A Setback

Finally finished the towers for the Longfellow Bridge center span and textured it with some dirty stone texture I downloaded off the web, then updated the shape in the shapes directory (I had already placed an earlier model so I just updated it with the new model). However when I open RE and navigate to the Charles River to look at the bridge, the RE crashes. So something is wrong. The new bridge has a lot of polys (over 9000) so perhaps it is too large for MSTS? I'll have to research to see if there is an upper limit.

After thinking about it, I am going to save off the towers (which I did as a component) into a separate shape then revert the center span to just the bridge itself without the towers. Then try placing each tower in the RE by itself, maybe that will work. I may try simplifying the tower to reduce its poly count. The spherical roof alone has about 100, I should be able to redo that and get it down.

For fun yesterday I downloaded a new version of London Underground Northern Line which I heard about on UK Trainsim. I like this one much better than the earlier version. They did a nice job on the scenery. Just ran a short activity from Golders Green to Edgeware. I am a big fan of the LU as I rememebr riding it as a child back when we still lived in England. I had an aunt and uncle that lived at the time near Waterloo and I still remember going with my parents to see them, steam train to Fenchurch St. then District Line then probably Bakerloo as I remember the station Elephant and Castle, the name intrigued me. We probably rode on the 1938 Tube Stock based on what I remember of the train interior.

In subsequent trips to England as an adult I have renewed my acquaintance with the LU, most recently last year when my wife and I traveled from Balham (where my suster lives) to Kings Cross then a few days later back from KK to Heathrow to fly home. I was glad to see the 1973 Tube Stock still soldiering on the Piccadilly, they still sound like Underground trains are supposed to. I guess by the next time I get over there, everything will have the modern electronic drives like our Red Line 01800's and all the old stuff will be gone.

In other transit notes, over the weekend we went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which required a ride on the Red Line from Alewife to Park St. (where I got to check out the Longfellow Bridge towers one more time) then the Green Line E train which I hadn't been on since we lived in Jamaica Plain as a child. Of course in my mind I kept thinking "how would I model this in MSTS" as we went along ... no way I would do a Green Line, too much urban scenery on the surface! BTW I noticed that the signs at Park St. and the maps still refer to this as the "Arborway" line, even though from what I hear bringing the line back beyond Heath St. now seems to be dead as far as the T is concerned :(