Trains @ Station Studios

I decided on using sheet styrene for the fascia since I had a fair bit left over from the backdrop. I started with the lower fascia. It was a simple matter of installing the fascia cut roughly to the right shape, installing it on the module, marking the final profile of the fascia, de-installing, making the final cuts and reinstalling. OK it was a bit of a fiddle, but worked out just fine in the end. I used #5 brass screws from Lee Valley with #6 cup washers to hold the fascia on. The cup washers are highly recommended; they spread the force of the screw over a wider area and help keep the styrene from tearing. I also created 3″ wide wings at both ends of the module as per Iain Rice’s suggestions. They help frame the module.

Here’s a photo before the paint went on:

After installing the lower fascia, I turned to the top fascia. I first cut a 3/8″ piece of plywood to the same footprint as the module. This piece sits on standards above the module proper. I then cut a 4″ wide piece of styrene for the top fascia. Again, these were installed with screws and cup washers.

The fascias then got several coats of dark brown semi-gloss latex paint. The brown colour was based on my flat earth colour but darkened considerably by the addition of black to the tint:

There are two main structures on the dock module:

1. the dock itself along with the combined passenger/freight “station” for traffic between the PM&TCo. and the steamship “Kawigamog”
2. the water tower for refilling PM&TCo. engines

The dock was the most important to be designed at this point because of its interaction with the scenery. So I started by designing mockups of the dock and station. I used cardboard for most of it and placed scale figures, rolling stock, etc. into the scene to get a feeling of scale. I left things for several weeks until I was happy with the design.

The dock went together pretty quickly. I had some stripwood lying around, so the dock is all stripwood. After laying out the dock, I filled in some more scenery details around the dock, in particular, the rock walls coming up from the water.

At the time, I had no photographs of what the Key Valley station at Lost Channel looked like, so the design of the dock station was based on photographs of the station at North Portage on the Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway circa 1930. Essentially it was a one and a half storey building with a hip roof. I built the dock station was built using sheet and strip styrene. I used several Grandt Line windows and doors; the six pane windows are cut down from a Grandt Line 12 pane window. I followed Boone Morrison’s suggestion for laying out hip roofs using a compass. It worked very well.

Below is a photograph of the station under construction along with a photograph of the H&LoB Rwy station. I took a few liberties (siding rather than tarpaper; changes in windows) but I feel I’ve captured the look and feel of the prototype. The side roof is pretty funky but prototypical. The colour in real-life is not as garish as the digital photo would have you believe. The roof still needs to be tarpapered and the windows, doors and trim painted white.