Thank you guys so much for your responses!

@stjur I really like this sketch! It does a great job in creating a building front, fitting alongside the road without to much undefined space, yet doesn’t confront the memorial park next door. Would you generally be ok with me adopting that design in some way? For example I’m unsure about having the parking lot in front, and would probably move it to the back.

@Luciano That’s definitely a very innovative idea worth considering. I think I’ve seen that picture sometime in the past as well. I think however that this approach wouldn’t meet the architectural requirements of a government building in a democratic nation; to me it automatically evokes the image of a bunker where the political elite sets itself apart from the rest of the people.

@tparigo Those are very valid questions, and some have guided me in my failed attempts. I’ll try to answer them where they aren’t evident from the wiki;

Pyingshum is very pedestrian friendly, and this would also be valid for this area. Hoever of course high-level governemtn facilities alaways form an exception, and demand some specially secured parking spaced etc.

I thought it woul be nice to keep some ruins, and have mapped them in the memorial park. They form a kind of line of sight with the central memorial.

Most buildings would have been built in a similar manner than the surroundings, but again the Chancellery forms an exception.

So far I really like where stjur went with his design, I can see both state receptions at its front as well as common workers entering through the backdoor and it works quite well with the park. Of course I’m still eagerly waiting for other potential ideas, so don’t hold back ;)

I’ve made a quick draft and shared that with Luciano; I went with a max inclination of 50‰, and took 80‰ as my absolute maximum (mostly to account for mapping inaccuracies - xD ). I don’t know too much about railway operating, but I thought that for such a relatively short route, trains might as well run with bank engines all the way instead of just at a few difficult spots; especially considering that the amount of trains taking that route would most likely be very limited anyways, as the population centers it connects are pretty limited in size even today, and I guess even more so back then. I would argue that the resources needed for the operating the bank engines for such a limited number of (nevertheless strategically relevant) trains would by far be compensated by the much easier and shorter alignment.

I have to say that I went the exact opposite way than joschi proposed, and build dozens of zig zags. My arguing was that the main goal is, like Joschi stated, to get to the top of that mountain chain (I think we all agree that a base tunnel is out of question), and that very long detours would be needed for that. I tried to cut back on bridges and tunnels as much as possible, as I think building them in such isolated locations would have been a major obstacle back then.

Another major point I realised was the curve radii; the terrain seems to not only be rather steep, but also very “loopy”, which makes it very hard to align the tracks on the mountain side. I went with a radius of ~300m, a bit less in specific conditions, and still had to build quite a lot of bridges and tunnels. That was another reason I found it hard to get by without zig-zags.

I must say, Joschi’s points really unsettled me about my concept. But I guess that’s the point of the challenge after all, to see what different types of concept the community can come up with. And Luciano will be spoilt for choice in the end ;)

Great. Just the distraction I need from my uni exams xD I’ll see what I can come up with. I think you already gave quite a lot of background info, I’d just like to make sure that the railway was intended as a main line back in the 1910’s and built to the “highest standard of that time”? Or was it a minor side route even back then?

I second Sarepava’s comment about more pedestrian streets; while I think the argument of “local authorities wouldn’t allow XYZ” is slightly flawed (if only local governments always did what was in the best interest of their cities…), some “streets” are simply to narrow to be navigable even as one-way roads. But then again this might be taking the amount of detail to an obscure level for some. Similar argument goes for the width of the main road; while indeed at least 30 m width would be desirable, it’s still possible that your city’s history simply didn’t grant that wish to the planners of that time ;)

One comment I would disagree about is the amount of space between buildings, and yard sizes. Yes, the building footprints definitely indicate a very high density and in some places maybe even a “crammed” feeling, but after comparing that to this (very affluent) area in central Paris or even the city centre of Milan, I feel like it’s definitely within the scope of realism.

