#sims 4 train station | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

katesimblr · 2 years

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Chicago

This plot was a Commission request from a dear customer who agreed to me sharing this lot with my Patreons. On a 64x64 lot a small neighborhood was created, with a train station, a small park and a street with aging houses. The house I created should resemble the house of shameless. Outside it does that in any case and inside, I have adapted it to her Sim household. The house is a bit outdated, old, messy but still homely. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for letting me share it with you!

Thanks to all creators who made this house possible with their CC, like @13pumpkin31, @akuiyumi, @animefemme69, @bauvive, @chicklet, @dk-sims, @k-hippie, @msteaqueen, @Pocci Garden Breeze, @radioactivedotcom, @tatschu, @thetrashisout, @xldkx-cc and many many more.

Download CC

Download Tray files

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spookcy · 9 months

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Once I saw the train in the debug menu I knew I had make some sort of rundown train station, but I decided to convert it into a lounge/bar where sims can drink, dance, and play darts. There is also a little stable that cowfolk can leave their horse before entering and a more quiet area upstairs to just hang out and chat :)

Lot Info:

Placed on the “Palomino Junction” lot in Chestnut Ridge

Lot Type: Lounge

Lot Traits: Convivial, Great Acoustics, Natural Well (Wild Prairie Grass)

Lot Size: 50 x 50

Extra Info:

No CC

You can also find it on the gallery under ID: spookcy

Place with bb.moveobjects on

Tray Files: HERE (google drive) HERE (sfs)

(to add this to your game, download the files, unzip them, then add to your tray folder)

#sims 4 #the sims 4 #simblr #ts4 #mmcc #sims 4 build #sims 4 cc #sims 4 no cc #sims 4 horse ranch #horse ranch #chestnut ridge #saloon #train station #sims 4 lounge #palomino junction #sims 4 cowboy #sims 4 bar

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amethyxtnix · 1 year

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PROJECT: EVERGREEN HARBOUR

2. BUILD: THE CABOOSE BAR

Originally, one of the main train stations connecting Port Promise to its neighbouring areas, The Caboose Bar has now become a popular bar for the residents of Port Promise.

Area: Port Promise

Lot Size: 30 x 20

Lot Traits: Romantic Aura, Convivial, Great Acoustics

Some exterior shots of The Caboose Bar.

Though it has been renovated, it still remains its original exterior and some of its interior - ticket booths, train cart, clock station and ceiling beams. They are a nod to the build's historical purpose and significance.

The bar also has two toilets and a staff room. And of course, it showcases the talents of local residents. So grab a drink or two and have a chat or listen to local performances!

The train platform has also been transformed to an outdoor dining area. And it features an original train cart!

And just some extra shots of the glass roof - really love the shadows and lighting!

EA Gallery: amethyxtnix

#the sims 4 #project: evergreen harbour #show us your builds #speed build #the caboose bar #train station #bar #ts4 #sims 4 #evergreen harbour

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strangelovekraft · 1 year

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Basegame Railway Museum & Club

Do you love trains?

Do you love model trains?

Do you want to teach your children to love trains?

Do you want to get married at a historical train station?

If you responded "yes" even once, you might love this old railway station converted into a museum and event space. No packs or CC or any kind needed.

The outside of the station is greatly influenced by historical Scandinavian railway stations.

Railway lines were the life-blood of the industrializing world and many small communities were vitalized by the presence of a railway station.

While we have the railroad system to thank for our modern world today, many lives were lost in the construction and operation of these metal veins of industry.

This museum has preserved a historical railway station and a passenger train car for the future generations to commemorate the history of railways.

The historical station lobby has been transformed into a bar and restaurant space and a vast hall to host dancing, music and other event activities.

The upstairs offers a more relaxed lobby to enjoy history, cocktails and live music.

The station has also been updated with a spacious bathroom for families with toddlers.

Children of all ages love this whimsical play area, and can safely play in full view while adults attend various events in the neighbouring event space.

Suitable for a small wedding, indie music event or even a loving farewell to a life-long train enthusiast, this beautiful, intimate space is decorated by and for train enthusiasts.

