TransDEM Forum

Those parts of the world under influence of or with closer relations to the former Soviet Union were mapped by Soviet military cartographers. After the wall came down these maps were made public.

One of the most comprehensive collections of the maps can be found here: http://poehali.org/maps. An English user interface is available. There is also a commercial site associated with this collection, but download from poehali is free.

Available scale - depending on region - is 1:500000 to 1:50000. The maps are in Cyrillic, of course, but offer excellent topography.

All maps should be in the S42/40 Pulkovo Krasovsky coordinate system. In TransDEM, use 3+1 point georeferencing plus image editing (crop margins, reduce resolution, and/or apply transparent margins).

As these are scanned paper maps there will a bit of distortion occasionally which TransDEM does not fully compensate.

For some areas of our planet, particularly the more remote places, these maps are still the best you get.

I'm sorry dear Geophil, but it seems we have two threads on Russia up and running, we should perhaps merge them?

In my view the famous Soviet military maps are kind of unique in the way that they cover many parts of the world besides Russia. E.g. I have used them for my futile attempts to model the spectacular Eritrean railway line from Asmara to Massawa. Geographically, that hasn't much to do with Russia.

I don't mean to offend you dear Geophil, but perhaps the name of your thread should be changed. i find it confusing. Perhaps something like "Soviet Military maps of the world" would be more fitting?

Hi Gang - first post from myself, "Vern" on the Trainz forum, BigVern at UKTS and Northern Warrior at the old UK Trainz forum.

Re the Poehali maps they are indeed a fantastic source of information. However you do occasionally have to manually adjust the DEM position slightly to fit even after georeferencing, usually by around 200 metres or so.

Hi there.

I am looking for Australian Data if any one knows a link or any thing about it post to me thanks

mainly nsw and vic /qld ones thanks


cheers from jack ford

Even with poehali now gone, there is still an alternatative free source, at least for the northern hemisphere.

It's the Ukrainian website http://maps.vlasenko.net/

They don't have as many as on the poehali/mapstor site but still quite a few. Direct links:

1:50,000
1:100,000
1:200,000
1:500,000
1:1,000,000

See here for a legend including an explanation of the map sheet numbering scheme: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/ ... mapkey.htm

Thanks for that Roland - we are saved!

Hi all! Dunno is that good or not but I found on rutracker torrent source a lot of maps form the old poehali site. So they are still popular, especially between GPS users

I would be very wary of Torrent sites regardless, probably come with lots of little nasties attached. As we are discussing matters in a forum related to a payware add-on for a commercial sim the sponsers of both are probably very keen to avoid any mention of Torrents etc. even for bona fide free items.