In addition to the four Walthers Northern Light Power Stations, the building also uses Greenmax Concrete Viaduct Piers as accents. The only item surviving from the Kato station is the stairway shown in the above photo. The above is the 'front' entrance' with a wide pedestrian arcade or entrance...
Above is the rear of the building. Not much to say. I had hoped to NOT have to build a rear to this building to save both time and money, but no better plan presented itself for what to do on the back side, so another long cycle of cutting, gluing, etc... took place.
Another shot of the front of the building. The ground floor is lit with LED strip lights. I used two different colors...a 'white' LED for the common/public areas, and a warmer color for the interior shops.
One of the major challenges to get to this stage was determining what to do with the interior facing walls of the train area. Just painting the plastic would not look good. I thought of adding a thin styrene facade, but the idea of cutting out 40 windows was not something I was looking forward to. Fortunately, paper seemed like a good idea, and the website paperbrick.co.uk has a great tool for selecitng and printing multiple brick patterns. What a cool tool! Made my day. Above is a photo of the printed brick patterns being trimmed to fit the interior walls.
But not so fast...I still need to figure out how to automate the station stops for the metro trains. After futilely working with some non-conventional items, I am convinced I need to put on the big boy pants and go with a Loconet system / DCC / Computer (or Command Center) to automate these trains. It seems the only really effective way to make it work. Yes, SOME of you tried to warn me of this several months ago...I get it! You were right! :-0
And with that...see you next time!
Wow! This is an impressive structure and a major piece of kitbashing. I was particularly impressed by the second photo of the front entrance. Looking forward to seeing the upcoming posts.
ReplyDeleteThis is an incredible looking station. I can't wait to see what it looks like in context, with scenery around it. And brick paper? Great idea. I'd had the same problem with one of my stations, and never hit on that. I'll have to remember that for the future.
ReplyDeleteThanks J.D. & Ken! Yeah, this had the potential to be an ambitious project that became increasingly more complex and could have easily have been abandoned at any point. So while its not perfect, most of the flaws that bother me are pretty well disguised and I am excited as well to finally see this station take its position on the layout!
ReplyDeleteThe only problem is that it is so big, it will overwhelm where the future passenger station will go. Well unless I change my plans!