Help Polynesia Rail making a Tahiti Map

[Polynesia Rail]

Hey guys

You all know Tahiti, it's the biggest island of French Polynesia!
But The normal Map Editor makes too small maps of Tahiti! It should be big! It looks like a rock in the sea!
Has someone a tool to make bigger maps of small areas?
Is it possible? Thank you very much, David.
Please note: I don't have any patches because I have vista!
So I don't know if your maps will work, I think this will be a difficult thread!

[Wolverine@MSU]

PolyR: If I have some time in the next few days, I'll put together a heightmap for you. Just tell me the aprroximate size you want and I'll go from there.

[Polynesia Rail]

Hey! I don't know if Tahiti looks better in a rectangular map, it looks like this:

http://www.onlytahiti.com/Tahiti.html

Is that possible?: 768x640 ???

Thank you, David

[arop]

I really doubt, that there ever have been railways on that small island, but OK! phantasy is free!!! But I do´nt think it´s a good idea having 4-8-8-4 Big Boys, 4-6-6-4 Challengers or European high speed trains running at it!

[nedfumpkin]

I would also suggest that it be 1024 on it's largest size. With that many mountains, I think a larger map would be better for track laying.

[Polynesia Rail]

Well, Tahiti is not so small! It even has a highway and two McDonalds!
Please watch this photo of Tahiti!!!: http://www.polynesiepassion.net/album/d ... =83&pos=48

Ok, then I want a 1024x1024 map or a map that includes one time x1024! when it's possible!

[WPandP]

What sorts of industry does Tahiti have? What natural resources, other than tourist draw? I assume you'd want the mountains exaggerated enough that they pose a real obstacle to the trains. However, city growth can be awkward in steep terrain, so perhaps a bit of smoothing where the major cities are would be in order.

While it might be tempting to set up ports on each side of the island, with different cargo recipes, it wouldn't be realistic to have a railroad that merely transfers cargo from one port to another. Ships would just sail to the port they needed to, no need to transfer cargo and haul it overland. Thus, you need to set it up with native cargo that is mined/farmed/crafted and then exported via a port, or else import a raw material to fashion it into something else for export. As an example, set up ports to supply Wool, demand Clothing, and then a chief island industry will be Textile Mills. The railroad has a purpose then. In the Dominican Republic, I saw a railroad that was all about hauling sugar cane down to the docks.

[Stoker]

A railroad on a tiny island seems a lot like using a cell phone to call someone sitting next to you. Possible but not necessary or practical.

Perhaps passenger service from one side of the island to other or "sightseeing" excursion trains into the mountains (5 miles out and 5 miles back??) could be part of the basis for the scenario. Exporting fuits and perhaps spices (represented by coffee ?) could be a part of it as well.

[WPandP]

It would have limited application, but there's still situations calling for efficient bulk haulage. The sugar cane is one example; another I can think of are the ore cars that ride tiny (like 2' gauge or less) tracks into mines. Suppose that Tahiti has some form of inland industry which depends on a reliable and efficient connection to the docks, and suppose that a narrow-gauge railway is the proposed solution. You could take things further, and maybe Tahiti, like Mackinac Island, has outlawed automobiles, thus the rail line is the only powered mode of overland transport available. It may not be realistic, but it is at least plausible.

Since the towns are on the coast, I could see a loop around the shoreline that carries passengers and mail swiftly, then some spurs up into the center of the island to reach the freight, whatever that is. Maybe Tahiti grows an exotic kind of tree and logging is a major export. Or maybe "Bauxite" can represent a precious metal or even a type of stone which is mined or quarried there. These are cargoes which would call for a railroad, even on a small island.

EDIT:
Maybe, as a near-future scenario, it could produce "Uranium", as geologists discover an abundant supply, and Tahiti becomes rich when the rest of the world goes Nuke for its clean energy sources. And, as a near-future scenario, one could enable only the older locomotives (like antiquated steam or electrics), to represent the disadvantage they have at not having a robust railroad industry nor any link to major engine manufacturers. In fact, the script-writing could be done such that every engine purchased is a one-shot affair (aside from one inadequate engine, all other engines are only available for a very limited timeframe).

[Wolverine@MSU]

And also, physical size of a tract of land is not an issue. A thousand cell wide map of Tahiti offers as much track building area as a thousand cell wide map of Australia.

