Meet me at the station

Even though the Aston Spur is a "spur" and not a candidate for passenger service, I wanted to have a station as the centrepiece for the layout.

And with the station would be support buildings for the local track gang to store supplies and play cards in when it rained. I've always had a fondness for scenery around stations stemming from my days growing up in Georgetown, when we'd visit "the yard" on the way back from my Dad's hospital errands.

After I built my display case for the Canadian, the next hobby re-entry point was to build structures. Kanamodel offered wood kits of many CPR prototypes at a reasonable price. At this point, I hadn't thought of building an actual layout, but the idea of building structures for future layout appealed to me.

Support structures

So...

Coal shed

"Speeder" shed

Oil shed (not appearing on the layout)

The pictures don't tell the story of how long it took to build these basic structures. While the Kanamodel kits are fairly simple, you still have to measure and cut little bits of wood and assemble them piece by piece. For example, the trim on the door to the Speeder shed. The lattice for the Oil shed dock (which I don't have room for on the layout) was also time consuming. The doors and windows also prove finicky since they needed to be painted and fitted to openings in the wood. The most shockingly difficult part of all was building some stairs using a plastic form. The form was warped and I was never able to get a satisfactory result.

I was careful to paint the structures in standard CPR colours to give them a family look. In retrospect, the grey colour made the doors and windows pop more than I wanted. I should have painted them brown. The CPR's "red" also varied - most structures have a more brownish red vs the candy apple or barn red I bought at the craft store.

I also built a freight platform with a canopy roof that sits in a closet waiting to be placed on a future layout.

Even though I made many mistakes the structures came out fairly well. Along the way I built the skills needed for the big project - Aston station.

The Station

Aston station front

Aston station back

Aston station is a Kanamodel kit based on the CPR's Meadowvale station which was located on the Streetsville/Orangeville branch line. For many years, I worked a few miles away from where the station must have been located before the era of suburbs and large featureless warehouses made it redundant.

I labelled the station my "Zen project" since it coincided with a stressful period in my life during which I had taken a sabbatical to recharge mid-career. Working on the project during the spring/summer of 2018 was diverting.

Some of the challenges in building the station were dealing with a warped base (made from resin) and shingling the roof. The roof shingles were challenging because they came in long strips that I needed to keep parallel with the roof edge. They also had a tendency to come unglued, so plenty of swearing resulted.

As I've mentioned previously, I've developed a great deal of fondness for the cottage industry that supplies model kits. Meadowvale station cost me about $60 - a very reasonable price for a complete kit. When I had a question along the way, I e-mailed the owner of the company and he responded within a day. And, as you may have gathered, I like the idea that my CPR layout has prototype CPR stuff on it. Without Kanamodel and other companies like it, my dreams wouldn't be possible.

Again, I made the mistake of painting the windows and doors grey.

Putting it all together

Two RS-18s in front of the station.

Once I test fit the structures, I weathered them with powdered chalk (with lots of white streaks for pigeon poo on the station roof). They are kept in place by wood forms. I built a curb around the station for this purpose.

One of the maxims of structure placement is that each structure should have room to breathe. In the real world, structures, especially small structures, are spaced apart, not crowded together. Moreover, you should leave room for your 1/87 scale people to access the structures, and 1/87 scale people are quite messy so leave room for lots of junk. A structure without junk around it looks as awkward as a sheepdog that has just had a close shave.

The station area is in front of my background blob. A retaining wall keeps the hill in place, providing room for a road that accesses the station and surrounding buildings. There is a small parking lot, made from smooth-it plaster on top of fibreboard. Off the parking lot is an overgrown cinder path for the crew to park their work vehicle (what self-respecting work crew parks in the parking lot?) while they access the coal shed and speeder shed. 

I bought an oil tank to store fuel for the speeder that lives in the shed and CPR work vehicles, and, ignoring the warnings of the insurance company, placed it next to the station. I loved building the oil tank - it was a lesson in how paint and weathering can make plastic shine (in the right way).

I added oil barrels, broken pallets and a scratchbuilt ballast bunker to give the structures more of a habitat. I boarded off a door to the coal shed figuring the structure wasn't in its happiest of days. And added lots of vegetation (including a shrub growing in the ballast bunker) to show that the Spur gets only the bare minimum of attention.

There is one very important detail missing from the scene - once I have access to a good printer again, I'll create an "Aston" sign for the station. That, in of itself, is a bit of a process because it involves figuring out the font the CPR used for station signs on Eastern Ontario.

I also have plans to add a mini-scene to the north end of the parking lot - probably a truck getting a replacement tire. But that will require more research.