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ThomasSimpson

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Everything posted by ThomasSimpson

  1. Celeste | Ignite the Fire

    SimCoug: Thanks! I'm not very experienced with RHW, Celeste and that update are really the first times I've used it properly. LReyome254: It's the Euro-texture RHW, as grstudios rightly says. grstudios: Thanks! I personally thought picture three was the weakest but if you like it then it can't be as poor as I thought! Isiah110: I'm not sure if there are many Simcity magazines but thanks! IL.: Wow, it's an honour to get the thumbs up from you! I've been having issues with my street tree mod lately and it seems my tinkering with it didn't work. I'm hoping to get it working again soon. spursrule14: Thank you very much for both of those awards. They're greatly appreciated, thanks! Daniel, SC4L0ver, ggamgus, Blakeway, Mastof, MilitantRadical, Jetty Jockey, sucram17, Hazani Pratama: Thank you very much! Note: I did rate up all of your comments as I do with all my updates, because I appreciate all comments, but someone malicious has downrated them all again. This is unacceptable and if it happens again I'm going to have to report this to the moderators. I appreciate everyone's comments and think that you should all get some points for it. It's a shame someone feels so inferior that they need to downrate comments for no reason just to make themselves amused. Welcome back to Celeste, the capital of Cattala and the centrepiece of this city journal. Today we're returning to the bustling city and visiting some more new areas that I've built over the past few weeks. For those who don't know or are new to this journal, Cattala is not supposed to be a perfect creation when I update. It's a constantly growing, evolving entity and Celeste is now entirely different to its original form from two years ago. Back then, I had the idea and name for a university in the city but never got round to building it. Well, here's Celeste Imperial University, in the west of Aziens. Its urban campus is based in this building, next to the M1, but it continues to operate most of its traditional courses in the original campus outside the city. CIU is the leading higher education institution in Cattala, and the oldest as well. Since the 1990s, the new campus has created a science and technology park on the edge of Aziens in what is known as Imperial Court. The Ministry of Health and leading science and pharmaceuticals are based here. North of this is the Alder Court Park, the redeveloped home of Cattalian tennis. The ambitious reconstruction occurred during the boom of the 1990s, and is now the main courts of the Royal Celeste Tennis Club. The city of Celeste, the government and Sport Cattala are all supporters of the Atarashima Simlympic Games. Behind the glossy exterior of modern Celeste, lies a dark secret. For those who didn't live or know about the city two decades ago, there's little sign of the harsh reality of the rapid and ambitious development of the glass-and-steel district of Aziens. But there remains one small hint of what happened in the past. In the 1990s the grand regeneration of what is now Amosseri Province's financial and economic heartland forced hundreds of small businesses and low-wealth residents out of their homes and estates. The housing boom was clear for all to see, as street after street of older terraced housing was demolished and replaced by line after line of multi-storey apartments. But one group made a stand, and all that remains of old Aziens is the strip of land with small shops, bakeries and a pub penned in by the towers of the boom. The developers are still hungry to seize the land, even now. Here we see the boundary between Aziens proper and the university campus-technology park. The M1 ends here as it splits off into various a-roads criss-crossing the capital, and you can get a clear glimpse of the entrapment of those who resisted the change in Aziens. It was only through obstructing the developers after they began bulldozing shops and homes behind the remaining buildings that they managed to save their own livelihoods and a High Court appeal protected them from forced eviction. And now for another contrasting picture. In the last update we saw the differences between modern and rural Cattala, and now the difference within a single city. Celeste began as a castle town by the coast, and the Castello di Celestica was the grand centre of the first King of Cattala's plan to build a capital fit for a national monarch. Little of the original city remains, but medieval houses and the castle itself still stand as tourist attractions. Next time, we should be looking at the palaces and cathedrals that the Celestine's built using their vast wealth over the 800 years of their rule. Although, we could end up somewhere completely different.
  2. Mall of the Emirates

    That's a lot of sand! Great desert city there.
  3. Cattala (AIN)

