Tunnings Quarry, the first of many proposed projects by Grimey Earthscars Pty. Ltd, has been operating for 5 and a half years now and is well and truly establishing itself as an industrial power in the region.

The mine has now excavated a total of 2,595,840 cubic meters of Bauxite, with the majority of this material being shipped directly out to SimNation by trucking it to the port in Boston Central.  The new Southern Rail Link (funded entirely by Grimey Earthscars Pty. Ltd. only because it was significantly less expensive than buying Boston City Council) is more than 30% complete, which will take the material into Tellequin Beach, where it will either be shipped to SimNation via a new port that will be constructed in late 1985, or will be processed into Aluminium in a proposed (but not yet approved) Aluminium Electrolysis plant that will be erected in Tellequin Beach around the same time.

The industry required to support this massive operation, as well as the personnel required to man it has created it's own mining town, collectively known as Tunnings Quarry.  This mining town has a population of slightly over 2000 residents, all of whom work locally.  There are around 150 sims that travel from nearby regions including Kelly Bay and Tellequin Beach.

The material removed from the lode in Tunnings Quarry is only between 0.25% and 0.48% of the estimated lode, so Grimey expects to make a LOT of money, and Tunnings Quarry (the town) will be alive and kicking for close to another 80 years before the lode is depleted.  This is the larger of two prospects.  The other is several kilometers west of Tunnings Quarry.

The site office has expanded into a complex now, housing site managers and even with it's own pub.  The rail station will eventually be setup to efficiently take material out of the site, but for now is used only to ship in small amounts of materials from the industry in Tunnings Quarry (the town).

The majority of the local industry is dedicated to the manufacture and maintenance of machinery for the mining operation, as well as the manufacture and distribution operation for the Southern Rail Link.  There are several smelters working overtime to extrude rails, and concrete sleepers are being produced at the rate of 320 per week.  (That's 8 per hour!)

Some more advanced industrial buildings are also involved in the research and development of the proposed Electrolysis plant, as well as the advanced surveying and geo-mapping required to estimate and plan the most efficient procedures for the extraction of the Bauxite.  This means planning every scraping carefully to allow a clear way for the following scrapings without (for example) machinery having to struggle up out of large holes that could have otherwise been much flatter for much longer while the scrapings proceeded closer to the surface.  This reduces fuel costs as well as wear and tear on machinery, and ultimately equates to a much higher profit margin.

Because the entire town is owned and operated (and is in fact on private property) of Grimey Earthscars Pty. Ltd., the town planning reflects the "segregation" that occurs in big-business.  Elite and middle management even live separately, with the working class being provided (the mine pays for housing for workers) with much smaller and less fancy housing much closer to the rail line.

The mine is still only young, and hasn't even begun it's rail operations yet, which is expected to increase production by almost 750%.  And yet already it has created its own small town and is having a very noticeable impact on the region at large.

Why live in expensive apartments with a long commute when you can move to Tunnings Quarry and have the mine pay for everything and all you need to do is take your pay and spend it at the pub every night?  God Bless Grimey.

Meet the Greggory family.

Johno Greggory is an Environmental Scientist ("Possum Counter") currently working in Peninsula Fair Industrial Park.

Svetlana Greggory is a stay-at-home mum looking after their young child.

Tsiana Greggory is 2 years old and cute as a bug.

The Greggory family live in a pleasant little house in Boston South East Central, on the Boston Harbour Peninsula.

Johno's job at the Grimey Deer Squishing Facility paid well but wasn't exactly high in the job-satisfaction area.  There was only so many deers a man could squish before he wanted something more.

So the Greggory's took a punt, and accepted a new job up at the Colorado Lumber mill, in a very tiny town about as far west as Boston Region stretched.  The new town, called Carver Hills, was barely more than a fly sneeze on a map, with a population of 71.  Yes, that's right, 71.  And most of them were related to each other.

