best HO Scale stations revisted

I bought that Atlas Station along with the platform extensions and had it put together before I left for the Army and I tell you it looks great esp after I wethered it just a bit and painted the fixtures. A beautiful station servign a medium sized town. highy recomended indeed. But now Walthers is commign out with a bricked sttion building that's 1.5 stories high that kind of resembles the Dover Station but smaller. It looks great. What do you think? Is it better then the Atlas Station? I like the Atlas one but the details on the bricked Walthers Statio nbuildign has really caught my eye.

http://www.walthers.com/exec/page/FWNP04/city_station

I don't care for the Walther's brick station... it looks like it is based on a B&O structure, kinda like the Life-Like station of similar design (which they also offered as a school kit). But then again, it may be just what you're looking for.

I think the Atlas depot is still the best little kit around, especially with all it's details.

Thank you for your reply MR Vondrak.

I do agree it looks alot more like a B&O structure then a PRR or and NYC or even a DLW. Prehaps if Walthers showed an actually picture of the product rather then a drawing I would be keen on buying it. so far I don't like the fat that it doesn't coem with covered platforms or accessories (ie a phone booth and benches) like the Atlas station did.

But when Walthers does have an actual photo on how it'll looks like and I gather more opinions abotu this product I might buy it or save my money for somthing else. Plus this price is a bit too high. Atlas was no where near this much for their station plus judign buy the pics Atlas's Station looks more realisitic.

Walther's new "City Station" is based on the former Milwaukee Road depot in Wausau, Wisconsin. The depot is internationally famous because it was incorporated into the logo for Wausau Insurance Companies back in 1954, and has appeared in print media and television commercials for the past fifty years.

The station figures a little less prominent in their logo today, but its still there...

-otto-

This is a bit off topic, but I remember in the glory days of the Walther Catalog (well, to me anyway) of the late 70s/early 80s (when I was still a kid till pre-college), I loved the pictures of the huge and ornate European stations from Vollmer, Kirbi, and Faller (was it called Faller back then) - nowadays the small Walthers pictures don't do them justice, but the bigger pictures back then of say, Faller's Bonn Station (or 80s equivalent) was quite impressive (although I have no idea how accurate the tooling really was, of course) - especially as I only had the very common Revel small town station (for you real young-ens, this shares the same wall moldings as the current Con-Cor 'Rural Schoolhouse').
Come to think of it, the Revel station was a pretty nice looking model, generic looking but still rather decently detailed, and would have been great except for the fact that it must have been on at least 80% of the operating HO layouts of the era...
Hmm, what I really could use is bus-stop style passenger shelters, such as this: http://personalwebs.myriad.net/lruback/ ... dale02.jpg - yeah, I could probably scratchbuild one, but with bubble roofs and all it'd be easy with a modular kit part selection.

How about this one? Looks like an old Reading shelter! Or a trolley shelter...

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/528-11891

Otto Vondrak wrote:How about this one? Looks like an old Reading shelter! Or a trolley shelter...

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/528-11891

Ummm, nahhh. SEPTA did have similar looking shelter (still does, I think), except longer, but many were replaced with the alumimun and glass bubble 'bus stops' shown in the picture I linked too. I think Kirbi or Faller did have a simple aluminum and glass shelter included in one of their (many) station platform kits, but can't remember which.
Oh well.

Pardon my lack of knowledge but does Amtrak service or at one time serviced the station?

To me it looks like if the station is is good shape but the platform and the surrounding area looks a bit too grassy and deserted to be an active train station. Atleast it hasn't been torn down and the tracks are still active.

But that station looks a little too big for a one track row. Was there two or three tracks at one time?

Thank you for the posts.

NJTRailfan wrote:Pardon my lack of knowledge but does Amtrak service or at one time serviced the station?

To me it looks like if the station is is good shape but the platform and the surrounding area looks a bit too grassy and deserted to be an active train station. Atleast it hasn't been torn down and the tracks are still active.

But that station looks a little too big for a one track row. Was there two or three tracks at one time?

Thank you for the posts.

The ex-Milwaukee Road depot in Wausau (720 Grant Street) has local landmark status, which explains why it's been kept in such good shape over the years.

Wausau Insurance Companies purchased the depot in 1977, and used it to create a replica depot on the company's corporate campus. The insurance company then sold the real depot (not the replica) to the local Boy Scout council, which used the depot as office space until a couple years ago. Today the depot serves as office space for the city's HeadStart program.

I don't know much about the depot during its actual railroading days, other than it was once served by Milwaukee Road's Northwoods Hiawatha, which was discontinued before Amtrak ever existed. Wausau is located in nothern Wisconsin, far removed from the nearest Amtrak line. I do not know how many tracks the depot once served during Milwaukee Road days, but the existing single track is operated by Canadian National these days.

Here's a quick review of the passenger stations on my layout.

Horicon, the main passenger station (three tracks) has a Rico station (AHM, now IHC) next to one track and a series of Atlas station platforms between the other two. The Rico station is a model of one on a former narrow gauge line in Colorado, I think the Rio Grande Southern. You can leave the tower off -- it was removed from the real building -- and move the roof panel with the flat surface where it mounts to the less visible side of the structure.

Iroquois Lookout has an Arlee station (originally AHM, now IHC or Life-Like?), which was based on a freelanced but typical small town depot built by Rob Corriston and written up by him in Railroad Model Craftsman.

Grover has half an Arlee station (sliced lengthwise) butted up against the backdrop, with about three-quarters of a small AHM switch tower set on top of the bay, so as to resemble a C&O structure at Quinnimont. (I got the idea from a photo taken at a club in North Carolina.) Unfortunately that square switch tower (not to be confused with a larger, oblong one of B&O design) hasn't been offered in recent years, though some may still be on dealers' shelves or be brought to train shows.

Fabius has a small station I cut down from an IHC kit that was sold as a "country station" or "rural depot" or something like that. The picture on the original box didn't do the kit justice, partly because it was very dark. (The wall pieces were dark grown and the roof a light gray -- it really needed a repaint!) It represents a board-and-batten depot built in several places along the Lackawanna's extension to Buffalo in New York State, minus the original concave curve of the roofs near the eaves, which held water and caused rot. Chuck Yungkurth did scale drawings of one of these, published in RMC many years ago, I think. Art Curren reduced the size of the station when building one for a Model Railroader project railroad. My chop job was more drastic, eliminating the entire baggage section.

For years Eagle Junction had a stone station cut down from an old Aurora station by my brother Rick, so that it was quite close to a kind used by the Red Arrow trolley lines in suburban Philadelphia. I've returned it to him and will have to try making another using an Aurora (or Tyco, later) station that's already been assembled.

Anyone who really wants a half-open shelter resembling some used on the Pennsy and the Reading should take a look at the "three shanties" on the last page showing Life-Like structures in the new Walthers HO catalog. One is a good approximation. The smaller structures don't look very much like most built in the U.S.A.