    Thank you Benedict! Welcome back to Celeste, the capital of Cattala and the centrepiece of this city journal. Today we're returning to the bustling city and visiting some more new areas that I've built over the past few weeks. For those who don't know or are new to this journal, Cattala is not supposed to be a perfect creation when I update. It's a constantly growing, evolving entity and Celeste is now entirely different to its original form from two years ago. Back then, I had the idea and name for a university in the city but never got round to building it. Well, here's Celeste Imperial University, in the west of Aziens. Its urban campus is based in this building, next to the M1, but it continues to operate most of its traditional courses in the original campus outside the city. CIU is the leading higher education institution in Cattala, and the oldest as well. Since the 1990s, the new campus has created a science and technology park on the edge of Aziens in what is known as Imperial Court. The Ministry of Health and leading science and pharmaceuticals are based here. North of this is the Alder Court Park, the redeveloped home of Cattalian tennis. The ambitious reconstruction occurred during the boom of the 1990s, and is now the main courts of the Royal Celeste Tennis Club. The city of Celeste, the government and Sport Cattala are all supporters of the Atarashima Simlympic Games. Behind the glossy exterior of modern Celeste, lies a dark secret. For those who didn't live or know about the city two decades ago, there's little sign of the harsh reality of the rapid and ambitious development of the glass-and-steel district of Aziens. But there remains one small hint of what happened in the past. In the 1990s the grand regeneration of what is now Amosseri Province's financial and economic heartland forced hundreds of small businesses and low-wealth residents out of their homes and estates. The housing boom was clear for all to see, as street after street of older terraced housing was demolished and replaced by line after line of multi-storey apartments. But one group made a stand, and all that remains of old Aziens is the strip of land with small shops, bakeries and a pub penned in by the towers of the boom. The developers are still hungry to seize the land, even now. Here we see the boundary between Aziens proper and the university campus-technology park. The M1 ends here as it splits off into various a-roads criss-crossing the capital, and you can get a clear glimpse of the entrapment of those who resisted the change in Aziens. It was only through obstructing the developers after they began bulldozing shops and homes behind the remaining buildings that they managed to save their own livelihoods and a High Court appeal protected them from forced eviction. And now for another contrasting picture. In the last update we saw the differences between modern and rural Cattala, and now the difference within a single city. Celeste began as a castle town by the coast, and the Castello di Celestica was the grand centre of the first King of Cattala's plan to build a capital fit for a national monarch. Little of the original city remains, but medieval houses and the castle itself still stand as tourist attractions. Next time, we should be looking at the palaces and cathedrals that the Celestine's built using their vast wealth over the 800 years of their rule. Although, we could end up somewhere completely different.
  4. Week 11: 9/10/12-9/16/12

    Thank you again for this honour! It's wonderful to get praise for Cattala.
  5. Week 10: 9/3/12-9/9/12

    Thank you for the listing and for the nominations! Much appreciated.
  6. Lessito | A Bridge to Somewhere

