When I became seriously interested in large scale modeling I had already moved to Hawaii. Still, I wanted to create an outdoor railroad with the flavor of 1920s California. I looked around at the depot kits available and decided my only alternative to the ubiquitous "Colorado narrow gauge" architecture then on the market was to scratchbuild.

I wanted a mission style depot with stucco walls and a Spanish tile roof. That was a common design in the southwest during the early days of depot construction. After a lot of research I located photographs of two such buildings. The Santa Fe depot at San Juan Capistrano (on the current AMTRAC Los Angeles-San Diego route) fit some of my requirements and the old Pacific Electric station at Oneonta Park Junction in South Pasadena met the rest. (That depot is long since gone.) I liked the basic shape of the P.E. building but preferred the architectural design of the Capistrano depot so I borrowed from each.

DESIGN AND LUMBER

I had a piece of half-inch plywood lying around and after some tests with two LGB passenger coaches I decided to make the station platform 36 inches long (approximately the length of two coaches) by 18 inches deep. The overall size was big but still small enough to transport or relocate on the layout. I have since added 6 inch wide platform extensions to one end of the depot.

Next I decided the station should have front and side porticoes and a plain back. I used scrap boards on my base to arrive at the proper setback distances from the platform edges to the bases of the porticoes. That worked out to 5 inches all around and left room for benches, people, potted palms, baggage cart access, and clutter.

When I designed the arches within the porticoes I again relied on trial and error. I already knew the length of each portico so I only had to decide how many arches I needed and their width. A compass and scratch paper soon provided the appropriate answers.

Then I was off to the lumber store. I bought 3/4- x 6 inch clear pine to build the porticoes. Besides the amount I needed for the porticoes, I also bought enough to build the inner building. It houses the office, waiting room, and baggage area. Finally, I bought some 1/4- x 1/4-inch molding to use for trim on the arches. I selected a fluted design. When I installed it, it looked as though each section consisted of three separate pieces. Finally, I bought five sets of the smallest brass hinges I could find. I used them for the working interior doors (single office, double waiting room, and baggage room).

STEP-BY-STEP CONSTRUCTION

1. Cut the four sides of the 3/4- x 6 inch portico walls to length. After you determine the proper spacing from the portico walls (about 3 inches), cut the three walls for the interior building. The rear wall is common to both.

2. Make the miter cuts on the adjoining walls (a total of four cuts). Ideally, you should use a radial arm saw but if you are careful you could use a table saw or even a hand-held circular saw. If the corners are perfectly square you will have a strong structure and it will be easier to build the depot.

3. Cut the arches. I used a compass and straight edge to lay out the arch design directly on the portico boards. Every arch has the same dimensions except for the two at the ends of the rear wall. They are about 40-percent smaller to match the width of the inner porticoes. I cut mine with a portable jig saw but a band saw would probably have made the job go much faster. The more care you invest in uniform cuts, the less time you will later spend sanding. You should now also cut all the window openings and the arched door openings.

4. Glue and nail together the sides. I made sure everything was square, then clamped each joint to insure a tight bond. Let the glue dry for 24 hours, set the assembly on the platform, center it, and mark the location of the pillars, walls, and inner walls. Then drill pilot holes in the bottom of each piece. I drilled matching holes in the base, countersunk the underside of each hole, glued the bottom of each wall to the base, and fastened each securely with 3/4-inch brass screws.

5. Add the moldings and wood trim. Use a miter box to cut appropriate lengths of 1/4- x 1/4-inch molding and glue the pieces to form a square about halfway up each pillar. Fill any gaps with putty. Also add stripwood moldings around the entire base of the inner building and at the base of all the inner windows (purportedly to act as buffers for benches and errant baggage carts). I made doors from scrap wood and etched them vertically to represent solid planks. I bent bits of brass rod to shape, drilled holes, and inserted them into the doors as handles.

PAINT AND DETAILS

6. If you plan to make your building weather resistant, thoroughly douse the entire structure with water sealant and let it dry for several days. After that, I applied three light coats of gray auto primer but, before the third coat dried, I literally smeared some very fine HO scale gravel onto the portico surfaces. When it dried, and despite subsequent painting, it resembled the textured surface of a stucco building. I let the primer/gravel dry for another 24 hours, then brush painted the building with a good quality exterior grade latex house paint. Appropriate colors would be off-white, beige, or sandy pink. Touch up the moldings with a contrasting color-I used a dark reddish brown-and paint the doors the same color. Finally, I mixed yellow, white, and black artist's acrylics to resemble the color of concrete and carefully painted the entire platform. When it dried, I used a straightedge and a pencil to represent expansion joints in the "concrete".

7. Next, the details. I added signs, press-on vinyl letters, 1/8-inch Plexiglas windows, benches, people, baggage cars, suitcases, crates, and other articles to create an illusion of activity. I like to run trains during the mild Hawaiian evenings so interior illumination was a must. I added 12 light bulbs, 4 to the exterior porticoes, 6 inside the porticoes, and 2 inside the waiting room. All terminated at a two-position Radio Shack terminal. I mounted it at the rear of the depot just under the eaves. I also made potted palms. The pots are inch-long pieces of old rubber handlebar grips. I filled them with aquarium gravel and epoxied plastic aquarium plants inside to represent dwarf palms.

THE ROOF

8. Make the sub-roof from 1/4-inch plywood. Nail and glue it down securely, then add retaining strips underneath so it fits tightly and squarely over the walls. Use whatever size and shape supports you find necessary to achieve the final profile. I deliberately made my roof removable so I could replace burned out lights and detail the interior. Make the bell tower by gluing and clamping together 5 pieces of 3/4- x 4 1/2 inch pine, then drill and cut out the center.

Now it's time to "tile" the roof. On my model, roof detail is critical because the station is a focal point, it is large, and people usually view it from above. I spent a long time thinking about a good way to represent Spanish tiles. I checked hobby shops, craft stores, hardware stores and never found anything appropriate. Then one day I went to a pet shop and happened to notice some rigid plastic aquarium tubing. I bought several sizes, each three feet long, and went home to experiment. The best looking turned out to have a 3/8-inch outside diameter. I went to many pet and aquarium stores before I was able to accumulate enough.

I spent hours cutting the three foot sections into pieces 3/4-inch long. I depressed each piece to create an oval cross-section, then cut it in half lengthwise to create two "tiles". I methodically applied each individual tile to the roof with yellow carpenter's glue. The entire roof, including the bell tower and the cap-tiles, required more than 1500 individual pieces. What a job!

I let the glue dry for a week. Then I sprayed the entire roof with red oxide auto primer, similar in color to Krylon Ruddy Brown Primer. It almost perfectly matches the color of typical Spanish tiles. I was careful to spray the underside of all edge tiles. Finally, to remove any traces of shine from the paint or the glue, I oversprayed the entire roof with Testor's Dullcote.

The depot is the centerpiece of my outdoor layout. Even though it took many hours to build, I am proud to have a one-of-a-kind structure capturing the atmosphere of California's mission style architecture.