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Turbine and Whirlpool Interchanges

Started by Haljackey, November 26, 2011, 01:46:21 PM

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Haljackey

Section 12: Turbine and Whirlpool Interchanges

     

Turbine interchanges are large high-speed and high capacity RHWxRHW interchanges. They take up lots of space and cost a lot of money, but are still cheaper than stack interchanges. Turbine interchanges offer slightly less vehicle capacity because the ramps typically turn more often and change height quicker. They also require a lot of land to construct.

The whirlpool interchange requires fewer levels (usually two or three) while retaining semi-directional ramps throughout, and has its left-turning ramps sweep around the center of the interchange in a spiral pattern in right-hand driving.

12.1: Standard Turbine Interchange

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Haljackey

Section 12.1: Standard Turbine Interchange. (Created by mrtnrln)

1. Here's our location for our interchange, where two RHWs meet. I left the middle intentionally blank.


2. Next we make some helper stretches of RHW. These helpers are in-line with one stretch of the RHW and will be demolished later, but they can help with getting the dimensions right.


3. Next we lay 1x1 road stubs of 12 tiles long at either side of the helper stretch. Note that these tiles are in-line with the other RHW.


4. Now use a hole digger to make a tunnel entrance slope. Place these hole diggers one tile away from the 1x1 stubs.


5. Now place a A-wide or a FARHW-ramp at the flat section before the tunnel entrance.


6. Demolish a 2x1 area of the stubs and lay some RHW there. Connect the MIS ramp with a B-style RHW-4 ramp.


7. Now place a RHW-4 Smooth Outer curve. Don't worry about the stubs now...


8. ... because we demolish the curve right afterwards, leaving the stubs.


9. Drag out the RHW-4 from the stubs (re-drag the curve if it doesn't work immediately)...


10. ... and place the Smooth Curve again.


11. Connect the RHW-4 Ramp with the main RHW.


12. Repeat Step 4 to 11 at the opposite side of the interchange.


13. Demolish a 2x2 section of the stubs and drag a stretch of RHW on tile away from the other RHW-4 ramp. If it's right, you'll now have an area of 2x9 tiles of road stubs.


14. Demolish the helper RHW-stretch and replace it by stubs like this. It will mark an area of 20x20 tiles.


15. Place RHW stretches at each end.


16. Connect the other two main stretches of the main RHWs to the turbine.


17.


18.


19. Connect the inner stretch of RHW from one quarter with the outer RHW stretch of another quarter. Make sure the curve radius is just large enough to place smooth curves.


20.


21. Use hole diggers to make some OWR-tunnels. MAKE SURE NO ROAD TILES SURROUND THE TUNNEL ENTRANCE! Otherwise they will be demolished and can't be build on these locations again.


22. Connect the RHW with the tunnels.


23. Repeat step 19 to 22 a few times and connect the RHW ends from the other ends of the OWR tunnel to the main RHW. As you can see, this interchange barely fits in a small city tile, giving you the idea how large this interchange is.


24. Now we lower the center like this with hole diggers.


25. For one of the RHWs we make an overpass. You can do this by sinking one of the RHWs even further or when it can't be done (in this case, because I would be building under sea level) raise one of the RHWs like this.


26. We create an onslope RHW overpass.


27. Drag out the stretches of RHW from the overpass and drag a RHW-4 underneath it:


28. The following step can be tricky and doesn't always work out that well. Connect the RHWs in the middle to the main RHWs on the outside with Avenue tunnels. Now here's the tricky part: the OWR-tunnels might disappear. When this happens, flatten the tunnel entrance ramps for these tunnels and repeat step 19 to 23. This happened to me when I was making this guide. Anyway, the end result looks like this:

Twyla


Would this be a Turbine Interchange, or am I misunderstanding the definition?

Haljackey

Twyla: Yup, it's pretty straightened out, but that's a turbine all right. Compare it to the first diagram at the top of this thread.

lucasfg3

Unfortunately I can't see the pictures, so that's impossible to build a turbine interchange.
SimCity 4

Tarkus

Unfortunately, that's the case with many tutorials, development threads, and Mayor's Diaries/City Journals on both SC4 Devotion and Simtropolis.  The images in this tutorial were hosted on Imageshack, which was an extremely popular internet host in this community for a very long time.  However, a few years ago, they went to a paid subscription-only model and wiped out a lot of forum content in the process.  Sadly, even for those who have their images backed up locally, the process of finding all the broken Imageshack links and re-uploading and re-referencing the files on another image host is an extremely time-consuming task.  The Imageshack change wiped out good portion of my own work, including most of my MD, but I haven't had the time to go through and fix the whole thing.

The RHW mod has also changed substantially since this tutorial and most of the others were written, so it'd probably require a new tutorial in any case.

-Alex