Passenger Station Project

This was my architecture project for my senior year.  It worked out well, because not only did I get to work on trains in school, I got school credit for it!!  Luckily for me, my teacher Mr. Goodin had seen my train layout the previous year when my brother had him for a club sponsor and invited him to our open house.  He was more than willing to bend the requirements so that I could do it.  I still had to do all the drawings and all other work in the class, but I could change the scale from 1:48 to 1:24 and I could make it what ever size I wanted.  I also was taking residential architecture and he let me do commercial architecture in his class to make the station.  He even gave me a full wall in the workshop to build it.

Here is one stage of the project.  The board that it sits on is about 6 feet long.  The walls were made out of plywood.  I cut them all at my house and assembled them and then took it to school.  This was because we could not use power tools there. It was a thing where the principal was afraid of a lawsuit.  Most of the work was still done in class.

Here are some pictures through the windows.  I had to build all the windows from basswood .  To make the arch at the top of the windows, I soaked the wood in water and then clamped the wood while glued.  There is 4 pieces of wood in the frame, and 7 pieces in the crossbars.  Did I mention there is 21 windows?  There is also 5 doors with 3 pieces to frame each.  That makes a total of 246 pieces I had to cut and sand to make perfect.  The stone on the outside is vacuum formed plastic from Applied Imagination Inc.  I painted it with ultra flat camouflage tan paint.  It almost looks sandy.  To do the stucco, I covered all of the windows in masking tape, then cut with a razor blade the arches. The stucco helped to fill in any gaps from cutting I did. The stucco was left-over from the outside of my house, and took about a gallons worth to do all of it.  It takes about a day to fully dry, but I removed the tape while it was still wet.

I also decided to do a full interior on the station.  The benches I made from balsa to look like the ones here in Denver Union Station.  I looked all over for chairs that were the right size and looked like they belonged in a restaurant.  I wound up making them myself from some cedar shakes for doll houses that had rounded tops and bamboo skewers cut up for legs.  The tables were from my high school cafeteria.  My brother helped run it, and he got them from the pizza boxes.  They keep the lid off of the toppings.  Free tables!!  He actually brought about 100 home, I only needed 9. I will find another project for the rest.

Here is a picture of the finished model. For the roof I decided I wanted slate and copper. The slate is from Applied Imagination Inc. as vacumed formed plastic, but I had to paint it.  To get it to look right, I used a 4 step painting process.  I first painted it in a green camouflage paint. It comes in ultra flat. Then I put a watered down black paint on it and wiped it off.  I then did it again with it less diluted.  Last I put another watered down layer and let it sit in the grooves of the plastic.  After a couple minutes, I wiped it off.  It really looks like slate.  The copper was quite easy to do.  This is because my dad owns a sheet metal shop, and he had all the equipment.  I made gutters and all.  I built overhangs above the doors which were also copper.  I then did detail work and I was done.  My estimate is that I spent over 200 hours on the drawings and building of the station.