Named for the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Brunel house has been siminised from photographs of industrial Victorian brick and ironwork. All the furnishing & architectural items you need to use this lot are either downloadable below in the individual zips (or in the BigZip at the bottom of the page) or from the original game. Not all of these architectural items will be found in build mode; some will be found in buy mode / decorative or buy mode / misc.
Download the house and everything pictured on this page in one big zip - find this at the bottom of the page!    Zips with the normal winzip symbol are just the same objects in smaller packs below for those with slower connections.   If you download the big zip, you will NOT need any of the smaller zips from below unless they are marked with the NEW! symbol.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (April 9 1806 - September 15 1859) was a British engineer who pioneered fast, cheap & reliable mass public transport with the enthusiasm of a visionary matched by his ability to convince financiers, inspire his workers and maintain the high standards that ensured the success of his projects.
The son of an English mother and noted French engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, Isambard's life was a hectic sequence of ambitious, high-risk leading-edge projects involving designing & working with new technology while dealing with the intricacies of politics, investors and funding. Throughout his life he never stopped working on projects which called for complex organisational ability: working with clients, creating visionary designs, applying new engineering principles, budgeting, financing, and co-ordinating & motivating people.
Marc Brunel was a French monarchist whose continuing residence in revolutionary France had made life there somewhat uncomfortable, and left at the earliest possible opportunity to become, briefly, official engineer to the city of New York. During his time there, he invented a form of block-and-tackle mechanism (combination of pulleys with a rope or cable, commonly used to augment pulling force) which is still used to this day. The British Admiralty were very interested in this mechanism, and Marc moved to England. Settling in London, he became a consultant engineer to the Royal Navy.
Because of this, Isambard had a French and English education. He was sent to France to be educated at the College of Caen in Normandy and the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris. His education included studying mathematics and an apprenticeship with M. Breguet, a precision-instrument maker. Further practical experience came from working in the family engineering office and at the Maudsley engineering works where in 1829 the famous engineer, James Nasmyth (of the Bridgewater Foundry and 1839 steam hammer fame) also trained. Isambard rose to prominence when, aged 20, he was appointed as the resident engineer of the Thames foot tunnel, his father's greatest achievement.

zipThe Brunel House - Lot 8

PLEASE NOTE: This zip does not contain any objects, walls or floors. You will need to download, unzip and install all the object, wall & floor zips from below before playing this house, otherwise you will get the dreaded "missing objects" box and the house will be incomplete.

There is no shopping list for this house - all the pieces it is furnished with are found below or in the original game.
The Thames Tunnel was built between 1825 and 1843, and was a triumph of ingenuity and perseverance in the face of floods, financial losses, and human disaster. The first major river tunnel ever built, Isambard spent nearly two years trying to drive the horizontal shaft from one side to the other. Two severe incidents of flooding injured the younger Brunel - who nearly lost his life - and ended work on the tunnel for several years though it was eventually completed.

Digging under a river in soft sediments was an impossible task, but Marc Brunel solved the problem with the invention of the tunnelling shield - a solution that has formed the basis of modern tunnelling right down to the present day; principles of which were used in the creation of the Channel Tunnel between England & France in recent years.

You can see from the engravings reproduced here that the tunnelling shield was divided into 36 compartments, and each compartment held one miner, who was protected by extensive shoring which allowed a small section of tunnel face to work on. It was hard, dangerous and labour intensive work, and Isambard attempted to be involved in all aspects of the construction - including the digging - when he wasn't travelling the country raising funding and other support. 

zip Fig.1: Arch, door, fence

Door cloned using the wonderful no-gap base by Aenigma Sim

 

 

zip Fig.2: Staircase, "Cellar" Door

The "cellar" door is actually a picture and is backless. Your sims won't trip over the step either.