    grstudios: Yep, it's wheat. Very vivid wheat too! SimCoug: Thank you very much, and yes, my plugins can be a bit of a pain on occasion but they're nice and organised luckily. NMUSpidey: Aww, thank you! I haven't got many stadium's in Cattala and I'm not a regular on Simsports but it's always a possibility. Huston: Ceases to impress? I'm hoping you got that phrase muddled up. And I imagine it would be rather popular with tourists too. standop: No worries, it's great to see new people looking at some of the older updates too. Unfortunately, that building was on davidluart, dmscopio's website, which has been taken down but there is another version on the LEX. It's a shame that a lot of his work has been lost because it's very very good. Kruness, kakado_to_save: Thank you for the comment! Welcome back, for the last time this year, to Lessito! Our journey around the south east of Cattala is coming to a close today. I go back to school on Wednesday to start my A-Levels, so updates will probably become more infrequent again unfortunately. So here we are. After many weeks spent travelling along the A6 road from just past San Pietro, we've arrived at the end of our road trip. Marcolla is a small village that once served as the final stopover before truckers and travellers reached Ontano Bridge, after traversing the winding lanes of the old a-road, which you can see below. Marcolla is surrounded by sprawling fields that in late August give up their bountiful harvests. For days on end, the village is surrounded by combine harvesters and grape harvesters reaping their produce from the land and plowing it back to dirt again. Local children enjoy rides with the farmer, since Lessito's schools having longer summer holidays than other regions to allow for the harvest season. But Marcolla has been transformed by the construction of the A6 nearby, which was upgraded to a motorway after it was widened in the 1980s for two junctions. The village has two one-way roads linking to both carriageways of the main road, as well as the motorway spur to Ontano Bridge. Now the traffic never stops and the residents are trapped between the busiest stretch of Lessito's main road, the South Coast main line and the old A-road. As evening descends on the village, it's time to say farewell to our Lessito journey. From here, the A6 splits into two - the motorway, leading south to the island we visited last summer, and the dual carriageway continuing east and then north, to Cape Almae. Goodnight from Marcolla, goodnight from Lessito and I hope you all had a wonderful summer.
  7. Postcards | From West to East, Oxymorons

    SimCoug: A fair bit of bulldozing, but I did some tinkering with my plugins which made it easier to grow those buildings. 1000000000000: Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed pretty much everything in the update! StephenPullen: I was sure my NAM was all LHD. How odd, I'll need to take a look at that. Mithrik, 111222333444, Evillions, Mastof, Harbin91, TowerDude, pole475, Zeck180, Blakeway, grstudios, WillR116: Thanks! Following on from the Dropbox crash that I had after the last update broke my bandwidth limit I'd just like to ask that nobody features this entry on the Simtropolis homepage, since this journal is updated on five websites and the extra traffic from the feature seems to have pushed it over the limit. Thanks! Welcome back to Cattala, where today we're on a whistle-stop tour of two of the main areas we've been visiting recently. The last seven updates have been focused on Celeste and Lessito, two regions that are very, very different. Celeste is the capital of the nation and has been the power base of the monarchy for 1000 years. Once again it is emerging as a grand city with not only an illustrious past, but with a highly promising future too. Whilst Lessito is the breadbasket of Cattala, and has sustained agriculture since the time of the Aristotle. The sleepy, rural lifestyle is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the western cities but the region still contributes a large amount to the economy - Cattala is a major global wine exporter and the high levels of food security in the country is achieved mostly thanks to Lessito's farmers. Celeste is a major transport hub between the two biggest cities in Cattala and its terminal station is served by both InterCity and national railway services. The city also has a major domestic and international airport and remains the home of the country's political, social and class elite. Rumours of a bid to host a major international sporting event have been circulating for many years. Thanks for visiting Cattala, and seeing how diverse and unique this Mediterranean island really is.
  8. Ben's Top Ten +10

    This list really is active at the moment, and great to see some new CJs up in the Top Ten. And Cattala, still hanging around just below too!
  9. Corraile | Reborn (AIN)

    What can you say about Corraile, it's spectacular.
  10. JCO - September 3rd, 2012

    Yay I'm featured again. Thanks Jesus!
  11. Cattala (AIN)

