Richmond Main Street T-Trak Module Progress

Just about two years ago, I posted on the start of my project to build a T-Trak module based on the Richmond, VA Main Street station. This has been an on-and-off thing, where I work on it for a while until I get stumped on something, when I move to something else. But then my interest rekindles and I work on it some more.

I wound up finishing the roof on the train shed. I built the basic shed shape using foamcoare with 1/32 basswood sheet for the roof. Plans for the train shed are available on the web.

In the station's current use, only the platform on the east aide is used for passenger trains on Amtrak's route to Newport News. The train shed interior is used by the city as an event venue, so I had no interest in modeling the shed interior and was happy with just the basic shape.

The dimensions of the shed and headhouse avialable on the web show the whole station is pretty compact and a good candidate for an N scale model. Before I started building the model, I dimensioned it to fit a Masterpiece Mudules double-wide recessed deck T-Trak module. The headhouse is small enough to fit just fine in full N scale.

I had to shorten and truncate the train shed, but enough of it is there at full N scale to give a good overall impression.

Over the past week,. I called good enough for now on my train shed assembly and finally ordered a Masterpiece Modules double-wide recessed deck module to put it in. Here's a final view of the underside of the train shed as made up from foamcore:

I installed three Just Plug cool white stick-on LEDs under the roof overhang to serve as platform lights. You can see how the leads are threaded through the deck for attachment to an NCE Illuminator running off the DCC bus underneath.

Below is a view from the top. I was, and am still, concerned about how to handle the 1/32 basswood sheet that makes up the roof. I glued it to the foamcore forms with wood glue and gave it a coat of sanding sealer. The sanding sealer is water based, which caused the sheetwood to warp, but when it dried, it mostly went back to flat. I don't know how I may eventuially finish the roof beyond this, if at all, but for now, I gave the whole thing a coat of Krylon matte black. Prototype photos show the roof as mostly dark gray or black.

And here's the current state of play. For now, I'm continuing to collect photos of the headhouse that I can reducce to N scale and glue to the foamcore basic form as "skin".