Adjoining the Engine House is the original brick shaft. This shaft was Isambards' first solo project. This was the first part of the works and was itself one of the most innovative aspects. The circular shaft was built on the land surface course by course while the miners undermined the foundations, which allowed the brick & iron lining to gradually sink into the ground in a controlled manner.
The tunnel was opened as a pedestrian route in 1843, but was sold to a railway company in 1865. It is still used by the London Underground today, and passengers travelling between Wapping & Rotherhithe will have the pleasure of passing through this historic piece of engineering. The Engine House houses a museum dedicated to the life and work of Marc & Isambard Brunel.

Fig.3: zip

Four brick framed windows

 

 

Fig.4: zip

Connectable Railway Rug using the image from the Railway Track Rug at Sim Gypsy, with many thanks to Zzziana, "safety" step (based on the cloneable one tile rug at Sim Freaks), wall and street lamp recoloured from originals at Secret Sims, and animated furnace altered from an original by Simzalabim - all with many thanks to their original creators for allowing their objects to be freely cloneable while their sites were up.

Isambard was a work-a-holic who would readily work a 18 hour day and sleep in his office. Holidays were usually forced on him by his doctor. His honeymoon consisted of three days in Capel Curig in North Wales - with a visit to the Liverpool-Manchester railway opening rolled in, naturally. We can only presume that the new Mrs. Brunel also had a fondness for railway engineering.

Although Isambard was an industrial visionary, he also possessed an artists eye for the landscape, and when planning his works his designs always complemented the surroundings they were in.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge project over the Avon Gorge in Bristol (pictured left, as it stands today) demonstrates this as well as testing all the other skills & qualities that Brunel had. It was built at a time of intense competition between ports to retain business and capture substantial growth in trade and economic prosperity. Brunel submitted his radically new design for the bridge (1830) in a competition with Thomas Telford and others. He finally won the design competition - after much debating, as always.

In 1836 an iron bar 305 metres long was hauled across the Avon Gorge, and a basket to transport men and materials was slung from it. Brunel himself made the first crossing but the basket stuck at the lowest point, 60 metres above the river. Brunel climbed out of the basket, up the rope and released the cable from the jammed pulley. Trips were later made in the basket for pleasure. Yes, you read that last word right. Sure makes today's "white knuckle" rides tame by comparison.

zip Fig.5: Arch kit pt. 1

 

zip Fig.6: Arch kit pt. 2

 
These look best when used with the transparent floor from Caro's Sim Kagen. And you never need bother watering the ferns either :o)    Thanks to the awesome talent of Cooptwin The Amazing And Magnificent, the three-tiled arch gable pieces are droppable - you won't see them when played with walls cutaway or down and will remain in place when the house is sold. See more of Cooptwin's work at Another #%*& Sim Site

By 1843 the two towers were completed but funds were exhausted. To save money, the committee reduced the height of the towers and didn't go ahead with the planned sphinxes for the tops or the cast iron cladding around them designed to tell the story of the bridge. By 1853 the time span for completion allotted by Parliament expired. The committee sold the ironwork, machinery and equipment to pay the contractors, and much of the material was used on Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge linking Devon and Cornwall at Plymouth.

Brunel died without ever seeing the completion of his bridge. Ironically, his early death inspired the completion of the bridge, as the Institute of Civil Engineers decided to finish the bridge as a memorial to him.

By coincidence the Hungerford Suspension footbridge in London also designed by Brunel, was about to be demolished to build a railway bridge and the chains were bought for £5,000. A new bridge company was formed in May 1860 and a new Act of Parliament confirmed that the Clifton Suspension Bridge would be completed under the supervision of Sir John Hawkshaw and W H Barlow. Happily for today's road traffic these engineers decided to widen the roadway from 7 metres to 9 metres.

The bridge retains many elements from its original Egyptian style design (which was extremely popular at the time) but as above, the planned sphinxes were sadly omitted from the completed bridge - you can see where they should have sat from the engraving reproduced on the right. One can be fairly sure that were the bridge built during Brunel's lifetime, he would have ensured that the money was found for them from somewhere.

The bridge is to this day in constant heavy daily use and is still a spectacular sight from both above on the cliffs and below by boat.

Fig.7: Posters zip

A selection of one-tile reversible railway posters - the larger ones are a little wider at each side than the one tile, so they sit in a different position than a two-tiled painting would.