    emperordaniel: I've certainly not seen an eagle for a long time in my game, so it was great to capture it on camera too. Benedict: Thank you. Agriculture is something I specialise in, and it's nice to see the contrast with something I'm relatively inexperienced with, which is entirely grown and functioning residential and urban areas. I have wanted to do an oxymoron update for a while now and I thought this was a great opportunity as the Aziens and Lessito storylines are rolled up. vivapanda: Thanks! Welcome back, for the last time this year, to Lessito! Our journey around the south east of Cattala is coming to a close today. I go back to school on Wednesday to start my A-Levels, so updates will probably become more infrequent again unfortunately. So here we are. After many weeks spent travelling along the A6 road from just past San Pietro, we've arrived at the end of our road trip. Marcolla is a small village that once served as the final stopover before truckers and travellers reached Ontano Bridge, after traversing the winding lanes of the old a-road, which you can see below. Marcolla is surrounded by sprawling fields that in late August give up their bountiful harvests. For days on end, the village is surrounded by combine harvesters and grape harvesters reaping their produce from the land and plowing it back to dirt again. Local children enjoy rides with the farmer, since Lessito's schools having longer summer holidays than other regions to allow for the harvest season. But Marcolla has been transformed by the construction of the A6 nearby, which was upgraded to a motorway after it was widened in the 1980s for two junctions. The village has two one-way roads linking to both carriageways of the main road, as well as the motorway spur to Ontano Bridge. Now the traffic never stops and the residents are trapped between the busiest stretch of Lessito's main road, the South Coast main line and the old A-road. As evening descends on the village, it's time to say farewell to our Lessito journey. From here, the A6 splits into two - the motorway, leading south to the island we visited last summer, and the dual carriageway continuing east and then north, to Cape Almae. Goodnight from Marcolla, goodnight from Lessito and I hope you all had a wonderful summer.
  12. show us your countryside

    The way you have both used water is fantastic! Very different approaches but equally beautiful. Here's a picture from my City Journal of a rural region I've been working on quite a lot recently.
  13. Celeste | Victoria's March

    Update 76 grstudios:Thanks again, and no worries. I often mix SPAM and non-SPAM, depending on what kind of city I'm building. It's hard to grow stuff that isn't SPAM when you have it in your plugins though. MilitantRadical, 10000000000, Hazani Pratama, kakado_to_save, lew1984: Thank you! Update 77 TowerDude: I love Glass'n'Steel too! Evillions: You have the Day'n'Nite Mod to thank for the lighting, and I think I will do a daytime overview next time we're in Aziens. elavary, Hazani Pratama, grstudios, kakado_to_save, 100000000000: Thank you! emperordaniel: Thank you! MarkusJ: Thanks very much for the comment, and yes it did take a fair while but the result is what I desired. Vivapanda: Thanks, I'm glad you liked that one. rewright: Thank you! sim_link: Glowing at night is exactly what that was going for. So this interlude seems to be taking a bit longer than I expected, as I've been on holiday and busy building motorways and Celeste. But don't despair, as our Lessito journey will be returning shortly. Today we're visiting the north of Celeste, the opposite end of the city to Aziens. Vittoria is one of the three initial districts of the capital that I built in the previous incarnation of Celeste, and now it's been made bigger, better and 100% more functional than before. Here is its smaller station, Stazione di Alberto, pictured during the late evening. It's a busy little station, with many commuter trains from Vittoria, Celeste and Calora thundering past throughout the night. Vittoria is the northernmost district of Celeste's metropolitan area, and was one of few parts of the city not to be adversely affected by the colonisation of Cattala in the 19th century. The British governor relocated the capital to Calora Harbour, then the main port of trade with the Empire. Much of Celeste fell into disrepair as the monarchy was pushed aside and wealth moved to Jennai and Calora. It benefited from becoming a major station on the new railway line between the two main economic cities and saw substantial development as wealthy Caloran merchants and businessmen left the crowded city and wanted a quieter life in the country or the comforts of home in the Shires. Vittoria, named after the reigning Queen, boomed. As more and more people moved in to the new town, it drew in the Celestinian, British and Caloran middle classes and caused a further depopulation of the derelict royal city and became a sprawling settlement around the railway line. In its own right, Vittoria rapidly became independent from Celeste. In recent times, Vittoria has continued to serve as a commuter town for both Calora and the reinvigorated Celeste. As the old city expanded northwards, it was swallowed back into the capital and benefits from the faster and more frequent railway services to all three of the country's main cities. Since the 1980s, many offices have been created in Alberto Business Park, named after Victoria's consort. With easy access to the economic centres and cheaper rent Vittoria has appealed to many companies, including DHL's Cattala offices. Corona-Sesta was developed in the post-war years, as part of a new residential boom as Cattala adjusted to life after occupation and the emergency government tried to encourage economic growth. Located in the east of the town, it benefited from the construction of the M2 motorway a few minutes drive away and its expansion in 1990. Vittoria continues to grow even today. Suburban development and the large number of affluent city-dwellers that move to a quieter life ensures a steady stream of new residents to the town and one of the recent waves led to the creation of Meandrati, an estate that resembles more Americanised desires of modern buyers. One of the older areas of the town is the Borough of Hannover, named after the royal house that Victoria heralded from, with a minor change in the spelling. Hannover is the wealthiest district in Vittoria and is home to Hannover Park, a controversial regeneration project that led to the demolition of a number of old buildings and replacing them with what locals described as "blue boxes". A wider redevelopment of Hannover was stopped in the Supreme Court when the local elite joined with the province's millionaires in demanding an end to the Park plan and forced developers to back down in a landmark ruling. I hope you enjoyed learning about Vittoria's past and present and I leave you with a Hall-to-Market mosaic stretching across the town. Thank you for visiting Cattala.
  14. Cattala (AIN)

