Chicago CTA Stations & Other Gilded Age Grandiosities

[ardecila 125]

How about another CTA station? Madison/Wells was really popular, since it was the first station for L-Over-Road. Madison/Wells was Beaux-Arts, but this one (Ashland/Lake) is Queen Anne.

[Sim shady 12]

stunningly well done! Can not wait to see this one hit the STEX one day

[allez l'om 1]

Ouaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! This CTA station is very great!!!! it lokks like madison station!!!!!!!! my congratulations

[____----____ 37]

....drooling..... how about the howard terminal?

[ardecila 125]

Night shot. There are dark spots at the end of the platform canopies since I forgot to put lights there.... oops.  I'll fix that.  Also, the edges of the platform are glowing for some reason.

[screamingman12 30]

Hot D@mn! That's Awesom!

[Godzillaman 21]

Yay! Another elevated rail station to expand my system...

[allez l'om 1]

yeah!!! continue!!!i looks for this station on the web this station is located outside of the loop of chicago, isn't it?!!!! these guy is so cool because i surf on devotion and i saw that he is working on this beautiful project

[ardecila 125]

Okay.... the Ashland station is close to being ready. It had a lighting bug, so I fixed that and I'm gonna re-render it tonight.

In the meantime, here's a little bit of eye-candy. Installed in 1903 in Chicago's Riverview amusement park, the Aero-Stat was the first of its kind. The ride was moved around the park several times, and the swings were changed from blimps to biplanes. Sometime in the 1930s, the cars changed to rocketships and it was renamed the Strat-O-Stat. This is the rocket-ship version, in silver and red, brilliantly lit up for nighttime.

[Sim shady 12]

wow that looks amazing...ly dangerous

Nice

[Explodingsims 3]

Whoo....I like-a the station, can't wait to see it on the (hopefullysoonworking) STEX!!

The Carival ride looks beautifuly, dangerious! I like it!

[ianpaschal 77]

I feel for you about the height of the elevated rails. 16 meters is ridiculous, even with 3 meter Sims. In NL many of the train stations are raised above ground level:

...however that's some 8 meters tops, not 16! GAAAHH!

[nousername 0]

Dude nice job, you should make a transition lot so that it will go from the maxis height down to a realistic height.  BTW, when are these going to be relesed on  the STEX, and hell if you need a beta tester i wouldn't mind.

[ardecila 125]

Originally posted by: nousername Dude nice job, you should make a transition lot so that it will go from the maxis height down to a realistic height.  BTW, when are these going to be relesed on  the STEX, and hell if you need a beta tester i wouldn't mind.quote>

Ashland Station will be released once the STEX is back up.  It's complete and tested, and it looks gorgeous in the game.

The viaducts might take a little while yet - I need to learn how to make puzzle drags like the new GLR, SAM, or RHW.

[Sim shady 12]

ooh very nice I bet this one is better than your previous one because it wont be missing a zoom render

[nousername 0]

nice job, and you don't have to make it drag-able, you could always just make it as a lot. and like i said earlier, if you need a beta tester i wouldn't mind.

[VIPStephan 0]

Great stuff there. However, the CTA stations are crashing my game. Are there any known bug or issues with this, or any special treatment necessary such as special build order? I'm using SC 4 for Mac with Update and latest NAM (January '08) and have a couple of other plugins installed.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Read the readme that came with the NAM. I think there's a glitch with certain puzzle pieces and crashing, and you would have to use the puzzle pieces in order to have something for the station to connect to.

[allez l'om 1]

this CTA stations don't crash my game!!! the solution is when you put your NAM pieces, try to avoid this pieces touch the station if you want you want that the game don't crash!!!

[ardecila 125]

Revisiting an old classic.

[____----____ 37]

stunning work, amazing really.

[Explodingsims 3]

Wow, that's a beautiful building there...Sante Fe HQ?

Anyways, also looking forwards to new stations!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I remember liking it when you first posted it.  There are very few buildings of that style and size for the game.

[allez l'om 1]

ouahh you don't take holidays, do you, lol!!!!!

[SC4BOY 21]

You've done some beautiful stuff there, Arc.. lots of variety, well done.. Nice work. WRT puzzle pieces crashing the game.. that is a long known issue. There are many threads on the issue on probably all the SC4 sites.. basically DON"T HOVER AROUND WITH A PIECE ON YOUR MOUSE.. you'll regret it.. and SAVE OFTEN.. haha.. The new extensibles making "drag and drop" GLR etc don't crash.. you'll learn to like that as you use it.. Of coures its even MORE annoying then when it DOES crash..;-O

[nofunk 1,933]

Oh my gosh! That building is gorgeous!!

[Explodingsims 3]

Well, I like this stuff in this thread, BUT, I must whine about something...

Whatever happened to the Wider Elevated Rail thread? is that project over or what?

[ardecila 125]

Okay... I guess the party in this thread DIDN'T continue without me.... shoot. :haha:

So, I was hanging around in Washington DC last week, enjoying the great architecture, the great museums, the great food, the great subway system, and the terrible weather (I think it topped 100 degrees). My original plan was to rent a bike and ride down to Mount Vernon, only 12 miles alongside the Potomac, but in this hot weather, I wasn't about to try it.

So, I had some time to kill, and I went and visited the Library of Congress. They had lots of interesting stuff, but I decided to go to the research part and find a book on Grand Central Station. I filed my request, and went out for lunch. I came back, and a beautiful leather-bound book was sitting on my desk, along with an old magazine, that has pictures of the station before it was demolished. The book was actually one of only 5 distributed to the executives of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which built the station back in the 1880s. It had lots of pretty little engravings of the building, along with much more architectural detail than I had ever wished for. I now know not only the tile pattern on the lobby floor, but the quarry where the marble came from and the stoneworkers who installed the floor.

My goal is to get Grand Central Station finished up ASAP and released... it was my goal last summer, too, and we see where that went. Luckily, I don't have much work left to do - I did some educated guesswork when I made the model in the first place, and most of it turned out to be correct.

[gws57 0]

Those resources sound amazing!  Now I have something else to research when I end up in Washington!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Definitely looking forward to what you do.