Reversible means that from whatever angle you are looking at them from, the words are the right way round! 

The portrait-shaped ones and the three decorative wall recesses were cloned from an original base by PkTechGirl at the lovely Juniper Sun

While Brunel was still in Bristol, he became aware that the civic authorities saw the need for a railway link to London. The Liverpool & Manchester Railway, successfully connected one of England's biggest ports with its largest textile manufacturer. Incidentally, this is generally regarded as the first true railway not because it was the earliest (it wasn't) but because it was the first to carry both passengers and freight solely by the use of steam powered engine.

Liverpool was only one of England's great Atlantic ports, and the merchants of Bristol feared huge loss of business unless they could obtain the benefits of this new technology as well. As there was no nearby manufacturing centre comparable with Manchester, they ambitiously set their sights on linking to London, which would mean building a railway well over four times as long as the Liverpool & Manchester.

Despite the apparent failure of the Clifton Suspension Bridge project, in March 1833, Brunel was appointed by the promoters of the projected Bristol to London railway to complete a preliminary survey of the route by May. To do this, he designed what he called his "Flying Hearse" - a streamlined carriage which doubled as office and bedroom - and home for a humidor of 50 cigars. Six months later, the final plans were completed and in March 1834 the findings went to the customary parliamentary committee for scrutiny.

Railway location was controversial, since private landowners as well as towns had to be dealt with. Quite frankly, the landed gentry did not want a messy, noisy railway anywhere near them. The Duke of Wellington (of Waterloo fame) was certainly against it & is famously reported to have said : "... it will only encourage the lower classes to move about." Brunel and his team had their work cut out for them just in persuading the Parliamentary committee to let the work commence.

zip Fig.8:

The "basement" is actually a rug, and if you don't put a fence around it, the sims will happily walk all over it.    Alternatively, it goes very nicely underneath an exising staircase.

"Glass roof" recoloured with kind permission from Koromo, at Persimmon Grove.  To get the square frame effect I used two roofs placed on top of each other but one rotated to give the glass a frame on all four sides. The fence is based on the cloneable one-tiled rug from Sim Freaks & modified from an original by STP Carly at the Sims Tattoo Parlour. Wall buttress base object is by Marina at Marina's Sims.

After hearing Brunel speaking to the committee in 1835, an eye-witness wrote: "He was rapid in thought, clear in language and never said too much or lost his presence of mind. I do not remember ever having enjoyed so great an intellectual treat as that of listening to Brunel's examination." Bear in mind that the cross-examination had gone on for eleven days to a mostly hostile audience. He won his case.
Isambard Brunel was therefore appointed engineer of what was to become the Great Western Railway, one of the wonders of Victorian Britain. The Great Western contained a series of impressive achievements - viaducts, stations, and tunnels - that ignited the imagination of the technically minded Britons of the age, and Brunel soon became one of the most famous men in Britain on the back of this interest, also helping to establish him as one of the world's leading engineers. He eventually engineered over 1,200 miles of railway, including lines in Ireland, Italy and Bengal. His great civil engineering works on the line between London and Bristol are still used today by frequent high-speed trains.
Notable structures on the original Great Western route from Bristol to London include the viaducts at Hanwell and Chippenham, the Maidenhead Bridge, the Box Tunnel and the Bristol Temple Meads Station. There is an interesting anecdote which states that the Box Tunnel is placed such that the sun shines all the way through it on Brunel's birthday. This would be wonderful if it was true - but opinion in the absence of authenticated written instruction to the construction team as always in such things is divided. Nevertheless, there is an interesting discussion about it here. However, it is said that Brunel walked every mile of the railway while he was appointed chief engineer, so the possibility is there, if rather tenuous.

