Solution for Type=Link .desktop files?

For the longest time, I've used .desktop files with Type=Link and sftp:///... URLs to create "shortcuts" between different locations on my local network. For example, Devhost might contain a file /home/ferd/Documents/Documents on Testserver.desktop with the contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Downloads on Testserver
Type=Link
URL=sftp://ferd@testserver/home/ferd/Documents/
Icon=folder-remote

After upgrading to 3.28 those links appear to no longer be working correctly, though they do sort of work — if I right-click on the "Downloads on Testserver" link and choose Properties, I'm shown the file counts, size, and free space available for the remote filesystem. But double-clicking the icon (or choosing "Open" from the context menu) produces an error message:

And I'm getting the impression that, even if this did work, with the removal of .desktop launching support Type=Link files will no longer be supported either. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) So, is there any other solution to creating links between network filesystem paths?

Reproducible in:

• Other: Fedora 28, nautilus-3.28.1-1.fc28.x86_64