Shops Under Raised Rails In Real Life

[zebulon_stonehenge 135]

My, how one thing leads to another! I was looking at one of the "Spotlight" photos which Microsoft Windows 10 pushes to my computer every day or two, and it was an ornate stone building, clearly the central train station of some country that takes railroads very seriously (obviously not USA!). It turned out, it was the central railway station of Antwerp, Belgium.

The north third of the building is all ornate stonework in rich browns and greys and contains the ticket counters and gorgeous main entry hall.

The central third is a glass-and-red-steel half-cylinder area with train-boarding platforms on 4 levels. (All trains exit to the south only, except level 4, which has tracks running under the station going north and south.)

The southern third is a raised-rail viaduct looking much like the rail viaducts in SimCity4 that it was startling. And they do have shops under the rails! Again the resemblance to SC4 shops-under-rails is amazing. Check out this station on Google Image Search, Google Maps Street View, and Google Earth to see what I mean.

I've attached three photos to this post:

1. The rail viaduct leading northward into the station, which shops under rails
2. The main entry foyer (huge! cavernous! gorgeous stonework!)
3. A montage of interior and exterior photos of the station

INTENT: I'm posting this to show what these structures look like in real life, so as to perhaps spark people's creativity in their SimCity4 cities.

NOTE: This is not a "BAT" or "can't find it" or "NAM support" request.

For those who wish to create similar structures in SC4, similar stations and viaducts are part of NAM, provided that one installs all the "raised rail" components. Or, if one wants something closer to this (or any other) particular station, one could search SimTropolis and SC4Devotion (or BAT something one's self and post it to ST or SC4D if one has that skill set, or ask others to do so).