zip Fig.9: Planters

zip Fig.10: Topiaries

 
Three sizes of topiaries and planters. None of these ever need watering and can be placed indoors or on a second floor to make a secluded roof garden.   Thanks once again to Cooptwin, the medium and high topiary & planter pieces are droppable - you won't see them when played with walls cutaway or down. See more of Cooptwin's work at Another #%*& Sim Site
As we learned above, Brunel was also keen to make his structures aesthetically pleasing as well as functional, and there is no finer demonstration of this than in the wrought iron arch framework and other details of Paddington Railway Station, London. Even the patterned holes stamped out of the arches had a function - to hang cleaning gantries from. Cleaning must have been a dangerous job to have, dangling high above all those steam trains & stone platforms, yet it was done very regularly - with no recorded accidents.
Paddington Station was built as the London terminal of the Great Western Railway, and was opened in 1854. It was Brunel's dream to integrate the travelling experience for the passenger totally and conceived of having a grand hotel at either end of his railway lines.
The Great Western Hotel (now restored to a luxurious 1930s splendour by the Hilton Group) was the work of architect P.C. Hardwick. It was added in 1868-74, and is a large white building with two towers and a central pediment with classical figures facing Praed Street, some with features representing exotic lands, world travel & engineering.
The organisation "English Heritage" recently stated that Paddington Station is an internationally important part of Britain’s industrial architectural heritage, and is therefore soon to be nominated for World Heritage Site status.

Two sectional Glass Roofing Kits - one for the first storey and one for the SECOND storey. Fig.11: zip

By Koromo of Persimmon Grove, this set of glass roof pieces is for a second floor.

To achieve this effect on any other house, you will need to build your second floor with a one-tile gap. Use one of the two different mock window pieces in the gap. When you place the roof pieces (you will have to rotate them to fit together) you will note that they are much higher up than the first-floor pieces. Your sims will happily walk about underneath all the pieces, and you can place furniture without any problems.

Fig. 12: Zip.

This is a first floor roof kit, which goes on the second floor on the transparent tile.  The glass end piece & roof were recoloured once again with kind permission from Koromo, at Persimmon Grove. This zip also includes the transparent floor tile for which I am very grateful to Caro of Caro's Sim Kagen for permission to include it.

There are three statues of note within Paddington Station - a seated statue of Isambard Brunel by John Doubleday at the side entrance to platform 1 (the picture was taken before his move there); a combined World War I & II Memorial by Charles Sargeant Jagger - a large, solid-looking figure of a cloaked soldier in full battle gear halfway down platform 1, but perhaps the most photographed statue of them all is found in the inner concourse area.

This is of Paddington Bear, based on Michael Bond's whimsical series of 11 books first published in 1958 based around the adventures of a small bear newly arrived from "Darkest Peru" and is a magnet for tourists & children of all ages.

The Brown family, of 32 Windsor Gardens, first meet Paddington Bear on a railway platform in London. He is sitting all alone on a battered suitcase, behind a pile of mail bags, close to the lost property office. Although he will later acquire a blue duffle-coat that is a little too big for him and even later an occasional pair of wellingtons, when the Browns first meet him he is wearing nothing but an odd-looking hat (later discovered to be home to a packet of marmalade sandwiches) and a sign around his neck that reads, "Please look after this bear. Thank you."
 
And that is just what the Browns do, naming him after his finding-place, completely unaware that home will never be the same once Paddington becomes a member of the family. For an earnest, gentle, and well-meaning bear, poor Paddington has an absolute talent for getting into trouble. "Things happen to me. I'm that sort of bear". The Paddington books have sold more than thirty million copies worldwide and have been translated into thirty languages.

zip Fig.13: Three Bookcases

One empty, one with normal sim books, and one with vintage oversized bound railway timetables. These fit snug against a wall to appear as if they are recessed and are backless as the z's would have been impossible so close to the wall.

 

zip Fig.14: Trees

Outdoor / Indoor / Second floor trees with & without lights.   The lighted ones will require the Party Lights fence download from the official site.   Find it under Build mode / Walls. The non-lighted trees are droppable.

Idea credit for decorative steps to Simzalabim although these steps are solid, and the sims cannot walk on or through the steps so they should not be placed where access is needed.

