Montmorency Falls Station - Part 1

This project started out of nowhere this morning after I weathered the woodchip gondola. During the last club meeting, Jérôme expressed interest that I work a little bit on the station behind Dominion Textile.

Montmorency Falls station and Dominion Textile in the background.

Up until now, the Beaupré station has been in use as a stand in. Most major QRL&PCo stations, while different in architectural details, shared common interior layout, general dimension and openings. For this reason, it fitted the bill nicely.

Beaupré station (not boarded up) circa 1980 (CN Betamax videotape). Note the old style croosbuck in the background.

However, the Beaupré station sports the old orange and olive green QRL&PCo paint scheme that was in used until 1959. Back in late 1958, CNR started to renovate the stations on the line (it means the simplified the trims, get rid of any architectural details reminiscent of gingerbread, installed new asphalt roofing instead of "à la canadienne" tin roof and cheap fake shingle cladding). According to official CN Betamax footage from the early 1980s, all remaining stations were in that simplified paint scheme. Except Beaupré station, all other buildings were boarded up and in a relative state of disrepair. Most would be demolished in the upcoming years. The last one to fell was Baie-Saint-Paul back in 2014 (if my memory serves me right) which is just another proof how the new tourist train is BS gimmick.

Abandonned St. Joachim station (boarded up) circa 1980 (CN Betamax videotape)

So here we are, back in the mid 80s, with a late 1950s station building. Two choices: alter, repaint and board up the existing model, which I would consider sacrilege. Or build a correct Montmorency Falls station. I decided on the second choice for obvious reasons.

First, I decided to build a 1.5 mm thick styrene core with lots of internal bracing. I was quite easy to assemble. A good thing about boaded up building is you don't have to waste time cutting window openings. I let them blank and glued trims around the opening. After everything was glued, I came to the realisation I made a small mistakes with the trim. I used the dimensions required to insert a Tichy window... but didn't take in account the trims overlap the opening a little bit. Thus, my windows are about 1mm larger than they should be. I'm not sure I was to start making trims from scratch at this point thought! Maybe I'll keep them as they are and save me some pain.

 
The styrene core will then be covered with layer of painted masking tape to imitate the cheap cladding CN put on the buildings back in 1958-1959. When that will be done, I'll add the roof and bow window.

 
The new paint scheme will be quite spartan. Most trims will be dark green or white, depending on their location, the cladding will be medium gray and the roof will be black. I think it will suit better the layout. I'm also thinking it will be a good opportunity to install the speeder shed in the vicinity since it was common on Murray Bay subdivision.