#tarmingham

Sorry for taking so long to get a new upload out, been busy with IRL stuff over the last month. But I have some art in the works so there is stuff on the way, and some of them are not an illustration for Tales of the Tarmingham Overhead this time. But it is a stand alone drawing relating to Tarmingham, featuring one of the locations on the Overhead and is right in the centre of Tarmingham.

Here we see Danwood and Sanworth pulling into Tarmingham City Centre Station during the rush hour on a warm summers day in 2021 (the reason I choose to set the image around 2021 and not 24 is because I have a piece of lore about a war that starts in 22 that happens in the 29A timeline, and it has something to do with an AI Sentient Machine army. I'll be doing more lore relating to this event, and this war at a later date and when I release the official 29A timeline) while on their usual service to seaside town of Searonby. Tarmingham City Centre is as it's name implies is located in the centre of the city of Tarmingham serving it's main financial and shopping district and is a major interchange and junction on the Overhead with both the line to Ronston Quarter another major junction with lines from there branching off to Walaceton, Searonby, Greenham, and the south city line to band the line to Blburgh Oakland, and the station is where the western city line to Slaidon Marsh begins and is a starting point for the newest line on the Overhead the city circle line, and consists of four platforms.

Opening with the first section of the Overhead in 1864 as part of the line to Walaceton, albeit without delay after an incident that occurred at the station that became the railways first major accident, when a supplies train was driven by a bunch of rioting protesters from the southern part of the city at full speed off the end of the then under construction station with the engines boiler exploding upon impact with the ground, destroying and damaging several nearby buildings in the process with the engines boiler being sent flying thousands of feet into the air and landing inside the hull of a merchant freighter. The station opening as part of the section between GER's terminus at Tarmingham Piccadilly Street and the GE&SEJR's terminus at Ruston Quarter as part of the Overheads efforts to provide easy access to the docks and to allow the overhead to expand further to Walaceton. The station became a major junction for the Slaidon Marsh line after that lines opening in 1876 which allowed passengers to exchange between trains running on that line and the Walaceton line.

Since it's opening the station has gone through at least two redevelopments throughout it's life, with the first from 1971-1974 and the second from 2010-2015, with the bridge it was built on and the stairs leading up to the platforms being the renovated but others the only elements of the original station to remain standing, with the station being the busiest station the Overhead's network and the busiest in Tarmingham with it continuing to fill it's role as the city centres most important public transport hub with the station having since received a third line to serve that being the Circle line which opened in 2017.

New illustration for TFTHO Book 1, this one introduces the city of Tarmingham itself during a snowstorm in the winter of 1970. The overhead railway can just be made out among the buildings in the background, along with the station of Margaret Hall, and the two bridges that carry the overhead over the Tarm and Gapney Rivers to the cities south and north sides with the latter going via Tar Island.

The inspiration I had for Tarmingham came from cities like Birmingham, Norwich, Southampton, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Hamburg, New York and Detroit with me choosing to locate the city on the coast of East Anglia in it's own metropolitan county between the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk with some areas of those two being served by the Overhead Railway, and being built on former marshland on the banks of two rivers with it's waterfront and harbour being shelter in a large bay leading out into the North Sea. I'm planning to write a full history and biography of the city at some point, that will give a lot more information about the city and it's history.