Being a member of the New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association (www.nhrhta.org) during the 1970's I periodically received data sheets that the organization published on various subjects about the New Haven Railroad. One of these data sheets was a copy of the floor plan of the Danbury station drafted by the railroad in 1902. This data sheet, seen below, provided all the necessary dimensions of the building and platform footprint for a scale model.
Click to enlarge photos.
Copyright NHRNTA Inc. Reproduced by Permission
A trip with camera and tape measure in hand to the Danbury Rail Museum (www.danbury.org/drm) the remaining dimensional data of the windows, doors and building height was collected.
On the layout only the eleven sides that face the loop track can be seen will be modeled in detail, the two unseen long sides of the station will only be represented by blank brick walls on the completed model of the station. Each of the eleven sides to be modeled were photographed and measured thoroughly.
Building the Inner Core
Using the footprint dimensions provided by the data sheet an inner core structure for the station was made first. I decided to try something new with this building and made the inner core entirely from wood.
Two pieces of 1/4" plywood were cut to the size of the building footprint. To be sure that both pieces turned out the exact same size, the two pieces were stacked and screwed together for cutting. Pieces of 1" x 2" dimensional poplar cut to size were sandwiched in-between the plywood making the correct height of the station walls. The interior was then painted black so not to be seen thru the windows of the finished model. The finished core is seen below.
As a side note, the outside walls of the model are made from .040" styrene sheet. When cutting the plywood core to size, allowances for thickness of the styrene walls were subtracted from the overall size of the plywood so the overall dimensions of the finished model would be correct.
Roof support.
The roof support was built first, this structure defines the roof peaks and roof pitch. This is made from .040" styrene, all the individual pieces where glued together forming a one piece structure that is attached to the plywood core with screws.
The Walls & Roof
The outside walls and roof are again made from plain .040" sheet styrene.
The 10 large prototype station windows are very close in size to a Tichy masonry window offered in their catalog, these windows were used unmodified. The remaining windows are all made by modifying a selection of Tichy masonry windows.
Assorted Tichy door frames were used, all the doors needed to be scratch built.
Early construction photos of the walls below.
Photo below shows all walls ,windows and doors made and temporally taped to the core.
Next photo, roof panels are being fitted to roof structure support.
The Brick Walls
The yellow brick walls are represented by peel & stick adhesive backed paper sheets. Micro-Mark #83140 HO yellow brick was used. These sheets adhere very well to the smooth clean styrene.
Windows and doors were painted and installed into each individual wall then glazed. All the walls were then glued to the core with ACC before brick paper was applied. The brick was applied, then windows and doors cut out. Strip styrene window and door lintels, sills and signage were applied to the surface of the brick paper.
Shingles
Self adhering paper shingle sheets were also used, Micro-Mark #83218 gray HO scale shingles.
The finished station waits for passenger operations to begin!
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