A Complete Down East Fishing Village From the Download Station

By John D'Angelo

You can almost taste the lobster.

There is nothing like Downeast Maine, that beautiful region of Maine where lobsterin' and other fishin' activity goes on. The smell of the pines is pervasive and the mornings are cool, even in August, when morning mists rise up from the water and hang in the salt air. Ayah, it's a great place to be.

This bucolic scene has been beautifully captured by gfisher and is available from the Trainz Download Station (DLS), kuid:106916:1056 with the label of “Down East Fishing Village” by gfisher for TRS2006. It has been built as a module that you can operate as a stand alone switching layout or add to your own layout. I liked it so much, that I added it to my model of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad that I am currently building. Mr. Fisher's attention to detail is excellent and his treatment of the reeds by the streams is a beautiful touch.

Although the module is only 12 baseboards in size, it is no lightweight in download size. The layout is 1.49 MB, but all the scenery items that the layout has adds up to more than 74 MB of data. A fast Internet connection is a must, and your computer needs to be really powerful to render the detail properly.

Well, I think that's enough talking about the layout, let's take a good look at it. For these illustrations I used a 2-8-2 Mikado by Ben Neal that I have re-lettered for the Maine Central, pulling a highly detailed New Haven boxcar by Whitepass.


The Down East Fishing Village Module.


At the dock area.


Heading out.


Passing Lubec Station.


At the creek.


Moving along.


End of the run.

I hope these screen shots help to illustrate Mr. Fisher's excellent rendition of a 1920's Maine fishing village and scenery. Oh yeah, when you are down at the docks, listen to the buoy bells in the harbor, or should I say haabor, they are a nice touch!



By the way, if you are interested in reading about the craft of lobsterin', try picking up The Lobster Chronicles by Linda Greenlaw, the sword fishing captain who was written about in The Perfect Storm. She writes a hell of a book!

See ya!

John

Article and screen shots �2009 John D'Angelo. All rights reserved.

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