What Sarepava said about the central railway station (of you want a single central one that is) is also very important; I wish I had thought about that earlier in Pyingshum, as now I kind of have to write the city’s history in a way to explain the position of the railway stations today. My advise would be; map the medieval downtown (or at least get a good feeling of the extend of the city shortly before industrialisation), and then imagine you are a planner in the 19th century thinking about where you wanna put the city’s railway station. A lot of others have already had very good experiences with this somewhat “chronological” mapping method, but I guess everyone does it differently.

I like it! The building footprints and street layout/block size looks pretty realistic, and I think quite a lot of mappers on here will also be very appreciative to the fact that you took the time to name all the streets ;)

Sure, the idea has its appeal, but I think if there really is a talented video maker in our community, they might as well upload their videos on YouTube or a similar platform, and just link the video to the wiki page. That way, the burden on the OGF servers would be kept down as well.

@thilo, that’s amazing! Definite must-have bookmarks for public transport enthusiasts ;)

To avoid to blunder into another debate about a “controversial” topic on this platform akin to the discussion about homosexuality a while ago (cough gays and lesbians will be given the right to marry in Germany in two days cough), I’d just say that while cycling is a viable mode of transportation for many Kojolese people, it’s nowhere near real-world Scandinavian proportions ;) Public policy is mostly centered around public transportation as an alternative to car travel, and especially in dense urban centres walking will get you to a wide array of daily necessities as well.

I really don’t know for sure, but to me it looks like a temporary storage for some administrative relations.

Designing railway stations is a science. And I’m not exaggerating here, I’m actually studying (or should be studying xD) for an exam about this right now. To answer your question about spacing though: for the purpose of mapping in OGF, I always go with a 4 m space in between parallel tracks, and when drawing platforms (as areas) I leave 2 m between the platform’s edge and the track. Width of platforms can vary heavily, and I’d just advise you to look at real world transportation systems with similar passenger numbers and space requirements to get an idea (As a side note, most of the time the limiting factor to how narrow a platform may be are the sections where there are stair cases or elevators on the platform, as passengers still need a safe passage and boarding space on each side of the obstacle). The parallel line drawing tool in JOSM is your friend, by the way.

But besides these “design guidelines”, if you want some feedback on the overall layout of your station, providing the historical background of the station’s development and, very important, the service patterns it’s supposed to handle today, would be the first step. I found that only after I really sketched out inter city services, regional rail and commuter rail for the major railway stations in Pyingshum, I could start estimating whether my station layout was sufficient. In retro perspective I think some elements might be over designed (I could definitely do with a smaller number of tracks leading to the stations). Termini stations are a whole different story again as well….

Just a quick note; the “real world equivalent” of this, the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) are to be understood as corridors, rather than one single continues piece of infrastructure. Of course it makes sense to have a continuous highway route through major population centres of the continent, but those routes are the result of stitching together national networks. Also, the amount of cross-continental traffic on major highways or railways is not to be overestimated. To give a flat example, while the A 8 in Germany is technically part of a major European east-west axis, the absolute majority of traffic will be regular boring German commuters on their way to work. And it even has a major gap between Pirmasens and Karlsruhe, over 50 km.

What I’m trying to say is, it definitely makes sense to think about important trade corridors for the continents and their respective traffic volumes, but let’s not start to simply draw a 10.000 km long straight line across whole regions and declare it an intercontinental highway.

Just leaving this and this here ^-

I’d encourage you do focus on cooperating with your next-door neighbours too. Detailed train schedules only make sense once the human geography is pretty accurately mapped anyways. Kojo and Ataraxia got quite a solid high-speed rail connection along the coast for example, but I still haven’t gotten around to thinking about regional trains across the northern section of our border. At the end, a “trans-continental railway” will only be a simply line drawn in the editor, but to fill it with live (and make sure it makes sense), cooperation with neighbours is everything ;)

I agree with Sarepava, in the sense that any global flight network we come up with at this point would obviously need to be “work in progress”. But I think that’s no objective to start up a tool as you proposed anyways, after all everything on OGF will always be “work in progress”. I think the main point is coming up with such a tool; if you are able to code such an application, I’m sure many users will be happy to comply.

