In my Januaray 4th post I wrote about a region map of Tamriel, a fictional continent in the Elder Scrolls game series, which I downloaded from Simtropolis and proceeded to build on. The result of that effort was a collection of 26 cities, towns, and villages. Most of the work on those cities was completed by the summer of 2014. A little bit of tweeking was done in late 2017.
On that map there is a single track rail line which traverses the northern coast of the region. For some reason or another I placed the eastern terminus of the line in a village instead of extending it further south to a neighbouring city. After writing that post, I said to myself "Why not extend the train line?" and thus I reopened construction in the region.
Here is a portion of the regional transportation view prior to the line extension being built. The rail line is the red line that runs on the west side of the straight the separates the island in the top right corner from the mainland.
I had given the "city", where the line ends, the nonsensical name of "Ghotleim". In my Jan. 4th post I had thought the island was connected to the mainland by a ferry service. In fact, the connection is a bridge. The city is actually comprised of three communities; the small city on the island, a village on the south shore where the bridge makes landfall on the mainland, and a town where the rail line ends. The population was 10,664 sims when I reopened the city.
This view of the small city highlights its bridge and seaport. Electrical power is generated at a geothermal power plant whose location is marked by a large puff of steam in the top centre of the screen shot.
The village at the south end of the bridge features a lighthouse and a PetroCanada, aka: Petro-Can, gas station. It humours me to see that the price of gasoline is quite low by today's standards....
These screen shots take a gradually closer look at the town where the rail line terminates.
The station on the left is the passenger rail station. The one on the right is for freight. If I recall correctly, they are from a rural rail collection published by Pegasus Productions. The steeply inclined landscape makes for some humourous sights such as the business perched on a huge plinth-like wedge of land. Behind that building is a house sitting on stilt-like supports.
Here is a view of the town after the rail line construction was completed. I scrapped the original approach of rail into the town and built a new section at a lower elevation. This avoided the problem of appropriating property in the town and destroying buildings.
At this point the population had edged up a bit to 10,884 sims. A closer look at the town will reveal its Petro-Can gas station. Also, I realized that the road which approaches the town from the south-east actually continues on and out the west side of the town.
Here is a screen shot of the updated regional transportation map. The terrain leading out of Ghotleim has a gentle rise and the rail line is generally straight. But on the other side of the city boundary the rail line finds itself at the head of a valley with steep terrain surrounding it. The rail line thus twists and turns many times to work its way up and down over the intervening mountain range.
The rail line finds itself terminating next to the county fair grounds on the northen edge ot the city of Gallant, population 161,453 sims. The city has highway, avenue, road, and subway connections to its neighbour on the west. Avenues and an elevated rail line, which dives underground to become a subway line, serve as connections to its southerly neighbour. Its eastern neighbour is a smaller town connected by a single avenue. The city's subway system has somewhat low ridership numbers and its bus network is almost criminally under-used.
I spotted a couple of interesting buildings in the city; first, the TD Tower. The real one stands on Georgia Street in Vancouver; The roof of the stock exchange building can be spotted at the bottom edge of this screen shot. In the top left corner is the university.
And second, a Mark's Work Wearhouse store. They were somewhat ubiquitous in the Greater Vancouver Region when I lived there.
Here's a look at the passenger and freight rail stations next to the Gallant city county fair ground. I managed to get a screen shot with a hot air balloon floating by.
In all the years I've played with Simcity 4, I had never spotted the smiling gentleman greeting visitors to the fair ground until now.
