Bit of an interesting brief for this one; modernise a traditional, steam-era building for a station. I was doing this alongside another practical piece, looking at retaining walls, so the obvious solution was to combine the two, taking Stourbridge Town Station as the loose inspiration.
Ah yes, good old Town station. I used this station a fair bit when I was at Sixth Form in the Midlands. How I remember it, with a class 153 on the shuttle...
...and as it is these days, with the Parry People Mover.
It's quite nice that such a small station, on such a short line, survived, and even had a new-build, manned building.
Other details I looked at- I found I had to try and pick a time period, as not all 'modern' features (defibs, solar panels, LED lighting etc) would appear around the same time. In the end, I went for the early 2010's, a period I was regularly using the trains.
The building kit, and laughably rudimentary instructions.
Everything in white plasticard (sheet, strip, and channel) is an addition.
The platforms were cobbled from two base sections from the scrap bins at Frizinghall models, various types of embossed plasticard, and the edging created from bits of the decking of an Airfix pontoon bridge kit.
Key for the modern image were the posters and signaege; more on this anon.
Also note the CCTV cameras, perfect for the paranoia, War on Terror days of the 2010's.
More accessories, from Peco. These do illustrate a slight problem though; they're sold as 'modern image', with the problem that most of the model railway fraternity seem to consider 'modern image' applies to anything from about 1968 to the present day. The big, chunky TV display monitors for example would be LED flatscreens these days, most likely.
So, the signeage. The idea was to create a Stourbridge-esque station, but after some thought, decided to set it where I grew up (specifically where I went to Scouts), in Lower Gornal. This is a district of Dudley, and is a former industrial town which about 100 years ago was served by a halt on the GWR line to Wombourne, and an industrial tramway.
I probably went way, way too over the top with this. The signeage was custom-created, with the exception of the Centro logo which was scanned from an old leaflet.
THIS is how over the top I went. Dudley's transport as it should have been, had the various authorities not decided 'screw it, buses will do'. My little station exists as part of a network taking in the former freight-only lines of the Earl of Dudley, and the GWR route through Dudley to Brierly Hill which is eventually, finally, and haltingly, being sort-of resurrected as a tram route some 5 decades after it was first proposed.
Other posters, railway and security related...
...and some nods to prior shoots and projects. Hallie is rapidly becoming like Terrence Cuneos mice he'd paint in to his works... In my case, Spot The Robot Girl.
And here's the building, with a fair amount of weathering, on the platform. A bit of improvised lighting in it too.
I ended up acquiring a few better-quality figures to populate the platform.
And shooting the header pic. Making use of the Edenvale Tramway boards, and a few random buildings.
This is one of those scenes that doesn't really show up on the page, the overgrown, litter-strewn remains of the old platform still in there. I probably need to start reigning it in with doing stuff like this, to minimise the amount of unnecessary work I generate for myself.
...aaaaand on the page.
I really enjoyed this build come the finish. I even managed to get it over the line a week and a bit before the deadline!
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