The Winding River Project

[canyonjumper]

Great update Fred! Excellent pics and great storyline! I'm sorry, but I have no idea what that thingy is, but I'm sure someone else knows.

                    -Jordan

[RustyXL]

Awesome new update Fred! I'm glad you could get everything back to normal after the issues with plugins. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the construction of the new rail line. It looks like it would make a good commuter rail line in the future.

[KoV Liberty]

Looks great Fred, I have NO CLUE what that could possibly be.

[nedalezz]

Looks like gunshots or something to me. Maybe Johnny B. Badd has been letting some bullets fly!

Great update, huge update, cant wait to read more. Access' downtown is certainly growing quick.

[kimcar]

No clue either. Great story and great shot of the dam too .  Looking forward

[Battlecat]

It's just one thing after another with that highway it seems!  At least the town is still growing nicely.  Everything looks great.

[frostwolf]

I have no clue what those sparks are. Never seen them before in the game.

Nice update. I'm interested in seeing you do with the swamp. Reminds me of some of the road projects where I grew up; roads built on cliffsides, so they were constantly falling into the sea. Caltrans still hasn't figured out a way to make them stay put.

I actually have a pretty good idea of what happens with the road shift thing, though I've never seen that particular problem. There's a town where I grew up where the entire town is moving south. To the north, the old town is full of abandoned, rundown buildings, while the south side has the supermarkets and the various chain stores, and all of the cars and people. It's kind of sad and kind of amazing, really. Figure that's what would happen if a highway shifted over to one side; all the new buildings would follow the highway, and the old downtown would die off. Alternatively, I'd think that the industrial district would take over the area near the rails, and the commercial district would build near the new road. Like the mayor said, it's a big mess either way.

And either way, it sounds like a whole lot of fun.

[cubby420]

I'm not sure but I think I have seen something similar to that spark and smoke glitch on power line towers connected to an old, overused power plant. Someone else probably knows better than me but this looks exactly like that little animation, even to the point that it appears suspended in midair.

Beautiful shots by the way. The damn night shot and highway construction pics are really great.

[mrbisonm]

Thanks guys for the comments.
frostwolf, it will be quite a story to build the roads over these swamps and that will bring the Gabbers back for almost a year in their construction of highway 15.
BTW, where I live in Quebec/Canada, nearby is a whole town that was moved once, houses and churches and stores, all moved away for a few kilometers to make room for the enlargment of an asbestos mine. The towns are called Thetford Mines and Blacklake. That was in the sixties if I remember right. What you see below used to be a small blackish coloured lake and a town of 12K or so.



There will be a town in the WR Region later on with a mine (Iron Ore or Coal) like this and they will have some problems there too, but that is still to come in the far future, just watch for it when they establish the village of Blacklake on the other side of the valley.....

cubby420, makes sense what you said, but there's a slight problem, no powerlines nearby at all. It is probably an idustrial lot that doesn't function properly, I cannot think of anything else what that thingy could be. I can't bulldoze it, nor burn or drown, it just stays there what ever I do.

I will make a small update tomorrow and another one on sunday. Busy times in Access, things are moving and the Mayor is freaking out.....losing total control...


Fred

[danielcote]

The towns looking nice but it has all 3rd class buildings. Can you add some 2nd and 1st class commercial and residential buildings again?

[mrbisonm]

The towns looking nice but it has all 3rd class buildings. Can you add some 2nd and 1st class commercial and residential buildings again?

What do you mean by 3rd, 2nd and 1st class buildings?

[mrbisonm]

Update 36 (beginning of August 1964)


This is just a little shorter but not less important update.

The rails have invaded the town. Without any warning, one morning this week big loads of trucks and heavy machinery invaded Access Center and tore away the highway to make room for the rails that need to be ready before winter comes. If you woke up and asked if you're still in the same town, don't worry, this is only temporary and the railfolks garanteed that it won't take more than 3 weeks and they're out of here. Hundreds and hundreds of new workers all over the town.  Restaurants are full every noon and small canteens are growing out of the grounds like crazy. This is a money making moment for the population of Access, excellent for the economy, like Mayor Bartlett says, but nerve wrecking for the residents.

