My addiction is getting worse...

I picked up more paraphernalia for my stash... Cough. Cough. I mean parts for the collection. As you can see in the photo, the major acquisition was the Kato city transit station with the expansion set. I had placed the order with Hobbytech a couple of weeks ago and it happened to come in today. It was a pleasant surprise when I arrived at the store to visit with Johnny. I wanted to find out how the Edmonton train show went last week-end. The Kato products sold very well and his booth was well received despite the lower attendance this year.

It took a long time to convince myself to get the Kato station. I wasn't sure it would fit on my expansion area. Yes, I'm expanding the layout. Eyes roll up. I decided to branch the lines where they cross over the bridge. The new station is going in the location circled in red. It's going to be a nice complement to the Baden-Baden station with a more modern look.

Unlike the Baden-Baden station, this station took only an hour to complete. Out of the box, it comes pre-assembled with one street side entrance, but I wanted a street entrance on each side of the station. That meant I had to pop out the window. This was more difficult than I expected. I had to remove the roof first, which was secured with four screws. This exposed the interior of the building so that I could get at the window from the inside. The window was snapped into place. I didn't want to accidentally break the wall or the window so it meant applying careful pressure to pop it out. In the end, I had to file the lip down a bit before the window would come out. Once that was done, I screwed the roof back on and attached the second stairway entrance to the station by inserting it into the opening and then pushing down on the stair unit. The stair unit slid into place perfectly.

You may have noticed that there are no platforms. I elected not to buy the platforms due to cost. They were really expensive. Instead, I will build the platforms out of styrene plastic. This will create a consistent look as they will match the platforms at the terminal station.

Are we hoarders?

One of my colleagues mentioned a show called Hoarders. It got me wondering if this hobby I'm currently involved in might have a higher percentage of people with this condition? I know a few people who could benefit from an intervention. I'm not there yet, but I do find myself collecting stuff that just sits in unopened boxes. Take for example this plastic arcade I purchased last year. I sit here staring at it and wonder where the heck was I going to incorporate this on the layout? Oh well, at least I managed to pull it out of the box and put it together. It's not a bad little structure although I wish Brawa did a better job at the edges where the panels meet. The seams are quite visible. Mmm, I wonder if I could elevate the cathedral so I can use this? Ack! Gotta stop that kind of thinking or I'll find myself laying track into the furnace room soon.

Labouring on Labour day

It was a very productive long week-end in regards to train stuff. Since completing the station, I've had a renewed passion in all things modeling. So much so that I placed an order for some more structures. Specifically, Vollmer models 7642 and 7641. The first one is a restaurant. It looks identical to the railroad man's corner house, but with awnings. The other one is a railroad man's house. I ordered two of each to sit on each side of the cathedral for symmetry. The plan is to place a large market square in front of the cathedral, which means moving the cathedral back. Unfortunately that also means I have to replace the benchwork with a longer one. The colour scheme of these new structures also needs to be rendered more subtle. They are red coming out of the box, which conflicts with the copper green roofs of the station and cathedral.

.Speaking of colour, the new copper green roofs on both structures turned out very well despite my poor painting abilities. Thank goodness the Tamiya spray paints are very forgiving. I wanted to replicate the look and feel of Canada's parliament building. The glaring difference is that the parliament building architecture is Gothic, whereas my cathedral is Romanesque and the station is Baroque. Not only are my trains a mix, but so are my buildings. If my trains and layout was a dog, it would be part akita (Shinkansen), part shepherd (ICE) and part poodle (TGV).


As I indicated in the previous post, I had to build a brand new platform to accommodate the station. This went quicker than I had expected and I'm pretty happy with the results. There was a minor mishap with me spilling the bottle of solvent on my workbench. Some of the solvent soaked the platform, but fortunately it was only on the surface covered by the building. As a result, I am now very careful where I place the solvent. Ordinarily I'm a very cautious person, but I'm a klutz at four in the morning.



The only complexity was assembling the steps. I wanted to make sure each step was equally spaced. So I built a little jig to make this a breeze. Being a novice at all this, I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with this template all on my own, although I'm pretty sure professional modelers already know about this technique. However, I've never seen any postings on this so I thought I'd share this with other novice modelers.

I also finished the awnings for the station. However I think I'll only keep the front awning. The back awning doesn't seem to match the track platform terminal layout. Design of the ceiling structures for the track platforms are on hold, while I work on the city centre. Stay tuned!