The Greggory's sold their pleasant house, got a fortune for it and stuffed it in the bank, piled all their remaining posessions into their all-wheel-drive sedan hatch, bought a caravan, and set off on their road trip!

The first small township they entered after leaving Harbour Peninsula was Shangreelahville - a cozy little town that serviced the surrounding rural community.

After entering the south-eastern most suburbs of lower Boston, the Greggory's paused to admire one of the most beautiful homes they'd ever seen.  Johno temporarilly flipped out at the idea that he had thrown everything he had worked for away and was about to start a new life in the unknown, about as far from the rest of society as it was possible to live.

Soon the road trip entered some of the heaviest traffic the Greggories had seen in their lives.  Not one but TWO sets of traffic lights to pass through in one stretch, and several complex turning lanes.  Lucky they had arrows on the bitumen or there'd have been a few problems.

As they continued west into the more rural areas that existed between the shore-hugging suburbs, one of the largest high-tech industrial parks in the southern parts of Boston was adjacent to a range of farming blocks... it was a striking contrast.

Traveling up the Da'Angular highway, the Greggories passed by the Mathshampton Soccer Field, where the Mathshampton Pi's were having a home game against the Shumachaville Soles.

Traveling almost into the heart of Boston South Central, the Greggories stopped for a break from their trip while having a look at the university.  The Graduation Day was useful in that the university was having an Open Campus day, so the Greggories could stroll about without raising any questions.  The architecture was grand and inspiring.

After driving for hours through suburb after suburb, eventually the Greggory-mobile passed by another noteable landmark - the Saxtonvale Smelter.  One of the largest smelters in Boston, this monstrous building was responsible for the conversion of up to 15% of Boston's iron into steels and alloys.

Heading south the jouney took the family past the region-wide famous Da Wagatta Hotel, known for having the largest steak in town.  It was rumoured that only one man had ever been able to finish one of Da Wagatta's steaks in 1924, and that he was to this day still digesting it.

On the way out of town, heading inland away from the river, Johno, Svetlana and Tsiana passed by the huge Natural Gas Power facility that powered most of South West Central Boston.  An impressive structure and reasonably modern technology.

Leaving Boston South Central behind, the roads head back away from roads, lights, and signs, and into winding rural pitted and cracked bitumen roads.  A much more familiar drive for the Greggories, and a welcome change to the chaos and stress that the traffic can bring.

Shortly into the rural trip a brief pie and drink stop-over in Eskvale.  Such a beautiful little town.  So many porches to porch on.

And here it was.  Head north and you come back into Pulmott River and civilisation.  Head south and you get further and further away from everybody else.  Johno turned south.

This isolated country road stretched seemingly endlessly, and it was easy to switch off and drive on "autopilot".  Look out!  A rabbit in the middle of the road!  Fortunately Johno was paying attention.  Were you?

Jerrycan Town - a very small rural community and pretty much the last place that you can fill up on petrol before heading inland.  Hence the name.

Now THIS is where it gets interesting.  Say goodbye to the bitumen because here's where it stops.  All-wheel-drive comes in mighty handy when you've got no road, no phone, and no way of even walking to get help.  Take it easy and DONT try to plow through a mud hole - go around it.

After traveling for many hours the forest gets denser, and you absolutely do NOT have your hands outside the vehicle or a passing drop bear will bite it off as you drive past.  No kidding.

Eventually, much to everyone's delight, the track itself becomes so difficult to see in the undergrowth that you lose it completely. Just keep heading west and avoid the big logs and axel-breaking holes and she'll be right mate.

The Lake! On the other shore the Greggories could just barely make out the smoke of wood-fires in houses.  Exciting but they still had to bash their way through a couple of kilometers of bush to get around the Aquifer-fed lake to their new home town of Carver Hills.

Carver Hills!  Civilisation!  Hot meals and showers!  Very exciting.

It didn't take long to meet all the people.  After all there's fewer of them than relatives at a wedding.