As magical to adults as it is to children, a miniature railroad world showing the journey of people and goods on the rails and sea, put together by the loving hands of Newcrest Railway History Society.

There is also a version of this in the gallery falsely flagged as CC, that features gorgeous thematic train paintings by talented creator ID: MISSPIE03 and creator ID: MBARNET, though also this version should be downloadable with no packs or CC.

Bring your family and friends to enjoy this piece of entertainment and history at:

Creator ID: Strangelovekraft

or Item name: Railway Club BSGM

#sims 4 #the sims 4 #ts4 build #sims 4 build #ts4 museum #ts4 base game #sims 4 base game #base game only #sims 4 wedding #ts4 wedding #train station #railway #ts4 build download #sims 4 download #simblr

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victorluvsalice · 2 years

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Which is “run home and let the ordinary mortals take a quick nap so they’d be awake to watch the final countdown on TV.” XD Look, all that running about at the festival tires a Sim out! But they managed to wake up long enough to catch the last half-hour of New Year’s Eve TV and the big moment. :D Everybody cheered, Alice and Victor celebrated with a quick cheek kiss, and then they went to bed while Smiler finished off their term paper edits and sent it off for grading. XD An excellent holiday for all!

But not an excellent house. . .yeah, remember how I was like “WOW, this place is a lot smaller than I thought” back in post #1 of this update?

Next time, the gang moves to a much BIGGER place. Time to start the challenge of haunted Henford-on-Bagley!

#sims 4 #the lazy save #smiler always #the smiler #victor van dort #alice liddell #valicer #yeah poor Victor and Alice were running pretty low on energy reserves #partied too hardy XD #but they got to watch the countdown and that's what matters #that and Smiler keeping up with their schoolwork XD #even with multiple moves and suchlike I WILL keep up their A average #but yeah next time things take a turn for the spooky #time to get the cottagecore occults train out of the station!#queued

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allisoncocanasia · 2 years

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TS4 GTA Maze Bank Tower Train Station Loading Screens free on Patreon

#sims 4 #gta 5 #gta #train #train station #maze bank #travel #transportation #loading screen #custom content

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rheya28 · 8 months

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Windenburg Train Station [Restaurant + Cafe ] ♥ The Sims 4: Speed Build // CC

♥ Hi guys, Today I present to you The Windenburg Train Station located in Windslar. This train station is known for it's Classical Architecture and beautiful historic interiors that has been conserved for decades. While the interior was updated with modern furniture's, the overall structure and essence of the building remains the same.

Located inside is a 5 star restaurant, "Florentine," and a café, "Stella's Cafe," where sims can dine and lounge while waiting.

The Windenburg Train Station is a multifunctional lot athat can be set as a restaurant or a Cafe. Some Spaces were left empty as I did not want to overly clutter the space with too many custom content. Feel free to decorate it!

Considering that this is a multifunctional lot, I recommend downloading LittleMsSam's Lock Door mod to lock doors in community lots. This will give you more control of the space. If you want your sims to specifically be seated inside the restaurant, I suggest locking the doors to the cafe and other parts of the building.

READ ME ♥ Please make sure to turn on bb.moveobjects on! ♥ Please DO NOT reupload or claim as your own. ♥ Feel free to tag me if you are using it, I love seeing my build in other peoples save file but please make sure to credit me. ♥ This is a huge build and is very cc heavy, so beware. I did however tried to use cc's from the same creators so it is easier to manage and download! I used alot of cc's from @felixandresims @harrie-cc @charlypancakes @pierisim and more!

SPEED BUILD VIDEO

0:02 Intro

1:51 Speed Build

28:21 Photos

♥ Lot Details:

Lot Name: The Windenburg Train Station

Lot size: 64x64

Location: Winslar, Windenburg

♥ MODS:

TOOL MOD by TwistedMexi

♥ CC LIST:

Note: I reuse a lot of the same cc in all my builds, specifically cc's from felixandre, HeyHarrie, Tuds, and Pierisim so if you're interested in downloading past, present, future build from me i suggest getting all their cc sets to make downloading a little easier! other creators include Sooky, Charlypancakes, Sixam, Thecluttercat, Myshunosun, awingedllama, Peacemaker, kiwisim4. This will also ensure that the lots are complete and are not missing any items upon downloading !

