Nancy's Cove

VMRJ

The making of Nancy's Cove

I guess I have always been in love with the sea and the small fishing villages that lie alongside the Atlantic Ocean. My wife Kathleen and I are now retired and living on the eastern tip of Long Island, NY, where we have water within a mile of our home in all directions. Over the years we have traveled up and down the east coast of the United States and Canada. During our travels we found a beautiful fishing village in Nova Scotia called �Peggy�s Cove.�

When I started working on my latest Trainz route, The Caribou & Cape Porpoise Railroad, I decided that I wanted to create a fishing village based on Peggy�s Cove. I named the village �Nancy�s Cove� for my daughter.

This article describes some of the ways I used textures, custom items, and sound effects to create the atmosphere of a New England fishing village located on the Atlantic coast. I hope this article will give you ideas for your own route. All the custom items and textures in this article are available from the Download Station. I have supplied the KUID numbers to make downloading them easier.

Creating a seascape

Before making the cove, I laid in the sea. I found that to create the seascape in a way that makes it realistic I needed to expand the horizon line outward. I did this by adding one additional baseboard along the view to contain just the sea. The sea itself is made very shallow with the bottom only a short distance below the surface. I normally use a light grey texture as the base coat and then mix in other textures for variation, even some green grass textures. The different tints give the surface a live feeling.

My favorite sky effect is called �GoldenOctober(CAB)� (KUID:60349:21004). This sky effect coupled with the seascape gives an excellent mood to the scene.

Creating the cove

To create the land section of Nancy�s Cove I used the Plateau (P) option in the Topology menu of Surveyor. On my route I already had the mainland coastline meeting the sea. At the point where I wanted to create the cove, I placed the compass on the land. Then, by holding down the right mouse button, I pulled the coastline outward into the sea to create the land that will enclose the cove. As the compass moved across the sea the land came up out of the water. I adjusted the radius to help me form the size of the land mass. In this case, I created a peninsula, which will hold a lighthouse at its tip, and the cove section where the fishing village and docks will be, and a few small inlets. Once the basic land was formed, I then added the custom items to create the village. I usually do not bother with further texturing until the village is completed.

A New England village

New England fishing villages have a special look to them. They are usually quaint with wood sided homes, docks, fishing boats, and sundry nets and lobster traps scattered around. To get this look I decided to use as my primary homes the New Zealand type homes, which can be found at the Download Station in a number of varieties. Look for them under the basic KUID of 46439. They are all really great looking and added to the New England character I was trying to achieve. These homes are highly detailed, so you have to be sure to use them sparingly in order to keep the simulation frame rate at a decent level.

The boatyard

A focal point of the village is the boatyard at the end of the train siding. The boatyard, �Down East Boats,� was created by mixing a number of elements to make a completed scene. I felt the boatyard needed an old building for the boat shed, and chose the �Austin old barn� (KUID:316:27001).

The slipway was created by using the �Dockwall timber� (KUID:60238:38096). The slipway runs from the boat shed down into the water. I adjusted the slope of the slipway by dropping the outer end of the slipway below the water line. The slipway needed rails for a boat to be launched on, and I chose �MB_rail_only_track� (KUID:35412:38051).

Various items were placed on the ground such as �Lumberstack_4� (KUID:86661:28334) to add to the feeling that the place is active. At the end of the slipway I used an object called �Tside_Overhead�. This object is included in TRS2004. It is an overhead coal shuttle, but I used it to look like a boatlift. Below is a screen shot of the boatyard area.

There is a very useful option that I found in TRS2004, which is not in the previous versions of Trainz. This is the �Adjust Height� option in the Objects menu. Before this option existed, I could not place people on docks, since they would just go to the ground level, which in this case happened to be underwater, and I drowned a lot of folks that way! I also could not place people on the porches of buildings or on high scenery objects.

Using the adjust height option I could place a workman on the deck of the trawler and he would not sink down to ground level. For the workmen I chose �Person Animated Logger1� and �Person Animated Logger2� (KUIDs 79097:10047 and 79097:10048, respectively). Although they are animated loggers swinging axes, they do look like workmen swinging large boat hammers and give the yard some life.

Sounds of the sea

One very important aspect of a fishing village is the sounds of the sea. Boat horns, buoy bells, seagulls, and other sounds help to bring the flavor of a seaside village alive. I used a number of sound effects to achieve this. KB sounds are available from the Download Station in a number of sound files that you can drop onto your route and are activated when you pass near them. The sound file itself is invisible under normal viewing. However, if you need to move, change or delete a file that has been placed, go to wire frame mode where you will be able to see the sound file object. For Nancy�s Cove I used �KB_boat harbor� (KUID:52682:39417) and �KB_seagulls3� (KUID:52682:39285).

Let there be light

Of course, what is a New England fishing village without a lighthouse nearby? At the tip of the peninsula I placed �Land�s End Light,� which is a lighthouse that is animated with a revolving beacon and operating foghorn. The object is �Lighthouse� (KUID:4468:39001).

Adding to the nighttime look of the village, I used a gas lamp spline along the main street, �Gas lamp� (KUID:68236:23090), and individual gas lamps �Gas Light� (KUID:68236:23202). For the lamps at the small town station �MaywoodStation� (KUID:67598:100043), I used �GWR Platform lamp01� (KUID:46219:28040).

Here is a nighttime screen shot of the local freight coming from the boatyard towards the town station.

After all the custom items were in place, I completed the scene by working on the ground textures and adding the foliage. I found the Red Pine assortment of trees to be especially good looking. Look for them under KUID:33404:22048 and other numbers for various sizes. Ground textures are really a subjective thing and I have my own likes in this area. I like to use rocks along the coastline, mix grass and ground textures for variation, and will mix textures for a specific look that I like.

TRS2004 has excellent potential for anyone who would like to create a route. The possibilities are endless. When you add in the great storehouse of track and scenery objects that is available from the Download Station, the sky�s the limit! I hope that my little article has been of help to you when you sit down at that drawing board and start to create your own design.

John