For now the Greggories would camp out in their caravan, but they had a contract on a block of land and would be building as soon as they'd settled in.  And forget about going home, there's no service stations out here and they were out of fuel.  All the vehicles in this town run on Tripple A Batteries, which is great news for the Battery Hut.  Better get that All-wheel drive hatch converted or it's gonna be a paperweight!

Work tomorrow!  Colorado Lumber's boss is expecting Johno to turn up drunk so he can fit in with the other lumberjacks. New life, new responsibilities.

Copper-Rock, a small node town built on the main road between Foggy Inlet and Boston North East Central.

Due to being inland away from most of the region's water pumps, and isolated from most other communities by distance, as well as being too low in population to justify it's own water tower, most Copper-Rock citizens have lived off rainwater and bore-water for the last 65 odd years.

The small town has grown quite slowly, mostly due to having no particular attractions or reasons to move there besides property prices.  However as urban sprawl has reached out towards it from the more prosperous communities (in particular the west shores of Foggy Inlet) it has come closer and closer to the rest of civilisation.  With this sprawl has come water lines, bringing cheap, chlorinated, flouridated water to the masses.

So it was that in August of 1982 Copper Rocks was finally connected with underground water pipes, and the citizens had the option of installing town water plumbing in their homes.  Three residents took up the offer.  The others were all dead of lead poisoning from drinking rain water that had collected pollution from the industrial parks a few kilometers east in Foggy Inlet.

But the good news is that now there's a lot of vacant homes with access to town water!

Build it and they will come.

An extra 12,000 sims have moved in.

There's no pics.

This has been the worst City Journal update ever, proudly brought to you by CSGdesign.

Mmmk bye.

Time to discuss the growing traffic concerns of East Central Boston.

Sims travelling to and from East Central Boston and South East Central Boston into Central Boston are causing wide-spread chaos.

The bus networks are working so well that the roads are becoming conjested with streams of buses, usually taking sims to other forms of mass transit such as ferries and train stations.

So we're calling on YOU, councillor (and all our councillors) to help us brainstorm a solution for this before it becomes a complete disaster.

Please, have a seat... there's water in front of you and against the far wall you'll find an assortment of cakes and biscuits...

Shall we begin?

Ok, we splashed out and bought a $4.50 map from Sonya's corner store on the way in, and the Wilderness Warriors were good enough to provide us with a photo of one of the major areas of concern from one of their choppers.

Ernie, put the duster down, we'll let you know when you can clean up ok... just have a seat.  Good boy... want another coffee?  Bert, do you mind? Thankyou.

Okay as I saying, there is one major area of concern, being in South East Central Boston, particularly through Smokeyton and Nameless Suburb.

That picture is taken looking west towards Boston, by the way.  Yes that's right, it's where we installed our Botanical Gardens a few years ago now.  Quite the make-out spot now I hear.  Right so those avenues, while effective, are very quickly falling behind the growth we've been experiencing in the east of boston in the last 5 or so years.

Most of the traffic is travelling through this area and to the pedestrian and vehicle ferries in Boston Harbour, and then traveling upriver into Boston, rather than taking the main road in north of Yuppyville and down over the Carlson Esanda Memorial Bridge.  The trip is clearly more efficient, despite the traffic conjestion.

In addition to this we have nuisance drivers heading in to Boston Central from the eastern suburbs by traveling along the coast-line, rather than taking the main road up north and crossing Brackish Inlet and traveling west again north of Yuppyville.  These we can put a stop to by simply not allowing through traffic along the coast, and redirecting all traffic in and out of that area to be via the main road up near Muffy Outlook, on the southern shore of Brackish Inlet.  This might help to convince these stupid stuuuupid sims to just keep on rolling north.  Erhem.  Just an idea, but you guys are the councillors, let's hear what you have to say about it.

Now the only other area of any real concern at this time is the Franklin Clot Road, running along the west edge of Franklin State Forest.