    Benedict. emperordaniel: Thank you both! And yes Daniel - the modern development around railway stations is quite common here too. In my town, there's been a lot of construction around the main station in recent years with 20+ storey towers being built in a town of less than 100,000 people. Welcome back to Cattala, where today we're on a whistle-stop tour of two of the main areas we've been visiting recently. The last seven updates have been focused on Celeste and Lessito, two regions that are very, very different. Celeste is the capital of the nation and has been the power base of the monarchy for 1000 years. Once again it is emerging as a grand city with not only an illustrious past, but with a highly promising future too. Whilst Lessito is the breadbasket of Cattala, and has sustained agriculture since the time of the Aristotle. The sleepy, rural lifestyle is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the western cities but the region still contributes a large amount to the economy - Cattala is a major global wine exporter and the high levels of food security in the country is achieved mostly thanks to Lessito's farmers. Celeste is a major transport hub between the two biggest cities in Cattala and its terminal station is served by both InterCity and national railway services. The city also has a major domestic and international airport and remains the home of the country's political, social and class elite. Rumours of a bid to host a major international sporting event have been circulating for many years. Thanks for visiting Cattala, and seeing how diverse and unique this Mediterranean island really is.
  15. Celeste | Victoria's March

    Apologies for the downtime that all of my updates are now experiencing. Cattala is published on five websites all at once and, with it being featured here on Simtropolis, it has overloaded Dropbox and they have now disabled all public links from my account. I have moved the images for this update onto other servers, but obviously this is only a temporary fix. Apologies again. [i]Thomas[/i]
  16. Cattala (AIN)

