On the Layout: Changes at Brockville Station

     I've often talked about buildings I've wanted on the layout.  Brockville seems to be the location for so many of these buildings.  I added one more to this railroad town.  Years ago, I bought an already-built Faller train station on Ebay.  I had planned on having it be the Dorval train station, but Dorval never came to fruition the way I had envisioned.  The station has been in storage since I bought it.

    In 2009 VIA Rail released images and plans of the station that was going to be built in Brockville.

It was a very different looking station than what has been in town since 1872.  The residents were not happy about destroying the old station.  VIA Rail decided to scrap the idea of building something new and instead rebuilt the old station in 2014 with a new brick facade.

    The curved roof of the station VIA wanted to build in Brockville reminded me of the Faller stations, and so I decided to play What If on my layout.  What If VIA had gone ahead and built something similar to their 2009 plan?  What might it look like?  I dug out the Faller station and started to see if it could fir the space.  I thought it fit the space better than the station I was currently using.  The model was going to need a little work to be ready to use on the layout.

    One of the things that attracted me to this Faller station was the large windows.  When I bought the model, it has a sticker with the station's name on it.  Having a station with the name Seebruck on it when it was going to be placed in Brockville.  I removed the name sticker and then tried to remove the sticker adhesive that stayed on the plastic window with Goo-Gone.  Sadly, Goo-Gone should not have been used on this type of plastic.  The warning on the back cautioned me on this, and if I had read the warning before applying it instead of after it probably would have been useful information.  I ruined the window, it started to fog, craze, and melt in a matter of seconds.  

    I almost abandoned the project, but decided to see if I had some clear styrene in my supply.  I didn't find any, but I had some overhead transparencies.  I traced and cut one of the transparencies and then scribed the window lines the original window had.  I thought it turned out good enough to install back into the station.

    The next problem I needed to deal with was a lack of room for the two rectangular buildings on each side of the main hall.  I only had room for one.  I thought about using only one of the wings and scratch building a smaller second wing, but it still didn't seem to look good enough to use.  

I decided to use only one wing and to window the open gap on the street side of the station.  To hide the spot below the window with unfinished plastic, I built a landscaping island with tall shrubs.

    I painted some of the window trim and added a safety ladder to get to the roof.  The fence line in the back has some landscaping.  The final detail I wanted to add was a new station sign.  I printed a new Brockville sign on another transparency and cut it to fit the space on the main hall's window.  Figures and station seats still need to be added, but it's good enough to add to the layout.

    The final step in the project was to add some details to the interior of the station.  I printed a tile floor pattern and applied it to a thin piece of styrene.  I also ordered some passenger station seats on Etsy and added a few passengers waiting for a train.

In the future, I'll add some people waiting on the platform and maybe a few more baggage details.  I'd also like to add some VIA Rail banners and signage to decorate the station.  I'm pleased with how the station turned out and think it's a great addition to the layout.