A New Station - Combining Kato with Vollmer

The main railway station on Quinntopia has, since any of the 'little plastic people' can remember, been the Kato Overhead Station.  Its an ideal station of course, as it takes up little room in the crowded downtown area of the city but yet still provides access to the two lines that serve the inner city.

However, the little plastic people of Quinntopia had some issues.  For one, they didn't like climbing all those steps to get to the station, and then have to go down a bunch of steps to get to the train.  Is it too much to ask for an escalator-or an elevator?  My response has always been that if its good enough for Kato (and, presumably, Japan), then it should be good enough for Quinntopia.

Another complaint the LPP ("Little Plastic People" from now on) have about the station was that they think that a modern, well-lit, central-city station should have something more of a grand entrance?  My response has always been that art deco rail palaces are so 20th Century. And what's wrong with that really long stairway anyway?

Ultimately, I had to agree that the LPP had a point (which is one of the reasons its so hard to glue them down, another topic....), and that I really needed to do something about the downtown station.  Then I came across this:

It's a Vollmer 7510.  A modern train station (which is an oxymoron in the United States) from Germany that is now out of production.   I really liked the glass walls, the modern architecture, and in my own imagination, I could visualize the incorporation of this building with its large, welcoming entry/lobby, second-story offices, with the Kato Overhead Station. 

So that's what I did.  I had to completely disassemble the 7510, and gave just about everything a new coat of paint.  This meant that the Kato station needed a similar paint job; so they both went under the brush (or spray can to be more accurate). 

From the street side, a new entrance with lots of light, and large lobby and (in my pretend world) and elevator to wisk the weary travelers to the overhead concourse:

Of course, with all this renovation, the 'old' overhead station needed some improvements.  The most visible is the stairway down to the platform got an upgrade with new glass walls providing a view of the trains as you descend to the platform anticipating your journey.

And of course, the 'main entrance' now attempts to be a bit more inviting to our LPP travelers' with a large glass facade:

 Hopefully, this will keep the LPP happy for a while.  However, I have a feeling that they have more demands that I must meet.

Aoshima Apartments: 20 Stories of Fine Living!

Allright...so the Aoshima Apartments are done!  Now all the office workers I've been creating workspace for have a place to rest their heads!

This was a tough build though...a lot harder than I thought.  It was actually complicated by the fact that Aoshima did a great job with this kit.  There are plastic 'insert's for each floor of the building, which makes it very convenient to add lighting and details.  This sort of convenience works well if you go with the standard 5 story building, but I ordered 2 of these kits (each box contains two buildings) resulting in a 20 story monster!

So the inserts, which are somewhat important for stability, I think, ended up getting in the way quite a bit.  I got a lot of use out of my Dremel cutting blade with this kit.

I basically followed the instructions, and attempted to think a few steps ahead of the instruction's sequence to accommodate the fact that I was adding 4 buildings together.  The stairway is first, and its something I felt needed a few lights.  Hey, if someone's going to climb 20 floors of stairs to get to their apartment, the least I can do is give the an occasional light!  These are simple SMD LED's that went into a few somewhat random areas of the stairwell.

Once I had my stairwells wired, with extra bracing on the backside to hold them together, it was clear I needed to modify the 'inserts' to allow enough room for the extra wires and bracing as they tend to sit fairly snug against the stairwell's and exterior walls.  This was a lot of messy work...but thank goodness for the Dremel cutting blade.  This is not a job you want to attempt with a hobby knife.  The below photo shows the tortured inserts (additionally modified for another hole for the SMD light strips I decided to use for interior lighting, which also required some cutting down of the interior 'walls' on the inserts to allow more light to pass through):

The next photo skips about 5 tedious hours of attempting (not altogether successfully) to get all the exterior wall seams to stay tightly glued together.  Where I ended up with gaps, I used a bit of caulk to fill in the gaps, and then covered the caulk with Model Master's Camouflage Grey, which was a decent match for the stock color of the building.

As I mentioned at the top, this was a very time-consuming and somewhat tedious build, but in the end I think its worth it.  There aren't many modern apartment buildings with this look available, so I'm glad I spent the time on it.  The real time suck on this building were the dozens of sprues that needed cutting, filing, and sanding to fit.  And there are LOT of pieces....100 balconies alone, and 160 of the smaller 'fence' gates over the windows.  A lot of work.  My only complaint with this kit is that the plastic seemed very 'brittle'.  A lot of the detail pieces, especially the small 'fence' pieces, cracked when being removed the spru.

The lighting turned out how I wanted it to, however, just enough light to give the indication that some folks are at home, and others are dark, just like reality.

I sprayed a random group of the window scenes with black, white, and grey paint, to give different levels of opacity (sprayed the inside of the windows, of course!).  This was really an attempt to avoid even thinking attempting to add interior detail to this monster!

I wish I could have added a lot more of the SMD LED's to the stairwell, but I got some of the effect I was looking for. A flashing red LED on the roof (hey, its 20 stories, you bet we want a flashing light on this building) rounds out the project!

Tramway "Star House"

I just received this newly produced structure from a company called "Tramway" from Japan.  When I ordered it, there were no pictures available, only some mechanical drawings.  I was intrigued by the 3-sided shape of this building and I think it will be an interesting addition to the layout.

However, I was a bit surprised when I opened the box to see that this was a 'pre-built' structure, and not a kit.  I had fully expected a kit as that makes it a lot easier to custom paint and add lighting and other details (of course, I can't remember if the description when I pre-ordered it indicated it was completed or a kit, but it wouldn't be the first time I overlooked important details like that!).  Well, looks like there's going to be a change in plans (and that is what you get for assuming and not reading the fine print!).

So far I've gone about removing the roof.  It was tightly glued, so I'm a bit nervous about further demolition.  Unfortunately, the appearance of these buildings is just too plain and 'plastic-looking' so they're going to need several coats of paint on both the exterior and the interior (the interior paint is mainly to make the plastic less transparent for when interior lighting is added).

Another thing about this kit that surprised me, at least at first, was the fact that there is no identifiable 'ground' floor'.  There doesn't seem to be any entrance for this complex!  However, when you look at the back side you'll notice there's an entry into a small interior courtyard that would be the likely entrance for this building.

It's still a neat looking building, and my plans to 'triple-it' should make it an interesting addition to the burgeoning skyline of Quinntopia, but I'm a little bit vexed at the amount of work this is going to turn into! Ah well...."happy modeling" as they say (and hey, at least I'm still not working on that tram line!).