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Microsoft Train Simulator screen capture - Date unknown.
18 September 2013
Revisiting the Dominion Atlantic
Greenwood Nova Scotia - Want to take a train trip?
Passenger trains haven't run through the Annapolis Valley for more than 25 years, but Alberta resident Steven Meredith and his colleagues are ensuring the
Dominion Atlantic Railway lives on virtually.
Meredith said the DAR Digital Preservation Initiative web site is his personal donation to the study and preservation of
the railway.
The Dominion railway conglomerate "is one of the more important pages out of Nova Scotia history," he said.
"The DAR served as the catalyst in the development of the economies of the Annapolis Valley apple industry and the Nova Scotia tourism industry and
provided the vital link that connected the western end of Nova Scotia from Yarmouth to Halifax and Truro."
"This railway has always held a fascination for me, yet its history has been elusive," the former Valley resident said.
Meredith said there is a much larger folklore component to the DAR that keeps its memory alive.
By harnessing the technology of the Internet and software, he said, he hopes "we may eventually assemble the bits and pieces that everyone seems to have,
their own little slice of the DAR, and together hopefully we can build a true panorama of the railway everyone holds dear."
Meredith said he thinks there is a large worldwide community of train aficionados who enjoy operating interesting and defunct railways (virtually) that can no
longer be experienced in person.
Meredith and his cyber-supporter Paul Charland say their involvement in DAR history motivated by nostalgia and a sense of preserving history otherwise
lost.
"We both lived in the Valley in the 1970s as children of air force personnel stationed at Greenwood.
There's still a sense of community and a willingness to do whatever we can with the talents we have to help preserve the history of the railway.
"In five or ten years there will be plenty of people living in the Valley who will not even know there was once a railway that served the region all the
way down to Yarmouth," Charland said.
"I enjoy railways and enjoyed the time I spent in the Valley, so the Dominion Atlantic was an easy choice for a Microsoft Train Simulator route. Most of
it might be gone, sounds like the remainder might be on its final days, but there is still lots of information out there and you can still follow the route on
Google Earth and Bing Maps," Charland added.
"Now is the time to do this before things start to go missing or are lost forever," Charland said.
"Recreating parts of my past doesn't hurt either, I lived in Greenwood back in the 1970s and saw Argus aircraft pretty much everyday. They are gone now,
but I have been able to recreate them on the computer and have them fly past while running a train on the DAR, something that could have
happened."
Charland went to West Kings and then Kings County Regional Vocational School.
"I Might live in Ontario, might not be a real Nova Scotian, but this is part of my history too," he said.
The digital artist has recreated the DAR from Windsor Junction all the way to Middleton.
He finished the stretch from Kingston to Middleton last month and has released the latest version up to Middleton.
With the route files that Charland created on the simulator program, it is possible to drive the engines and trains from end to end as if the DAR route still
existed and it was the mid-1970s again.
Gary Ness of Wolfville, who is the local expert on the DAR, said the online group has some expert people as members and contributors.
"The website has really blossomed and it is an important source for reliable DAR information. Lots of people refer to it."
Ness said the volunteers on the DAR wiki site are contributing to the dissemination of DAR information and that is a good thing.
Meredith, who lives in St. Albert, also works on railway preservation sites for the Halifax and South Western and Northern Alberta railways.
Author unknown.
Vancouver Island
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