Awingedllama: Boho Living, Apartment Therapy, Nostalgia Living

Sooky: Paintings (all)

Felixandre x Harrie: Baysic, Jardane, livin Rum, Orjanic, Kichen

Caiocc: Cozy Set up

Charly Pancakes: Munch, Maple & S Construction, Lighthouse Collection, Chalk, Miscellenea, Modish, Slouch

FelixAndre: Chateau, Berlin, Colonial, Florence, Gatsby, Georgian, Gothic Revival, Grove, Kyoto, London, November 2017 set, Paris, Shop the look Season 2, Florence, Berlin

Harrie: Heritage, Coastal, Brownstone, Kwatei, Octave, Shop the look, Spoons

Kaiso: Rusti.co

Kiwisim4: Blockhouse Dining

Little DicaL Countryside Cabin, Greasy Goods, Rise & Grind, Roman Holiday

Madame Ria: Basic Luxe Kitchen, Cottage Living Wallpaper addon solid colours no wood,

Mycupofcc: Maple Manor

TheCluttercat: Dandy Diary, Sunny Sundae

Myshunosun : Daria, Dawn Living, Herbalist Kitchen

Peacemaker: Hamptons, Mina Kitchen

Pierisim: Autie Vera, Coldbrew, David Apartment, Domain Du Clos, MCM, Oak House, The office, Tilable, Winter Garden

Charlypancakes x Pierisim: Precious Promises

The plumbob Tea society: Cottage Garden

mlysmakescc: Pufferhead

Surelysims: Office space

Sixam: Hotel Bedroom

Tuds: Cave, Cross, IND

Taurus Design: Angela Bedroom, Lilith Chilling Areas

Whos is Sage: SImply striking Kitchen

♥ Tray file ●Origin ID: Applez ●Twitter: Rheya28__ ●Tiktok: Rheya28__ ●Patreon: Rheya28 ●Youtube: Rheya28__

#sims 4 #ts4 #sims #thesims4 #showusyourbuilds #sims 4 builds #builds #thesims #the sims 4 screenshots #build

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simtleman · 4 months

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The Venice Express (Download Tray Files & CC)

So I've been receiving a few DMs asking me whether my lots are up on The Gallery or somewhere else to be downloaded. To be more specific, my Grand Express (Columbia Station) Lot seems to be getting a lot of attention (which I'm so, so glad!).

As you may already know if you follow my Tumblr, my game and therefore my save file is kinda messed up ever since the last update (mostly my UI), so unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to share that lot with you guys. However, I've decided to create a brand new train from scratch and finally contribute somehow to this thriving historical Sims 4 community I'm loving so much. I may not have the talent to create CC myself, but as a former stylist I sure can put things others have created together to make 'em look nice lol. Without further delay, allow me to introduce you to The Venice Express!

Clearly inspired by the legendary and breathtaking Venice Simplon Orient-Express, the lot consists of a three wagon train (two of them with private cabins, the third one featuring a lounge bar and a small kitchen), a log cabin and a recreation area with a wooden arbor. Here are some screenshots:

Private cabins (they're all practically equal):

Lounge bar wagon/kitchen:

Log cabin:

Before you go ahead and download it into your game, a few IMPORTANT disclaimers:

The lot is a 50x50. If you want the enviroment to look just like my screenshots, make sure to place it in the big lot on top of the hill on Mount Komorebi.

I use ReShade in all my screenshots, so lighting/colors may vary from what it looks like on your game.

I used items from a few expansions and packs (listed in picture below), so if you don't own them those items might be replaced with others.

Like all my builds, this is a heavily CC based lot. If you don't have a powerful PC, it might get laggy while trying to play with it.

Regarding the CC, I do not own nor take credit from any item included within this lot. All credit goes to their amazing creators.

The .ZIP file (3.19 GB) includes two folders: one for the Tray Files and another one with all the CC. I'm 100% sure all the CC I used is already public for everyone; if it's not, it's been definitely longer than three weeks since it has all been in my game and you (the CC creator) shouldn't be putting content behind permanent paywalls to begin with ;)

I did use bb.moveobjects on while building and have NOT playtested it, so you might have to move some items for them to be functional.