    emperordaniel: Thank you! MarkusJ: Thanks very much for the comment, and yes it did take a fair while but the result is what I desired. Vivapanda: Thanks, I'm glad you liked that one. rewright: Thank you! sim_link: Glowing at night is exactly what that was going for. So this interlude seems to be taking a bit longer than I expected, as I've been on holiday and busy building motorways and Celeste. But don't despair, as our Lessito journey will be returning shortly. Today we're visiting the north of Celeste, the opposite end of the city to Aziens. Vittoria is one of the three initial districts of the capital that I built in the previous incarnation of Celeste, and now it's been made bigger, better and 100% more functional than before. Here is its smaller station, Stazione di Alberto, pictured during the late evening. It's a busy little station, with many commuter trains from Vittoria, Celeste and Calora thundering past throughout the night. Vittoria is the northernmost district of Celeste's metropolitan area, and was one of few parts of the city not to be adversely affected by the colonisation of Cattala in the 19th century. The British governor relocated the capital to Calora Harbour, then the main port of trade with the Empire. Much of Celeste fell into disrepair as the monarchy was pushed aside and wealth moved to Jennai and Calora. It benefited from becoming a major station on the new railway line between the two main economic cities and saw substantial development as wealthy Caloran merchants and businessmen left the crowded city and wanted a quieter life in the country or the comforts of home in the Shires. Vittoria, named after the reigning Queen, boomed. As more and more people moved in to the new town, it drew in the Celestinian, British and Caloran middle classes and caused a further depopulation of the derelict royal city and became a sprawling settlement around the railway line. In its own right, Vittoria rapidly became independent from Celeste. In recent times, Vittoria has continued to serve as a commuter town for both Calora and the reinvigorated Celeste. As the old city expanded northwards, it was swallowed back into the capital and benefits from the faster and more frequent railway services to all three of the country's main cities. Since the 1980s, many offices have been created in Alberto Business Park, named after Victoria's consort. With easy access to the economic centres and cheaper rent Vittoria has appealed to many companies, including DHL's Cattala offices. Corona-Sesta was developed in the post-war years, as part of a new residential boom as Cattala adjusted to life after occupation and the emergency government tried to encourage economic growth. Located in the east of the town, it benefited from the construction of the M2 motorway a few minutes drive away and its expansion in 1990. Vittoria continues to grow even today. Suburban development and the large number of affluent city-dwellers that move to a quieter life ensures a steady stream of new residents to the town and one of the recent waves led to the creation of Meandrati, an estate that resembles more Americanised desires of modern buyers. One of the older areas of the town is the Borough of Hannover, named after the royal house that Victoria heralded from, with a minor change in the spelling. Hannover is the wealthiest district in Vittoria and is home to Hannover Park, a controversial regeneration project that led to the demolition of a number of old buildings and replacing them with what locals described as "blue boxes". A wider redevelopment of Hannover was stopped in the Supreme Court when the local elite joined with the province's millionaires in demanding an end to the Park plan and forced developers to back down in a landmark ruling. I hope you enjoyed learning about Vittoria's past and present and I leave you with a Hall-to-Market mosaic stretching across the town. Thank you for visiting Cattala.
  17. Ben's Top Ten +10

    Yay I got into the +10 - first time in a long time I've been anywhere on that list.
  18. Sculpting Nature, Part 6 (Done. Finally!)

    Beautiful region you have there, the detail is incredible. I'm very jealous of your MMP talents.
  19. JCO - August 12th, 2012

    Thank you Jesus! I feel privileged.
  20. Celeste | Glass and Steel

    Replies will come in the next update! We'll be back in Lessito soon, but first, an interlude in the capital. This is the seventy-seventh update of Cattala, and the nineteenth of Celeste, so I thought it was about time I started showing some urban scenes. And here, is Aziens! Aziens is the culmination of three decades of development and regeneration in the east of the city. Celeste was once the commanding, dominant city of Cattala but the rise of heavy industry and commerce in Jennai meant that Celeste fell into decline, and is now a third of the size of the economic powerhouse. By the 1970s, even Calora was developing and growing faster and bigger and better than the capital. Celeste was the old face of Cattala - history, pomp, pagentry - with no place in the present. It's streets were clogged with tourists, not money-makers and businessmen. So a plan was created, to turn a former hunting ground and war-ravaged brownfield site south of the old city into a bustling modern district, a hub of sport and enterprise alike. By the mid-1980s, the Stadio di Lady Eliza was complete and the rest, is history. Public broadcaster RMI was roped into the redevelopment, and built a brand new media park just off the main carriageway into Celeste. Light industrial warehouses hugged television studios and offices for the media elite. RMI's brand new headquarters were finished by 1995, a mix of modern architecture and classic cubic design. The centrepiece of the multi-million lira project, RMI moved its news, television, production and radio services to the complex from their old homes spread across Calora, Jennai and Celeste. The rest of the site was leased to international broadcasters, producers and media companies. The international media building is home to more than 20 different news channels from around the world, with many basing here due to easy road and rail access to the city centre, Calora, Jennai and all three of Cattala's major airports. There's also a good view of the modern skyline. Aziens wouldn't have existed without the central station. Cattala's third-largest station is also a changeover point if you want to go to the north, the rest of Amosseri and is a key terminal between Jennai and Calora. The InterCity services between the three carries millions of passengers a year, more than all the other lines combined. Next time, it's back to Lessito for the rest of our A25 journey. Here's a map of the province, showing you all the places we've been over the past 18 months. The five towns and villages in the southern island, along with San Pietro, were visited last summer and you can clearly see the route of the A25 from San Pietro to Callavre, where we left off. See you then!
  21. Lessito | All for Progress