I think the edit button was just phased out for zoom levels smaller than 13. Since you can’t edit on a larger scale than zoom level 16 anyway, that actually makes sense.

To chip in on the language debate; although I try my best to develop Kojolese into a fully functional con-lang, for the purpose of mapping you don’t need that. For example you can completely ignore verb inflections and still come up with well thought out and realistic names for your cities.

And to repeat my usual stand in this discussion, I think both mixing real-world elements in ways that don’t usually go together in the real world and especially coming up with completely new ideas and concepts is what makes OGF really interesting to me.

Thanks for the tips! Especially the makehuman tool seems pretty useful.

As someone who (has) play(ed) C:S for quite some time, let me tell you it’s indeed a fascinating game, definitely has addiction-potential. But it’s pretty much useless (IMO) for mirroring anything like we are doing on OGF. Firstly, the game is pretty much a traffic-management game, and therefore the amount of traffic is completely over the top for any similarly sized real world equivalent. Most importantly (especially since this aspect is often neglected in OGF already) you won’t end up with cities that look like they’ve had a history behind them. I could go into depths about this, but I’m sure when you get to know the mechanics and “feel” of the game, you’ll understand it much better ;) Still a great game though.

As for the “Why are trains so expensive?”; I’ve watched several videos on that channel (Wendover Productions), and I think that indeed there are many important and correct thoughts about transportation systems in them. However I also find that while the videos may look pretty professional, the actual “academic depth” (sorry for sounding a bit snooty here) is rather flat, to the degree that many conclusions he presents are simply not true, and in the best case evoke the wrong impression, while also missing out on much more crucial points for the discussion; at least I noticed this in areas where I feel like I have some small degree of background knowledge.

To illustrate this; from my very limited knowledge about traffic economy, he explains the ticketing scheme of railway companies and the driving forces behind it rather well. But when talking about airlines and airfare in general (not only in this video), he speaks of airlines as highly profitable, this marking the airline industry as “more economically sound” than railways; however it’s important to note that airport infrastructure etc. is highly subsidised by local governments, while least long-distance railways (at least in Germany and most other countries I know about) don’t benefit from much or even any subsidies.

But most importantly, he completely ignores that there simply are historical, cultural and political differences which have a much bigger impact on the different modes of transport than the fact that Amtrak has to pay compensation to the families of suicide victims… starting with car-centric settlement patterns which render high-speed rail much less effective than when you have a European-style dense inner city and ending with political agendas that are simply not based on the common interest, but rather clientele policy or in worst cases lobbying activities and bribery.

This reply is far to negative really; but you just managed to hit two internet-things of mine that really go against my personal understanding of how transit works xD So while I’d of course encourage everyone to check out the content and thank you for sharing your discoveries with us, I just needed to type out my worries about applying it to how stuff actually works in the real world and to OGF. But please don’t take this as an unfavourable comment against you posting that stuff here, I really only meant to target the content itself.

I think you guys should take a look at the “measurements” plugin ;) Click

I agree with MrOobling; while I see the appeal of Blikis, I wouldn’t be incredible happy to see “feedback requests”, “brags” or just general thoughts about mapping vanish from the diaries. Subtracting “preventable” entries (and I mean this in a very subjective sense), I counted 14 diary entries in the last 8 days, that’s less than two per day. I really don’t see why putting them on the wiki would make things in any way more tidy, rather the opposite in my honest opinion. That being said, I do enjoy reading the Blikis that are being put on the wiki, and I will try to get started on the eastern border of Kojo; I’ve restrained myself from touching it too much since I don’t have an (active) neighbour over there, but who knows when someone will move in eventually ;)

My couple of thoughts about waterways; In the past I tried to restrain the river tag to natural waterways that are at least somewhat fit for commercial shipping. But looking at both OSM and OGF standards, I guess that’s a very restricted use of the tag (or rather an overusage of the stream and ditch tags). Then again, the level of waterway mapping in Kojo is quite low at this point in time anyway.