[Polynesia Rail]

I want to share a story with you! There is a small isolated island in French Polynesia called Makatea. It is very small (24 km2) and it has only 94 inhabitants! From 1917 to 1964, phosphate gave people new hope! (They discovered much phosphate on the island!) A railway was used to transport the phosphate to the sea!

Here are some photos:

Very rare train on Makatea:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Ma ... motive.jpg

You can see the rails here:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Temao.jpg

Makatea railway map:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Makatea.jpg

How Makatea looks like:

http://olivier.funix.org/polynesie/makatea/falaise.jpg

Thanks to http://fr.wikipedia.org/ and http://olivier.funix.org/

What do you think about this story? A railway on such a small island, a railway in French Polynesia! I hope you liked the story!

Greetings from Luxembourg, David

[Stoker]

Maybe you could make a scenario that centers around some castaways that develop their own primitive railroad. You could have a "Professor" who is the mechanical genius, the "Skipper" of the boat could become the Engineer, and perhaps you could have a financier named something like "Thurston Howell III"

Just joking of course. I welcome all new maps to this game, and I was serious about the suggestions about passenger service between the few cities on the perimeter of the island. Maybe have a warehouse programmed as the "Airport" that would produce/demand passengers and demand island Produce and Spices (Coffee) from the interior and perhaps fresh fish (Meat) that would come from Ports, and perhaps a sightseeing line into the interior. You could have Diesel produced by a port on one side of the island and fishing ports around the perimeter, that would produce Fish(Meat) from the Diesel and perhaps also from imported Steel and Aluminum.

[nedfumpkin]

I took a look at Wikipedia, and it seems according to them there is only postcards being made on the island. But the CIA factbook offers a really good supply of information that would be helpful creating a scenario.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahiti

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/fp.html

There's actually a lot going on as far as resources and industry on the island, so the options for scenario creation are there in abundance. I don't think the island is too small to provide for a useful railroad, and I would think that the map could be a really fun and challenging scenario. I encourage you to proceed on this.

But....I do have to say that the terrain for the map and the actual industries would lend this map to being a very good Trainmaster scenario. The main industries are tourism, pearls, agricultural processing, handicrafts, phosphates.

Trainmaster has tourist sites, agricultural communities, food processing plants, and communities that produce small amounts of goods and glass, also there is a shipyard.

It imports fuels, foodstuffs, machinery and equipment, and TM has petroleum, food, and machinery as commodities.

Its exports are cultured pearls, coconut products, mother-of-pearl, vanilla, shark meat. Which can be represented as gold, goods, and food.

The potential for creating a scenario is there so I hope you'll keep it in mind when you get a base map ready. But definitely make a scenario from this map.

[Polynesia Rail]

Hey guys, Thank you all so much for your great ideas and your interest in the Tahiti map. Tahiti is big enough for a railroad (1,045 km² in reality)
You all made my day! I'm so happy, it would be awesome if not only me would play the Tahiti scenario, you all seem interested!
Even very small islands can have a railroad (Scroll Up and look at my Makatea post!) All your ideas are great! I want to put all of them in my scenario, but I've never done a scenario before, so that will take me a very long time! You all can't believe how happy you made me!

Friendly Greetings from Luxembourg, David

[nedfumpkin]

We'll offer you any help you need to create your scenario. Post any questions you have and sure enough someone willhave your answer within a few days if not minutes.

[Hawk]

One small tid-bit of advice I'll throw out:

Don't worry about painting your terrain until you've set up all of the events and tested it.
There's a quirk in RRT3 wherein if you continue to save a map, the painting you've done too early will start to deteriorate, unless you keep saving the map with a new name. That can add up to a bunch of maps if you save and test a lot.

Just save your painting of the terrain until the end. I know - it's so tempting to get in there and start making the map look good, but resist.

[nedfumpkin]

What I like to do is go into the paint terrain screen, select fill and then fill the entire map with a single colour. This way you don't have to worry about the moiré effect of multiple saves, and you don't spend any time painting the map.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Or, once you've painted the map the way you like it, "rip" the color overlay with PJay's gmp2bmp program. Then when your ready to publish, repaint it with bmp2gmp using your "ripped" overlay.

[Hawk]

I didn't even think about that Wolvy. Great idea!