Even before the Great Western Railway was opened, Isambard Brunel was moving on to his next project - transatlantic shipping. While involved in the Bristol - London rail link, his plans started to take on a far grander scale. His dream was to extend a high-speed & reliable public transportation connection from England to New York, and he now started to set his sights on building the ships for the sea link. Brunel put the suggestion to the GWR company directors in 1835 that the Great Western Railway should extend its London-Bristol service to New York via a "steamboat."
Although a regular packet service between Europe and North America had been in place since 1816, it was all by sail, not steam. Though taken up by the company, the idea was considered sheer folly, as it was widely believed that the power - and hence its fuel, coal - required to drive a steamship varied in direct proportion to the size of the hull. It was Brunel who devised the elegant formula demonstrating that though a ship's capacity increases as the cube of the hull's dimensions, the power required to drive it increases only as the square of the dimensions.

As late as the 1890s, sailing clipper ships were still the preferred method of long-distance travel. There were several reasons for this. The wind, of course, is free and, while the navies of the world could and did discount the cost of coal, hard-headed commercial men needed more convincing - especially considering the notorious unreliability of early steam engines and their restricted range. At first, just as sail had been used as an addition to oared galleys, steam was used as an adjunct to sail. A ship's engine would be fired up only when the wind dropped - an approach which combined economy with the reliability of sail and the ability to keep moving in any conditions.

Brunel was to change all of this. Each of his three ships represented a major step forward in naval architecture. His Great Western of 1838 was the first steamer designed to cross the Atlantic, while in 1845 he constructed the Great Britain, the first propeller-driven ocean-going ship.

zip Fig.15: Five Gable Pieces

The largest roof segment comes with and without mock windows. You can place these in any way you like to give the effect of a multi-storey building.

 

Gable roof idea & shape by Ophelia at Ophelia's Little Page About The Sims although I have modified mine somewhat so that they have all four views and can be placed against walls at any rotation - and now with vastly improved Zs so they DO NOT BLEED through walls anymore.    And thanks to Cooptwin, they are droppable so that when you play the game in walls down or cutaway modes, they become invisible!

The clock is actually a garden lamp.

The PS Great Western was a wooden paddle steamer with iron trusses. Launched from Bristol, she completed 45 Atlantic voyages to New York for her original owners, The Great Western Steamship Company, before being sold to The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. Considerably larger than any vessel built in Europe, her engines were the most powerful yet built. She was designed to carry 148 passengers, and boasted a main passenger saloon 75 feet long by 34 feet at its widest, again a superlative achievement. The first trip to New York took just 15 days, and 14 days to return. This was a great success; a one way trip under sail would take more than a month. The ship was broken up for scrap in 1856-57 after a long, varied & hard working career.

The SS Great Britain lies now in Bristol's historic harbour - today a tourist and recreation attraction salvaged from rusty oblivion, but in its day was by far the largest ship in the world - over 100 feet longer than her rivals. The Great Britain was made of iron and also built in Bristol, 322 feet in length. The ship was launched in 1843 and was the first screw driven iron ship to cross the Atlantic.

For more information on the ship and its restoration, visit http://www.ssgreatbritain.org/

His greatest technical triumph was his third ship - the Great Eastern of 1858, which reverted to paddlewheels and had six sail masts and five funnels. Big enough to carry enough fuel to get to Australia without refuelling, in addition it would carry 4,000 passengers or up to 10,000 troops. She was and remained the largest ship afloat until the end of the century - and at 10,200 tons, was the only ship large enough to carry and lay the first Transatlantic cable, comprising of 5,000 tons of telegraphic cable to be laid on the ocean floor from Ireland to Newfoundland. However, the stresses and strains of this project took a great toll on Brunel.

zip Fig.16: Glass Conservatory
 

You can make an ultra-modern cube by just using the full length window, Caro's glass floor and the lower roof piece, or as it is in the Brunel house, with the slanted glass roof, small false window & medium high roof piece. I have also used parts of this kit to give a high glass roof to the "basement" rug in the Brunel house.

The false window also is very effective as a room divider.

With many grateful thanks to Iona for the original idea of cubed windows, and Koromo for the use of the droppable one tiled rug segment.

