BigVern wrote:
Good news - it appears the Russian topographic maps have resurfaced via this site (interactive map):
I think this site has been around for quite some time. Unfortunately, what looks like Map Tiles, is actually some sort of WMS with pre-rendered tiles, and using the WMS protocol in a very obscure manner to access them. TransDEM cannot emulate this. A separate standard exists, called WMTS, to combine WMS with the Map Tile de-facto standard. Its acceptance is rather low, though, presumably because of too many parameters (and I haven't even attempted yet to implement it).
How about taking screenshots and georeference via grid lines? I'm afraid I couldn't figure out what the grid lines represent, Pulkovo/Krasovsky, lat/long or something different altogether.
For my own purposes I went to that Ukrainian website, and downloaded the sheets one by one. That collection is a bit thin on the larger scale maps, but for my recent Transsib trip I was more than happy with the 500k series and a few 200k. TransDEM on a netbook, GPS receiver connected via USB, and you could follow the train journey through the topography of Siberian taiga or Mongolian steppe. The vector maps, including OSM (which I had on the GPS unit), don't tell you much about the terrain. Even for China, which has changed a lot since the Soviet maps were printed, they still proved helpful. With them, we had plenty of advance warning for the spectacular canyon when approaching Beijing on the Datong line.