    Replies: Update 74 grstudios: Thank you! I use BLS Farm Fields Volume 3, Mickebear's farms and Simgoober's farm fields. I hope that helps. 10000000000000: I'm sure we can find something for you. Lost Realist: That's great to hear, Cattala was inspired by my visit to Tuscany four years ago and that trip really inspires Lessito especially. MilitantRadical: Thanks! Hazani Pratama: Thank you for the kind words. Kruness: On the BSC LEX, search for a member called Mickebear. If you want Mediterranean buildings, download everything he makes. Hellken: I don't actually use that set specifically, but practically I do since I use those fields and almost all of those lots he's redesigned. That's a great link, though. Simul8ter8: Thanks mate! majorpickhead: Thank you very much. Skimbo: Thanks. That's what this is aiming to do, just with 100% less Eurozone crisis than the news! david030400: Thank you very much. Welcome back to southern Lessito, where we're continuing to follow the A25 road eastwards towards the A45 bridge. Today we're in Callavre, as we move ever closer to the end of our journey. Callavre is a small town, like so many others in Lessito, that has hugely benefited from the improved transport connection to the economic heartland of Cattala, in the south west. Callavre now has a fast A-road connection and the South Coast Main Line link to Jennai and the rest of Lessito, speeding the distribution of goods and improving access to Roumeli and the other islands of the Ionian. The A25 broadens as it reaches Callavre, due to the later split into the much-busier A3 and A45 roads, spreading Jennaian traffic to the northern reaches of Cape Almae and our old Lessito haunt, Ontano Island. Due to the easy access to the road from the west of Callavre, lorries and other heavy vehicles often try to navigate the tight roads of the town centre to try and reach the triple carriageway, leading to calls for a bypass or eastern access road. Callavre is served by a small station that also acts as a hotel, competing with many local farms that rent out rooms and converted barns to tourists. Commuter trains from and to Jennai speed through the station throughout the day, although most do now stop at the station since the town has grown substantially in the last 50 years. Here we can see a number of those farms that have sought to ply the tourist industry with their converted barns and outbuildings, some more successfully than others. The busy railway has severely affected the volume of tourists to Callavre in recent years, especially with the higher speed and more frequent trains travelling to Ontano and central Lessito. Some have countered this fall in tourism by inducing businesses to use smaller buildings as offices, benefiting from the very same thing that hurt other income-boosting ventures. Outside of the town and away from the busy roads and railway, Callavre is much more like the rest of Lessito. The commuter enclave is surrounded by sprawling olive trees, vineyards and fields of fruits of various colours and flavours. The streams of the hills weave and flow just the same as anywhere else in rural Cattala... just a tad more managed, mind. Pendella lies to the east of Callavre, further along the A25's edge. It sits in a narrow spit of land between the lorry-lined carriageway and the passenger-laden railway that gets narrower the closer you get to the eastern coastline. To end today, another overview of the village, but on a summers night instead of the day. The station is open, the road's lights are glaring, but the town tries to sleep. Once it could, easily, but now, the times are different. Progress.
  22. Cattala (AIN)

