James River Branch: Passenger Station

Naughtright Passenger Station, Part 2 of 5: Walls

Idea Five snuck up on me while sifting through roughly a thousand station photos looking for inspiration. It dawned on me that Idea Four was on the right track; I just needed to take it a bit further by cutting the two-story parts down to one.

Thus the fifth and final design idea for the Naughtright station began with a photograph of the station in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Admittedly it's a wholly ordinary-looking structure, perhaps even boring, but I realized at least three advantages of going in this direction:

It's a lot less work; generic features can be represented by a wider range of potential source parts.
A unique-looking structure will be recognizable as belonging to a particular real location, and since Naughtright is a fictitious town, re-creating something along the lines of, say, the Wynnewood station raises questions in the minds of people familiar with the real thing.
A highly-stylized structure may draw too much attention to itself, which can actually diminish believability; modeling something that's ordinary-looking can heighten realism.

From the point when it became clear this was to become a "scavenger hunt" for parts, I cast my nets far and wide, accumulating things from a wide variety of sources, including N scale windows and detail parts, an abandoned barn kit, and anything else that would do the job.

Since this was not going to be a fold-and-glue job, I made careful measurements and built a series of custom jigs to hold all of the parts in place for soldering. All of the preparations paid off as the basic structure went together as if it was a kit.

The roof was planned to be removable for several reasons. For one, it made painting practical. I'd also wanted to be able to get inside to add lighting and interior detail at a later date. The only thing holding the roof in place on the building are the decorative braces—originally N scale detail parts from Scale Link—which are bonded to the eves but not the walls; the roof simply drops down over the building.

By the way, for much more detailed information on construction, see the Bashing Brass Buildings clinic.

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania has a unique, interesting-looking station...

But this one in Malvern, Pennsylvania became the new design starting point.

The ingredients are gathered from a wide variety of sources.

The walls are soldered together from individual pieces

N scale windows and Z scale doors are painted and installed.

Modified N scale detail parts are used to make decorative roof supports.