With the Great Eastern project, Brunel had produced something that was at the leading edge of the available technologies of the time. The vision and the design concepts were always pushing ahead, but much that was needed was way too ahead of their time - the necessary component materials were not yet available or possible to make non-degrading flexible material to replace leather fan belting, for example.

For this project, he was required by the Great Eastern Company to work with a collaborator - the marine engineer and shipbuilder John Scott Russell (pictured far right, with Brunel second from the left), who was awarded the contract to build the vessel in his own shipyards on the Isle of Dogs in the Thames, London. However, Brunel soon felt he was let down by what he saw as Russell's poor management practices. Among other things, Russell was very low in his estimates and money was soon a problem.

The Great Eastern project hit major financial problems as the launch date approached and Brunel blamed Russell for misuse of funds. Russell seemed to have a better relationship with the press who poured scorn on Brunel. The project went broke, and much of what Brunel needed to complete the project himself was in Russell's hands and a situation of litigation with reputations at stake soon emerged, while Brunel kept trying desperately to regain control of his project.

The first attempt to launch the Great Eastern on November 3, 1857 was widely publicized and tickets were sold to the public in an attempt to raise some much needed capital.

This came as a surprise to Brunel, who had anticipated a quiet and businesslike launch and instead found the shipyard filled with thousands of spectators waiting to see the largest object ever moved by man.

The launch date could not be moved, and the decision to go ahead was reluctantly made.

This was a great mistake.

The launch attempt was both a public relations disaster and a human tragedy. The resulting circus like atmosphere of the revelling crowds led to difficulties in communications. Chains snapped on capstans leading to the death of one worker and injury to a half dozen others.

Although Brunel himself never made this claim either in private or in public, there were many rumours of sabotage made by rivals wanting Brunel and his project out of the way. Whatever the truth or lack thereof, the ship now had to be virtually pushed into the Thames and despite almost constant attempts needing hydraulic rams, she did not take the water until January 31, 1858. Fitting out lasted until September 1859.

zip Five mix 'n' match wall treatments, floor tile, roof tile

 

This one zip contains all the brick walls, the floor and the roof. Unzip to a temporary storage folder, and move the files ending in :
  • .wll to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Gamedata\Walls
  • .flr to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Gamedata\Floors and
  • .bmp to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Gamedata\Roofs

zip Six interior wall treatments with matching floors (pictured below).

Victorian wallcoverings are a wonderful thing - they basically took whatever was available and used it. So it would not be unusual to see tooled leather, ceramic, majolica tiles or heavily varnished lincrusta (an embossed paper stiffened with plaster-of-paris) used below the dado (chair) rail, with silk, satin & other fabrics or of course printed paper above the rail.

The lower part of the wallcovering had to be the most hardwearing to accommodate wear and tear from passing ladies' bustles, crinolines and other whale-bone accessories as well as furniture. Also, because many roads were still unpaved, in the winter months removing splashes of sticky, foul smelling mud was a huge problem in the house.

The strangest thing for us today to understand in our world of stripped pine is that bare wood was never seen in a gentrified house. That was seen to be for the poorest families who could not afford to use the latest lead-based paints or dark coloured woodstains / varnishes to cover up the wood. But leather was sometimes tooled to resemble bare wood panelling and used below the dado rail instead.

Isambard's herculean personal interventions secured the launch of the Great Eastern into the Thames, but because of failing health, he was again forced to oversee Russell's work. Soon after a difficult and troublesome launch, and moments after possibly the most famous pictures of Brunel standing dwarfed by the launching chains of the SS Great Eastern were taken, he collapsed, having had a stroke. He was taken home but died soon afterwards and was buried in Kensal Rise Cemetery - not far from Paddington.

During trials on the Great Eastern on September 5 1859 - just a few days before Brunel's death - there was a disastrous explosion on board, and repairs forced the postponement of Great Eastern's maiden transatlantic voyage until June 1860. It is not known whether Brunel got to hear about this or not.

Sadly, due to the many problems with the launching & trials, and the fact that Brunel was there no longer to champion his vessel, the Great Eastern was not a commercial success, and never carried a full complement of passengers.

