Friday, May 18, 2012

Strategy Revealed

Whats yellow, has four wheels, and sleeps six? An LDPW pickup truck!
That joke usually applies to the highway departments of any American state, but it really can't be said about the Linden Department of Public Works. These folks work very hard so we can have lots of wonderful places to visit.
Last September, I wrote about The Lab's Land Use Strategy noting that there is quite a bit of land owned by The Lab that serve little or no purpose. In particular, the regions of Atroth (SLurl), Nysray (SLurl), Unttan (SLurl), and Saminekim (SLurl) seemed to be merely well-landscaped regions whose sole purpose was to host four Premium Member gifts sites. Since then, I've visited a few times and once found Governor Linden hanging about and another time the regions hosted the portals for the beta release of Linden Realms. Today I visited and found that the regions have been turned into a giant train layout, much like most of us played with as children.

Clockwise from bottom left is Unttan, Atroth, Nysray, Saminekim, the latter one being the home of a train rez zone and a build area near the four corners area. A non-functional zip line extends from the Premium Gift plinth in Nysray to near the open build area. One such gift area is marked with the SL hand in the pic above.
A classic oval with siding stubs, a passing section, and an inner loop has been laid out across the four regions. If you take the inner loop spur in Unttan, though, it gets to be a bit more fun than your average home model train set.
Be careful on the little used inner loop tracks in Unttan ... the bridge is out!! Build up lots of speed and you should be able to shoot right over to the other side. That's something everyone tries with their model trains but you can only do in SL.
Eventually you get back to where you started, a peaceful little shack which has a free copy of the Premium Gift Railroad Hand Car released May 8th if you don't get one at the gift kiosks. Hopefully it will still be there when the next gift is available for future Premium account Residents. And it would be very nice if some of the small ponds in these regions are stocked with fish (like the rivers in the Wilderness areas). Maybe more plans are afoot. Near the hand car shack are some ball field bleachers and some Drzdok Goal Posts, whatever they are (can you tell us, Michael Linden? You made them!).

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