The lot is currently set as a Residential, but you can certainly change it to anything else... including a Residential Rental and perhaps making each cabin a different apartment.

That's all for me! This is the very first piece of content I share for others to download, so if you run into any kind of issues do not hesitate to let me know and I'll try to help best I can :)

If you do like it, please make sure to like this post (maybe even comment on it if you feel kind enough!) and please, please, PLEASE do tag me on your screenshots if you share them here on Tumblr. I'd love to see what you guys make with it!

Download: Mediafire

Enjoy ♡

#ts4 screenshots #ts4 retro #ts4 vintage #sims 4 cc #ts4 1920s #ts4 simblr #ts4 lot download #ts4 decades challenge #ts4 legacy

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vixonspixels · 9 months

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I finally got around to finishing off my train station! It will be going up on my patreon (free of charge) at some point over the next few days. Here's some of my favourite photo's, and lets just mention how stunning sims 4 lighting is 🤍 I've also attached a picture of how it looks in world map view. I think I did really well to get it to fit in so well in the area and the lot that i chose for it. I have it set as a cafe, but you could choose either a bubble tea store or a retail lot!

Built on the 40x30 lot in Conifer Station Evergreen Harbor, this lot boasts a number of different shops for your sim to try out. There is a cafe, bubble tea and thrift store that comes with a selfie wall incase you fancy a quick selfie , information centre and restrooms on the lower level. On the upper level there is a huge seating area with a view of the downstairs area, a waiting room complete with a large 4k television, computers and a huge choice of books to read. Along with a bakery for that sweet tooth, a subway and mcdonalds stand. You won't be travelling hungry here at the Evergreen Station

Youtube | Patreon | Pinterest | Tiktok | Twitter

#ts #ts4 #thesims #ts4 custom content #the sims 4 #the sims custom content #ts4 screenies #ts4 screenshots #the sims screenshots #my builds

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sonqgmi-sims · 2 months

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Part 2 out of my Custom Neighborhood series! You can find my video here! You can view my Neighborhood Templates video here!

Guidelines I follow as well as any helpful links to some name generators will be under the cut! ♥

Starting a new Neighborhood can be tough! Where do you even start? Well, this written guide and video above is here to help you get started!

STEP 1: Creating/Choosing a Template - If you want to start from COMPLETELY SCRATCH, open up SimCity 4 and create your own map! - If that's too difficult or you just don't want to (like me!), you can download maps off ModTheSims or use the ones already provided in-game for you! :)

STEP 2: Naming Your Neighborhood/Lots - Take inspiration from real life! - Generators also help A TONNN! Below I linked the ones I like most! Feel free to mix and match them to come up with more unique combinations!

Fantasy Name Generators (Town Names) Mithril And Mages - City Names Sims 2 Name Generator

STEP 3: Lot Planning - Personally, I like to keep Community Lots/Apartments near the center of the map, and Residential homes around the sides/edges - Decide if you want just Small, Medium and/or Large lots in your neighborhood! - Place them around the map to figure out a layout until you are satisfied!

STEP 4: Choosing Your Community Lots - Main Hood Essentials: Cemetery, Restaurant, Park, Clothing Store, Grocery Store - University Essentials: Library, Town Hall, Lounge, Gym - Shopping District Essentials: Everything you can imagine! I also like to leave space for Sims to own their own businesses! I tend to use Shopping Districts as Secondary-Main Neighborhoods! - Downtown Essentials: Bowling Alley, Bar, Restaurant, Cemetery - Vacation Essentials: Hotels, Parks, Landmarks After I have the essentials, I fill in the gaps with whatever I want! Like I added a Car Dealership in my main neighborhood as well as a Cosmetic Surgery clinic! I also added a Train Station in my University!

The Mithril and Mages link above is great to come up with names and business ideas too!

STEP 5: Decorating Your 'Hood - I do this overtime! I don't think there's ever been a time where I've stopped decorating! Start by placing some trees or the flower decorations around the empty lots you placed!

