .

 

OpenStreetMap (OSM) covers the entire world. OSM maps can be fetched and loaded by Templot as tiled background maps, and displayed at the correct size to match your model scale. The tiled maps can be extended to any size by adding fresh rows and columns of tiles.

 

OSM maps are unlikely to have accurate track diagrams, but the scale, size and position of surrounding structures will usually be correct. Anyone can edit OSM maps.  

 

Here is Buenos Aires on OSM in Templot, with a bit of overlaid track in EM:

 

 

Here is the Google view from that overbridge in 2015:

 

https://goo.gl/maps/xSsis1gdx1P2

 

And looking the other way:

 

https://goo.gl/maps/p4orprsY7Nr

 

The semaphore signalling and S-curving pointwork give it a familiar feel.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[BG John]

I tried OpenStreetMap, and it may have the advantage of being able to get more accurate dimensions of the surrounding buildings, but I'm not aware of a pre 1940s version that might have some track on it!

[roythebus]

There's a large scale map of Kings Cross on the Prototype Questions group which gives a very details track plan. Look in the York Way station thread. That's good enough to make a Templot plan from.

[dajt]

OpenStreetMap (OSM) covers the entire world. OSM maps can be fetched and loaded by Templot as tiled background maps, and displayed at the correct size to match your model scale. The tiled maps can be extended to any size by adding fresh rows and columns of tiles.

 

 

That's a great idea!