Ready to show

I got the station ready to show just in time for the TCA York meet.

Still have some "to dos":  Make a 4th entrance door, add skylights, add LED lights between the columns, make windows translucent, and add a sign over the front entrance.

Roads, Railings, and Walks

I didn't expect the elevated platform would take so long to build.   I think I put nearly as much time into it as I did building the station.  The base is a 2X4' 1/4" MDF from Home Depot.   The arches are 3/4" pine.  Roads are a 1/8" thick adhesive backed foam rubber product from Scenic Express.  They look great and are easy to cut and fit.  Sidewalks are 1/8" Masonite, stacked 2 high, so they are one layer above the street.  I scored 1" squares with a Zona saw.  Rail is 1/8"X1/8" Basswood and 1/4"X1/4" Pine.  Streetlamps are Lionel.  All the "concrete" parts are painted with Rustoleum grey primer followed by Rustoleum beige "camo" paint.

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Almost done . . .  Just need to add the windows, doors and a roof.  The module will be on display with the Stillmeadow Modular Train Group at the TCA show this week.

Three become one

After weeks of cutting, filing, filling, and sanding, I get to the fun part -- assembly.  I needed to do a bit of filing and notching to allow the sections to butt together.

Would have done this differently . . .

Assembling the steps and the knee walls proved to be tedious.   Since I was working off 3 bank buildings and I needed 4 entrances, I had to fabricate the 4th knee wall out of pieces from one of the bank fronts, and made the steps from 1/8" masonite:

The challenge was to assemble all the pieces straight and square and glue them together with CAA.  If I were to do this again, I would only use the knee walls and top step from the banks, and fabricate the rest of the steps from the 1/8" masonite.  

I cut the decorative triangles off the tops of the doors and glued on a strip of styrene to fill the gap on top.

Let the cutting begin

The first task was to swap the front and back walls of one of the bank buildings that will become the right wing.  First the cutting:

Then the gluing:

Glued from the inside:

Next I needed to cut the steps and knee wall from the fronts of all 3 banks using a Zona saw and bandsaw:

The door cutouts in the center section were done with a Zona saw:

Since I am making the center section taller than the wings, I needed to lengthen the column.   A search of nearly all the pens in my office located a pen barrel that was exactly the right diameter.  I cut off the base and inserted the barrel (white) using another smaller pen barrel (black) inside to strengthen the joint.  I ended up making the columns 1/8" too tall and later had to cut them back.  (better than too short!):

Grand Station

My latest project is a kitbash of 3 MTH Bank Buildings into a Grand Station.  This has been done before by many modelers.  Much of my inspiration came from Alex Malliae Link and John Sethian Link who IMHO have done the best iterations.  Here is Alex's work:

And here is John's:

Most kitbashes involve turning the banks so the sides become the front of the station and moving the front doors and columns to the center section.  You also need to swap the old front and back walls on one of the wings.  My variation differs in that I raised up the center section rather than lowering the wing sections.  This avoided having to shorten the doors, preserving their grand size, but did necessitate lengthening the columns.

The hardest part of the project was making the first cut.  This is my first kitbash, and I was a little insecure about taking a perfectly good building and cutting it up.  But pretty soon, I was chopping plastic with reckless abandon.  I'll post pictures of my progress. If all goes well, the station should be completed for display in White Hall at the TCA show in April.

Milwaukee Road Hiawatha

Inaugural run of my new Hiawatha Passenger train.