    Thank you both. And Benedict, there's a little more to go! We'll be back in Lessito soon, but first, an interlude in the capital. This is the seventy-sixth update of Cattala, and the nineteenth of Celeste, so I thought it was about time I started showing some urban scenes. And here, is Aziens! Aziens is the culmination of three decades of development and regeneration in the east of the city. Celeste was once the commanding, dominant city of Cattala but the rise of heavy industry and commerce in Jennai meant that Celeste fell into decline, and is now a third of the size of the economic powerhouse. By the 1970s, even Calora was developing and growing faster and bigger and better than the capital. Celeste was the old face of Cattala - history, pomp, pagentry - with no place in the present. It's streets were clogged with tourists, not money-makers and businessmen. So a plan was created, to turn a former hunting ground and war-ravaged brownfield site south of the old city into a bustling modern district, a hub of sport and enterprise alike. By the mid-1980s, the Stadio di Lady Eliza was complete and the rest, is history. Public broadcaster RMI was roped into the redevelopment, and built a brand new media park just off the main carriageway into Celeste. Light industrial warehouses hugged television studios and offices for the media elite. RMI's brand new headquarters were finished by 1995, a mix of modern architecture and classic cubic design. The centrepiece of the multi-million lira project, RMI moved its news, television, production and radio services to the complex from their old homes spread across Calora, Jennai and Celeste. The rest of the site was leased to international broadcasters, producers and media companies. The international media building is home to more than 20 different news channels from around the world, with many basing here due to easy road and rail access to the city centre, Calora, Jennai and all three of Cattala's major airports. There's also a good view of the modern skyline. Aziens wouldn't have existed without the central station. Cattala's third-largest station is also a changeover point if you want to go to the north, the rest of Amosseri and is a key terminal between Jennai and Calora. The InterCity services between the three carries millions of passengers a year, more than all the other lines combined. Next time, it's back to Lessito for the rest of our A25 journey. Here's a map of the province, showing you all the places we've been over the past 18 months. The five towns and villages in the southern island, along with San Pietro, were visited last summer and you can clearly see the route of the A25 from San Pietro to Callavre, where we left off. See you then!
  23. Update 2 - Operation Barbarossa |

    Incredible. That's all I can say.
  24. Special Update: Harvest Time in Nueva Iberia

    What a great way to showcase some fantastic new MMPs, this update is really inspiring.
  25. Cattala (AIN)

    Thank you, Benedict. Much appreciated. Welcome back to southern Lessito, where we're continuing to follow the A25 road eastwards towards the A45 bridge. Today we're in Callavre, as we move ever closer to the end of our journey. Callavre is a small town, like so many others in Lessito, that has hugely benefited from the improved transport connection to the economic heartland of Cattala, in the south west. Callavre now has a fast A-road connection and the South Coast Main Line link to Jennai and the rest of Lessito, speeding the distribution of goods and improving access to Roumeli and the other islands of the Ionian. The A25 broadens as it reaches Callavre, due to the later split into the much-busier A3 and A45 roads, spreading Jennaian traffic to the northern reaches of Cape Almae and our old Lessito haunt, Ontano Island. Due to the easy access to the road from the west of Callavre, lorries and other heavy vehicles often try to navigate the tight roads of the town centre to try and reach the triple carriageway, leading to calls for a bypass or eastern access road. Callavre is served by a small station that also acts as a hotel, competing with many local farms that rent out rooms and converted barns to tourists. Commuter trains from and to Jennai speed through the station throughout the day, although most do now stop at the station since the town has grown substantially in the last 50 years. Here we can see a number of those farms that have sought to ply the tourist industry with their converted barns and outbuildings, some more successfully than others. The busy railway has severely affected the volume of tourists to Callavre in recent years, especially with the higher speed and more frequent trains travelling to Ontano and central Lessito. Some have countered this fall in tourism by inducing businesses to use smaller buildings as offices, benefiting from the very same thing that hurt other income-boosting ventures. Outside of the town and away from the busy roads and railway, Callavre is much more like the rest of Lessito. The commuter enclave is surrounded by sprawling olive trees, vineyards and fields of fruits of various colours and flavours. The streams of the hills weave and flow just the same as anywhere else in rural Cattala... just a tad more managed, mind. Pendella lies to the east of Callavre, further along the A25's edge. It sits in a narrow spit of land between the lorry-lined carriageway and the passenger-laden railway that gets narrower the closer you get to the eastern coastline. To end today, another overview of the village, but on a summers night instead of the day. The station is open, the road's lights are glaring, but the town tries to sleep. Once it could, easily, but now, the times are different. Progress.
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