One of the great things about the model railroad hobby is that it has a lot of different aspects to it.  When I get tired of doing the layout construction and/or electrical aspect, I can shift to buildings & scenery.  For the last couple of weeks, I have been working on some of the key buildings within the Union Station area of the layout. Even though I had shifted from doing track & electrical, I ended up having to add an additional passenger track (Track # 4)  to Union Station to provide for mail and postal operations.

The addition of track #4 included the installation of a couple more track feeders, a power cutoff switch plus a LED to indicate whether the power was on or off.  I also realigned a couple of turnouts - one providing a siding for up to 4 each 85 ft mail storage cars and the other to shorten an existing siding to allow another existing turnout to connect to track 4. The REA Express building has been mocked-up using a scaled PDF printout of architectural drawings glued to foam board.  I have also been working a little with Model Builder software and created an example of a color version.

The most important mock-ups were of the passenger waiting room that was test built (for sizing) in foam board and test fit over the passenger tracks. This then allowed the stairways to the passenger platforms to be checked for proper alignment in their planned locations. I also decided to use the Walthers Union Station building with some slight adjustments. The first video below shows all of these items in more detail.

Over the last long holiday weekend,  I worked on some additional building mock-ups to ensure that everything will fit (according to plan). This second video shows some partially assembled & unpainted kit-bashed Woodland Scenics Trackside Transfer buildings (2 each per freight building) that make up the Union Pacific Freight and ASTF Freight buildings.  Additionally, another foam board building was created to represent a more appropriate icing facility for Union Station plus an addition was made to the REA Express facility.  Both the REA addition and the icing facility have Model Builder software generated color sides. All of the foam board buildings will eventually be converted to scratchbuilt replacements.

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