STEP 6: Neighborhood/Lot Descriptions - Personally the hardest thing about Custom Neighborhoods! The good thing though is these can be left blank and nobody would know! - My best advice is to wait until most of the 'hood is built up, and then come with some descriptions! - Photoshopping the pictures like EA/Maxis will create beautiful pictures for the Neighborhood Stories album! (This is another post for another time)

STEP 7: The Families - Can't have a complete neighborhood without Sims and Families! - Use the Random Aspect Generator to come up with various Personalities for your Sims! - If you forgot to use a Clean Template (No Townies), I found a mod that will change up their names! - Take inspiration from TV Shows or the other Sims games! I always tend to recreate the Broke Family's storyline and Malcolm Landgraab's storyline with 2 families in my neighborhoods! (I like having a Rich and a Poor family lmao)

Creating new neighborhoods is always so much fun! I hope some of these guidelines help you get inspired!

xoxox

#the sims 2 #sims 2 #ts2 #custom neighborhood #sims 2 custom neighborhood #sims 2 custom hood #worlds #mine #mods #sims 2 mods #sims youtuber

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simtastickennedy · 5 months

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My Favorite Sims 4 Builds

Just thought I would do a mini video on some of my favorite builds.

Shout out to the amazing creators!

Ralph Lauren Store & Restaurant

Target Shopping Center

Hooters

Classy Pink Night Club - Gallery ID xnicole11x

Newyork Steakhouse - Gallery ID Room_TK

New Orleans Home

Hamptons Home

Windenburg Train Station

NBA Basketball Arena - Gallery ID RGeetect

#sims 4 cc #sims 4 gameplay #sims 4 screenshots #youtube #the sims 4 #ts4 maxis match #sims 4 #ts4

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yourtongzhihazel · 1 month

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I've been thinking about getting Workers and Resources but have a two questions about it:

1. how low can you get those graphics to increase performance? my laptop is NOT built for gaming but I crave a planned economy simulator

2. does it have similar issues to cities skylines? either in terms of bugginess or gameplay plateauing and getting boring

thx so much :)

1: I do have a gaming laptop but to reduce its operation to about the same as a standard consumer laptop, I run 4 firefox windows each with 30 tabs and also have MATLAB constantly running. This eats about 80% of its functional ram and CPU/GPU power. Despite this sadist torture of my beloved silicon sister, she can still run W&R:SR adequately with their lowest auto settings. The game runs on unity (afaik) so you can customize most of the major things in the initial startup menu.

2: In my humble opinion, W&R:SR is in a completely different league to any other city builder. I would argue that it is the quintessential economy management sim.

It is a a slow game. It challenges your patience as much as it does your planning, management, and calculation skills. Expect to have the calculator open on your phone on in another window when playing and a notepad for tracking required manpower and economic consumption vs output. Does the game get boring? I would say sometimes it does! Waiting for an entire city to build up by itself can take several hours on maximum time speedup, which may or may not be your cup of tea.

Comparing W&R:SR to city skylines is like comparing a construction site to a lego set.

Sim management is about as specific as you can go without controlling each individual citizen. Command your citizens to go to specific buildings to work or wait for transit. Command your citizens to go to which stations or buildings for work or for play or for education, etc..

The biggest example of difference I like to use is the water management. In cities skylines, you drop a sewage dump, and a well then you connect magical underground pipes and call it a day. This will not work in W&R:SR. Water must reach a certain quality of treatment of your citizens will get sick. You have to power these facilities and also take sewage out from them. Water must be supplied to every building which workers work. Sewers must run on a downwards slope and pumps must be built if there is an unfortunate slope. Sewage can be treated to reduce pollution or to return some fresh water back into the system. Some factories, such as the concrete plant, requires water as a resource. If you cannot afford pipes or do not want to run pipes down to some stupid wood-cutting shack, you can use the water distributor/sewage hub as a water tank/septic tank and have your maintenance depots take care of them.

This doesn't even touch on having to supply heat and clear snow during winter, having enough granaries to survive the winter when crops don't grow, managing the waste, demolition, and recycling of materials, maintaining your aging vehicles with repair shops and supplying fuel for all your cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains, and buses, and much, much more.