I glued together some pics below to give you folks a fullsized view of the rail construction site. On the top you can see the highway that today ends up in a simple road, while it still goes right through downtown Access and this for at least a year before the detoured highway is being build around the town. A new highway near the airport is being build like the earlier plan showed and will re-connect to the existing highway in Valmore. We will get a closer look at this in a later update.
As you go down on the first picture you can exactly see where the highway used to be. To Mayor Bartlett, this is new planning, and that will take a few years to finalize, he thinks. Meanwhile these 1x1 lots in the middle of the town will become simple lawns or parking. As we get to the bottom, we see the first rails arriving. They're really pushing the rails.

pic1



Now the talk in the Mayor's Office is to fill up the springpond right in the middle of town and build the new townhall on top of it. The spring will be drained and piped into the the creek just outside the town. People who live beside the pond would like to keep the pond, especially ever since it doesn't smell like cabbage anymore, others simply don't care, hey we're in the sixties, what has to be done will be done, no matter what.
Here's a sideview of that railproject, making a real big construction site for a small town like this. Talking about smalltown, Access has reached the 30,000 population mark this month. The new rails are shown on the picture below with a green line.

pic2


The fueltanks near the construction site have become somewhat dangerous and have to be relocated. A new location was found just outside the town. A few leaks of one of the tanks were discovered only in the beginning of this week, when a Digger started leveling the ground nearby and saw the wet and oily soil that was exposed by its works wondering seriously if he struck oil. All construction activity was stopped right then until the tanks have been emptied and relocated.

pic3


This is a part of downtown and now the question is to whether have the rails build on the right or on the left side of town (east or west). Probably the east side (left) will be preferred for eventual enlargements of the lots to 3 lots deep. The right side is already fully loaded and no additional space is either asked for or needed in the near future and a perfect lane to hold the rails. This is to the Council to decide, the Railcompany leaves these previleges to the town.

pic4


Talks at the airport are that they need some more space for "parking" and unloading the planes. Some planes have to wait on the runway, which is getting quite annoying and dangerous. For a small town this airport is really busy, mostly bringing in parts and pieces of the highway machinery urgently needing repairing and maitenance. They also want the runway to be lengthened again, so bigger planes can land too and maybe add a small and shorter runway for those little planes that seem to pop up more often now. Som Companies have DC8's and Boeing's 707 and 720 nowadays, which have a hard time landing on this somewhat short strip.
Since hopes that the population continues to increase while many new job-bringing occasions open and taxes bring in the needed money, the project *Airport for the Seventies* was accepted by the council of Access Center. Mr Racsan, Guy's father and the former owner and founder of the airport, agreed also and is willing to help financially with a low interest loan if the town has problems to get the full amount needed for the airport renewal plan.
The mayor and the council are happy, but the population is not. They say, "bigger planes bring bigger noises". Hm.....

pic5


There will be another update later this weekend. We will have some random pictures of the region to view, just for the fun of it, plus we start showing the places, where every one of our well known characters live nowadays, something not to miss.

Fred

[nedalezz]

Thats a huge construction project! Cant wait to see what the new and improved Airport for the Seventies looks like

By the way, those dirt lots you use to portray the construction sites, can they be dled anywhere? I could use them in my MD.

[Tomas Neto]

Very nice update again!!! Great work!!!

[cubby420]

I love the style of your diary and this update is a perfect example. The appearance of natural growth and development, adaptation to necessity created by that growth, and then details of construction and creation. You demonstrate a realistic process and I love that.  Can't wait to see more.

[mrbisonm]

nedalezz ,if you guys find me a good, free and easy fileshare site, I will be willing to share all my lot-creations when asked for, with a link. I don't want to upload those simple construction lots to a SC4 site because they take the space away for the better BATs.
Tomas Neto, thanks for visiting
cubby420, well I'm glad you like it. I always do my best to have everything shown naturally and the way it is in reality, or at least, the reality I know and live within, because some other countries it might be different. I hope you'll come back soon, I have some big construction sites coming up and what a mess in downtown yet to come.

Fred

[Battlecat]

The railway is coming indeed!  That's a huge amount of construction in town there.

[KoV Liberty]

Sweet job Fred. I cannot wait to see where everyone lives!

[Cyclone1001]

Woohoo! I get to see my house! But seriously, very nice update. I can help with airports...

[danielcote]

3rd class is poor, 2nd class is middle income and 1st class is rich.