This road is servicing traffic travelling between Daegon and other south western suburbs up into Wiggley Way, Crazyville, Sifolis, and further north, and is a bit of a choke point due to the development inhibitions currently in place to encourage a green corridor between Franklin State Forest and the Charleton River bend between Brenton and Spiffs Crossing.  Now that development has occupied this entire coastline, perhaps this green corridor is a waste of real-estate now?  It is 30 year old policy to protect it, afterall, maybe it's time to knock the whole thing to the ground?

No other roads or transport is causing us any real headaches, and the vast majority of this traffic is bus traffic.  Charlie do you have those figures?  Yes here we go, 97% of this conjestion is buses... the rest is cars and to a lesser extent pedestrians and skateboarders.

So councillor...

What do you suggest?

Can someone get Ernie off the ceiling fan please?  This happens EVERY time.

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Welcome back councillors.

I know that I promised that our Civil and Urban Engineers would have drafts of traffic calming designs however we had a slight problem when they escaped.  We've got rangers out looking for them now, and with any luck we'll have them back at work shortly.  In the meantime we have got a design proposal for a new train station as a potential solution to our traffic congestion problem.

While they were still strapped in our Engineers did suggest that the vast majority of our problems were occurring because our existing train station (almost 50 years old and with a very limited capacity of only 2,000 sims) was seriously congested with over 12,000 sims, forcing the remaining traffic to find alternative routes into Boston CBD.

They have therefore created a draft proposal of an upgrade to the existing train-station, bringing it up to speed with current capacity by installing extra passenger terminals and baggage handling areas, increasing the parking zones, and renovating the interior to make it much more streamlined.  This will increase the capacity from 2,000 to a very tidy 40,000 sims per month (that's 340 per day!).

Artist's Impression of Proposed Rail Station.

Models and prelimary surveys have suggested that this would redirect a lot of sims to our rail network since it's a very short (20 meter) walk from the station to the ferry terminal.  As a result almost all of the other congestion throughout the shire would be relieved because sims would choose rail since it's such a cheap and convenient solution.

This is an extremely inexpensive option to our traffic issues, and would pretty much solve them for another 25 years.

All in favour, say "Aye".

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Gilmore Llama grazing property goes under the hammer following Garry Gilmore's death at age 68.

14 years after the founding of Boston, one of the very first island communities to be set up was the rural farming community on Spanner Island, just south of the Harbour entrance.

The key founder of this was old Gary Gilmore, an immigrant from Madagascar that had come to Boston with his herd of 6 breeding Llamas.

In October of 1982, Gary passed away, after a series of nightmares about his beautiful Llama property being turned into a sea of houses (according to his diary).  Sad.  Let's all take a moment.  Okay moment's over, back to the story.

So his estate passed to his eldest daughter Sharron who lived interstate and had no desire to move to Boston, who promptly sold it to Haggerty Development Corporation.

HDC took no time at all clearing the land and laying the underground power, water and sewerage, and the asphalt cul-de-sacs for the new development.

The lots were sold off the plan, and in most cases were bought as soon as they were released for sale.  Gilmore Park was erected on the shores looking back at the Boston City lights.

As is usual with developments of this kind, the businesses and shops were the first to move in due to the high demand for good sites to set up business and with the gleam of expectation in their eyes for new customers and new business.

The first released residential lots were sold out completely within the first month.  The vendor's covenant stated that lots needed to be developed within three months of owning the land, but most houses were built within two.

The second release was a little slower to sell, but was still a massive rush, and the same covenant applied ensuring rapid development.

The third and final release was a lot more pricey and so slowed the rush, but none-the-less buildings went up within another two months.

Some months later when the suburb was fully developed, the rich folk moved in and added a bunch of class to the area.

And so, just like in the visions that Gary Gilmore had which killed him, the Gilmore Acreage was sliced and diced until only the older residents even knew a farm ever existed.  RIP Gary.