Oh and there is a very vibrant modding scene; the devs even hold contests/votes to put popular mods into the vanilla game (with compensation and credit, ofc). It's also the only game where you can get tankie memes in the community page and actual propaganda.

It's a very dense game, to say the least, and it kicks my ass a lot but im too much of a commie and a masochist to say no.

#Hazel's press releases

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amethyxtnix · 1 year

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youtube

PROJECT: EVERGREEN HARBOUR

2. BUILD: THE CABOOSE BAR

happy watching!

and please don't forget to subscribe! it really means a lot!

#the sims 4 #show us your builds #speed build #sims 4 #ts4 #project: evergreen harbour #voiceover #YT #YouTube #the caboose bar #train station #bar #Youtube

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simsinlowspace · 2 years

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Freetime Posters - 12 Tinkering Hobby Posters

Happy Saturday everyone!

I've been working on these Freetime hobby posters for awhile now and I finally finished the first set! This will be a ten part series, one set for each hobby, and I'm planning to upload a new one each weekend (because if I don't set a schedule I'll never get this done lol). Today I'm sharing the Tinkering set. Swatch, info and download below the cut!

These are on my favorite poster mesh, @linacheries’ beautiful 4t2 conversion of Simsza’s National Park Prints (mesh is included) and feature 12 designs I made with Flaticon elements + a variety of Simlish fonts. All of them reference various items, locations and Sims in the game. (I'll update this post later with translations; I need to transplant a bunch of watermelons first -- I just really wanted to get these up!)

Translations: 1 & 2. Top: Aspir's Garage & Gas | Bottom: Good! Fast! Cheap! Inspired by Luis Aspir, tinkering enthusiast from Desiderata Valley (plus the little sign I've seen in every single mechanic I've ever patronized: If it's good and fast, it won't be cheap; If it's good and cheap, it won't be fast...) 3. Top: Fairchild Repair | Bottom: Plumbing & Electric Named for Waylon Fairchild, Pleasantview repairman 4. DIY gone awry? Call Bradshaw Repair Named for Arcadia Bradshaow, Pleasantview repairwoman 5. Top: Teeny Tikes | Bottom: The building blocks of a good childhood Named for the Teeny Tikes Activity Table 6: Top: Always use the right tool for the job | Bottom: Hamilton Tools Inspired by Daryl Hamilton, Riverblossom Hills repairman 7: Hamilton Tools Daryl Hamilton again 8: Will's Garage Named for the tinkering secret lot 9: Top: One Man's Junk Car Bottom: by Mechanically Minded Advertisement for the in-game item 10: Top: Want to make new friends? Bottom: Non-Deadly Robot Crafting Station Advertisement for the in-game item 11: Round & Round Model Train Set Advertisement for the in-game item 12: Top: Toy Robots! Bottom: powered by clean muon-crystal cold fusion! (this one reminds me of Animorphs, when Ax asked Jake if he meant nuclear power like what the Andelites used to power dolls for children. If you get that reference, cheers, fellow child of the last great decade!)

And of course, a numbered swatch is included. :)

Icons are by Freepik, smalllikeart, max.icons, surang, Smashicons, kerismaker, photo3idea_studio and Good Ware -- huge thanks as always to the designers for sharing their amazing work!

DOWNLOAD (SFS) Recolors are ~300KB -- hell fuzzy yes!

Lots of love, Spacey

UPDATE: Now that this series is complete, here is a master list of all the posts, plus a single download link for all the posters. All swatches are included, and files are sorted into folders so you can easily keep just what you like:

Tinkering Nature Arts & Crafts Fitness Science Cuisine Sports Games Music & Dance Film & Literature

DOWNLOAD ALL THE POSTERS (SFS) Recolors are ~8.5MB

You can now also get all the designs on BV's Travel Keeper!

#s2cc #ts2cc #ts2 download #sims 2 download #ts2 art #ts2 custom content #sims 2 custom content #s2 cc #ts2 #ts2 posters #ts2 wall decorations

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cinamun · 1 year

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Noooo Hope really is taking the next step into her adventure 😭

But I must ask, where did you find that subway/train station?

