Latveria Metro Station and Metro Line Construction

A slight change in direction with the station.  The Kato 23-125 is a fine looking building, but I think its a bit too modern. So looking at some of the older Metro stations in Paris and other cities inspired me to go with a far older looking, turn-of-the-century style brick or masonry station. To assist in this effort, I'm going to be using Walther's Northern Light & Powerhouse as my facade.  I'll need another one to complete it!

I like the brick and the arches, and I think this structure can really be a nice looking Metro station.

Oh yes, and I decided the name of the Metro station would be Latveria.

I finally secured enough R1 and R2 Minitrix curves to work on completing the second loop.

My method is to assemble the track, flip it upside down, and then start glueing the elevated structure components to the ties itself (the unitrack shown in the photo is to help the two track sections at the proper distance).

There are about 106 of these 'elevated support beams' that are cut from styrene, glued together, and then attached to the track - just for the curves!  Its actually been very enjoyable....there's always a nice sense of accomplishment to when something like this seems to work!

The results of this effort - still upside down while the solvent sets, is this loop.  With both of the loops or curve sections complete, I can now work on the station approaches and other tracks sections and finally get to a place where I can start painting, laying all the track and running trains (again)!

Working on the Elevated (a little)

A box of various items to help me put together my elevated metro line arrived today! This includes not only Kato's large elevated station (Kato 23-125), but pier support sections from Kato, Tomix and Greenmax.

The importance of the piers - and the station - is that they're going to help me determine the height of the elevated section.  As I won't be using Kato Unitrack for this line, I'll need to do some measuring to get it all to working together.

I quickly assembled the station to get an idea of the size of this station. Wow! Its long! I'm planning on doing some modification to it before its ready for installation.  You know...painting, lighting, interior details, the same old stuff! I'm also thinking of changing the exterior by adding some elements from another kit...but more on that in my next post.  Basically, I want an elevated station that looks less modern than the Kato version, but I don't mind some modernity as I also want it to look like the kind municipal overlords of Quinntopia tried some renovations a 'few years back'.

In terms of the piers and my partically assembled, scratch-built elevated structure, I think they are going to work really well together.  A lot of paint and detail is needed, but I think this is going to work out pretty cool!

Okay, work has been CRAZY the past few weeks, so I'm trying to steal time away to do this train stuff and have some fun, but.... you know how it goes!

Thanks for reading chaps!