QSSR Mark VI - More Bashing

Bashing never stop at Hedley-Junction, but it's the fun kind of bashing. Taking my brushes and pencils to add some colors on the bare plastic and merging the new parts with the old ones, I couldn't help but see new ways to improve the station.

Slowly build color layers... still more to do...

Blending weathered colors wasn't easy at first, but as you add more layers of paint, the effects build up. You may start with the "wrong" color at first, but you can modulate it and even drybrush some specific colors all over the walls to really feather the effects and create an unified appearance.

A salvaged Tyco door makes for a convincing shed

A small detail I kept for later was the old telephone booth. The telephone and some other details were molded directly on the wall part. They could be removed, but I would need to graft another piece of wall in their place. Not the kind of fun surgery to do on an assembled model. So I decided build a small shed made of wall leftovers and an old door I had salvaged froma Tyco freight shed many years ago. After some cutting and gluing, I was quite satisfied with its look. Just what I had in mind to break the monotony of the station.

For the roof, I had to give it some deeper thoughts. Replacing the original Atlas roof was a given, but how to do it was more of a problem. My goal was to have a continuous pitch all over the new roof to make it more mundane and generic. This is not a fancy station, just your ordinary rural depot on the old mainline.

The roof really helps to bring everything together

The first problem I encountered was the fact the roof brackets sit lower than the top of the walls. It made sense with the intricate Atlas plastic molded roof, but if you just want to slap a sheet of carboard or styrene to model the roof, you have to add a double layer. Not only this makes the intervention more complicated, but makes the roof extremely thick... i.e., not to scale at all.

Thus I decided to remove about 1mm from the walls so they could be flush with the brackets. Once done, building the roof would just be a matter of gluing together 4 parts together in the right angle.

Speaking of angle, I didn't know what to do at first with the roof overhang over the platform. In front of the station, the roof has a lower pitch that used to fit the Atlas platforms you could add to the station. However, with a much simpler design roof like I intend to create, this lower pitch just look silly. The solution was to replace the long front roof brackets with the shorter ones that can be found on the three other walls. Many leftover brackets where in bad shape, so I had either to rebuild them or simply kitbash the long ones into short ones, which was simpler than I originally thought.

Tichy #8071 window over the original opening

Finally, I also discovered that the chunky Atlas station windows can be replaced with Tichy #8071 double hung 8/8 windows which fit the wall openings. They can be bashed to create the larger front ones without too much effort. I always found that the thick mullions and weird trims provided with the kit looked a little bit silly and over scale. This is another easy way to change the appearance of that ubiquitous structure. Don't just forget to cut off the trim under the window sill so it fits and looks better.

I'm honestly fascinated by the possibilities with the Atlas station and I'm already planning to build another one without reusing already glued models. I already have a few ideas about how I would improve upon my design.