Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

Just found a couple of handy resources for doing research on real-world resource distributions. Of course game playability is more important, but I thought these might lend some inspirations to map makers out there.

And if anyone else has some handy references they use, please share them here.

First one: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
That's the Library of Congress Country Studies portal. Gave me great info on Chile, with specifics like dividing the country into 5 regions then detailing mineral and agricultural resources appropriate to each. Textiles, cattle, oil, wine, etc.

Marginally helpful: http://dev.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/worldreference/

Best find: http://www.nationmaster.com
They've got a ton of nice statistics plus the most handy resource map I've found. Furnaces, Steel, Textile, and Lumber mills, concrete plants, coal, oil, iron, ores, grain, rice, sheep, cattle, wine, sugar, fish, etc. Don't know if such good maps can be found for other places, though.

I've made this "sticky" as it's such useful information. Thanks, l_g !

CIA World Factbook is one of my favourites
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... index.html

Some resources for Canada.....


http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/index.html

http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php

http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html

Found this..

http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php

and of course the fount of all knowledge .....
http://www.wikipedia.org/

I downloaded the Canada dem and it's a great map except for the fact that anything not Canada is not included. So no cross border available.

I like the stuff from seamless, however, I cannot figure out which format to save for Microdem...anyone know? Screenshots work too, but aren't that good.

nedfumpkin wrote:I downloaded the Canada dem ...

Where is the Canada dem?

http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/e ... d/dem.html

here

Cool, thanks. Now to learn how to use it... ;)

load it into Microdem and you will have a coloured and zoomable map of canada as a physical landmass. You an select areas and export the data. Extract the file and make the extention .asc

Beyond that my knowledge of DEM is measure in minutes and seconds.

Check out this link at Wolvy's site. Maybe it will help.

https://www.msu.edu/user/bowlby/rrt3/tu ... orial1.htm

My concern right now is that if I get started on making maps with dems then I'll get distracted from more important TM tasks. I was just poking around last night because I got curious about something.

nedfumpkin wrote:Beyond that my knowledge of DEM is measure in minutes and seconds.

I have been faking it for years working with gis.

Thanks Hawk, I will try it out.

JayEff wrote:
Thanks Hawk, I will try it out.

Let us know how it goes.

Here's a real gem! I'm always looking for historic maps, and maps with resources. This is the library of congress map collection online. Seriously thousands of maps, can be overwhelming. Try searching by keyword. Every place in the world is covered I think.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html


And here's another good one, a commercial antique map outlet. Some, but not many, of the maps are available for close zoomable scrutiny (in case you want to see what quality you're buying I suppose.) I like the idea of using old names and boundaries in 1850s era scenarios, but it's hard to find old maps that list such things.

http://www.geographicus.com/

Not sure if it could be of direct use for making maps, but NASA has just released a "new digital topographic map of Earth that covers more of our planet than ever before".

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... 90629.html

Just found a site that gives locations of mineral deposits on a map of the world.

http://apps1.gdr.nrcan.gc.ca/gsc_minera ... uage=en-CA

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) posts lots of good resource information about countries of all sizes around the world. They have maps of agriculture, natural resources, political boundaries, livelihood, climates and other good tidbits for RT3 map makers.

Go to: http://www.fao.org/ and click on "countries" or "statistics".