She got her young adult wings and starting flying!! She's on the train right now listening to SimZA.

Found that train station on reddit of all places!

It's on the gallery too!

40x30 lot. I used the art gallery lot in San Myshuno since the station is built underground and looks GREAT there but of course any lot this size will do! Enjoy!

#wcif

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transboysokka · 5 months

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@transuncletaylor made a post that really made me remember how easy it was to get lost back before we had smartphones and being home, it was just normal and they weren’t really essential, but TRAVELING omg…. When I would travel with my parents, no big deal at all. But traveling alone….

I used to live in Fuzhou, China, in like… 2018? In day-to-day life, smartphones were very much a thing by then- but without a VPN you couldn’t use pretty much any of the Big Western websites, including Google so now that I think about it, maps were much more difficult there. But that’s not my point right now.

Fuzhou’s kind of on the central coast, across the strait from Taiwan. On long weekends I would take the high-speed train about 4 hours to Hong Kong alone (most of my traveling is done alone) and BOY I never had ANY idea what was going on there. I wouldn’t bother with a SIM bc I would never be there for too long and there was free wifi in a lot of places (but, I’d find out, never in the places that mattered)

Anyway I would tend to just wander around Hong Kong without a real plan, hop on a ferry to some island I didn’t even know, wander around, get back on the ferry, go somewhere else to hike�� It was fun! I have a good sense of direction so I was always able to end up back at my hostel when I needed

Another important thing to know… my Chinese bank account (and I ONLY had a Chinese bank account) for some reason wouldn’t let me use my debit card or any ATMs when I was in Hong Kong. So it was very much a cash only situation but I was always pretty good at bringing the right amount

Well

Here’s the situation. It’s December 23rd. I’d taken a couple days off work so I could do a long weekend for my birthday (the 20th) and experience Christmas (which was really not celebrated at all in Fuzhou) but I DO have to work the next day, the 24th and I can’t remember why but there was something really important happening that day that definitely couldn’t be missed.

The train to Fuzhou ran something like twice a day and my ticket was for the afternoon train. Security and immigration took unexpectedly WAYYYYY too long and for the first time in my life I missed my train.

So here I am, without any money to even buy another ticket if I want to, PAST immigration with no real way to reenter Hong Kong, with no phone signal or Wi-Fi, and HAVE to work the next day…

I go up to the help desk and explain what happened and they were like “Well, you gotta go somewhere so we’ll stick you on the next train to Shenzhen” which is right over the border but I’m thinking “great because at least I’ll be in China with a phone signal and it should be easy to get a train from there”

So I get to Shenzhen. Which is a HUGE city that I know nothing about and have never been to before. I find the ticket line at the station. Because I was a foreigner, I was required to buy tickets in person instead of from the machines? There were a lot of rules like that, I’m not really sure what was up with that. So I get in the line which takes FIVE HOURS to get to the front of. Not even joking. That’s also for some reason not completely unheard of there. By now it’s probably like 7pm? I tell the lady I need to get to Fuzhou TONIGHT and I’ll take a standing ticket if I have to and she says they JUST sold out but I can get an unreasonably expensive business class ticket for 7am the next day if I want.

I take it. At least I can afford it now bc I’m back in China

Then I gotta figure out where to stay. I get on the Chinese version of like booking.com or whatever people use nowadays and find a shitty hostel that accepts foreigners. Many hotels and hostels DIDN’T take foreigners bc they’re allowed to choose and you need a special license of something. So the closest place that had a bed and would take me was AN HOUR AWAY on the metro.

Okay good I finally get there and I’m exhausted.

I pass out and wake up at like 4 or 5am to make my morning train. I try to take a faster route back to the train station and somehow it’s WAY slower. I ALMOST MISS THAT TRAIN TOO. But I do get on and NOW IM STRESSED BECAUSE I HAVE TO WORK AT NOON and the train is gonna pull up in Fuzhou at like 11:30.

I get in and RUN to work, luggage and all, and make it but oof how exhausting, Merry Christmas…

Not nearly as dramatic as going missing in Seoul, but I do love this specific genre of story 😆

#text

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