Project Status

Made some progress on the Park St. "Under" station. A note on the "under". The Boston El and MTA had this thing about different names for different lines at the same station. In some places such as Washington (now known as Downtown Crossing) they used Winter St. for the mainline elevated southbound station, and Summer St. for the northbound (as they were offset somewhat) and Washington for both sides of the CDL subway. I guess they could have named Park St. on the CDL as Tremont St but that might have caused confusion so they used the "Park St. Under" designation, providing a different name but tying it in to the important trolley subway station above.

Interestingly there is also "South Station Under" which is not named that because of the RR station of the same name above it but the one-time Altantic Ave El stop above the street that was torn down in the 1930's!

All of this is charming but probably confusing for visitors, so the MBTA has sensibly adopted common names for locations where lines intersect so now Park St. is the name for both Red and Green lines with tracks 1-4 the Green and 5 and 6 the Red line platforms.

Well enough of that digression, back to Park St Under. This is a slightly more complex station as it has 3 platforms (center island as well as 2 side platforms) and a roof line that is flat on the east end (due to the Tremont St. subway's Park St. station directly above) and a double arched roof on the west end. Finally figured out how to make an arched roof with Sketchup - draw an arc then a line across the endpoints to cause a surface to be generated, push that surface across the entire length of the roof to make a partial cylinder, then delete the extra surfaces created to leave just the roof.

I still need to play around with images and see if I can create a mosaic station name to place on the wall. Tonight is RR club so that will have to wait for tomorrow.