At the end of its days, in August 1888, having been used for many purposes but its original, including a fairground and advertising hoarding (left), the fate of the Great Eastern was sealed when it was sold for scrap.

Deconstruction work started on 1 January 1889, on the banks of the Mersey, near Liverpool, where the great ship had lain rusting for some time.

Taking the iron hull apart was a matter of brute force, and over the next two years men chiselled, levered and hammered its plates apart until there was nothing left. The destruction of the ship gave birth to the macabre legend that two skeletons, the remains of a riveter and his boy apprentice, were found inside the sealed double bottomed hull. At the time it was thought that perhaps it had been the souls of these poor unfortunates that had cursed the great ship with so much bad luck.

This one engineer in 19th century Britain transformed the landscape and the lives of everyday people by creating and raising what we today would call "venture capital" to build the ideas, devices and systems of new technology - bridges, railways, tunnels, viaducts and ships - that transformed peoples lives and the world as a whole. Inland journeys of hours rather than days became normal. Journies formerly beyond the imagination or reach of the average person were now possible and affordable. The crossing of the Atlantic became safe with the availability of iron-clad, steam driven, screw propelled vessels.

Some of Brunel's greatest achievements involved the use & development of industrial strength brick, decorative cast iron, viaducts and bridges in the dawning of the age of mass transportation. Many of his engineering principles are still used to this day - some of which have never been bettered. Many of his structures are in daily use today - and undergoing far heavier use than even he could have anticipated.

The house and all the objects above can be downloaded in this one BIGZIP : Zip File  This is just a normal zip file with all 104 items of the Brunel Theme inside one large zip.

This one zip contains the house, all the objects, the walls, the floor and the roof - everything pictured above that does not have the NEW! symbol next to it. Unzip to a temporary storage folder, and you must move the files accordingly as below:

    • House08.iff to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\UserData\Houses (for the original "The Sims") or C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\UserDataXX\Houses - where XX is the number of the neighborhood. For example, if you want it in Neighborhood 3, it goes to: C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\UserData3\Houses\House08.iff
    • Files ending in .wll to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\Walls
    • Files ending in .flr to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\Floors
    • Files ending in .bmp to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\Roofs
    • All other files ending in .iff to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\UserObjects

If you would like to redesign or recolor objects from the Brunel set, please provide credit on your site and in the object description with a link back to us. Most recolours here are from base items from sites participating in the Recolourers Resource Project, but where I have had specific permission for an item to be cloned for this set, you will need to ask the same permissions from the original designer - these are as follows:

  • Items from Secret Sims can no longer be cloned and modified or recoloured.

All links to the original site where I have made the recolour from are given. See notes on home page.

Without actually advertising the books themselves, I would still like to mention just some of the books I used in researching this potted history of I.K. Brunel. I have always been fascinated by his works, and now especially I live very close to some of them I have come to appreciate just how much this one remarkable man changed global society in ways that last today and for much time to come. Redoing this page gave me the excuse to go down to my local library with notebook & pencil, and act like a student once again.

I also had a complete riot in trying to emulate some of the flowery advertising styles and language of the era in presenting my downloads. Inspiration for this largely came from finding this instruction sheet for a cardboard 3D model of the Thames Tunnel - which seems to imply that not only would your intelligence be raised considerably by the purchase and construction of this model, but that you would become an engineer on par with Brunel himself. Victorian newspapers from the archives at my local library were also a rich source of phrasing and inspiration.

The pictures I have used were either used with permissions, scannable for non-profit use, acquired in a huge image licence I recently bought or are public domain and permission free. The text was rewritten myself from extensive notes I made from the following books:

  • Brunel's Ships : Denis Griffiths, Andrew Lambert, Fred M. Walker, Susan Baylis.
  • The Great Iron Ship : James Dugan
  • John Scott Russell : George S Emmerson
  • Ships of the World : An Historical Encyclopedia.
  • Isambard Kingdom Brunel : R.T.C. Rolt
  • I also used the online encyclopedia "Wikipedia"