Scratch Building Seattle's King Street Station

[sreekarkrishna]

Week 346:
Hours Spent: ~50 hours
Materials Used: 4 oz of River Sand from Verde River in Central Arizona, n-scale flex track 30" total, MDF boards for base of the model, Elmer's wood glue, Testor's spray glue, Left overs from the same Tichy Train Windows and Doors from the previous post, model power n scale fence, teal paint


This will be my last build post on the Seattle King Street Station Scratchbuild. I hope to post more videos and images in follow up posts.


As I mentioned in my earlier post, King Street Station has two portions to it. The Upper portion that is the Tower and the Main building, and the Lower Portion, that is mostly a functional portion of the station where the trains pulled in. The Upper Portion was above Street level and the more ornately decorated portion, while the Lower Portion was below Street level boasting more functional concrete finish. Apparently, this was usual of the Union Stations of this era,esp. when the stations were built in locations with gradient changes.





Further, in King Street Station, the design for having the trains loading on the Lower Level was more of a necessity. The north end of the station is meant to feed the rail lines directly into a tunnel that goes under the downtown of Seattle. When it was completed, this tunnel was an engineering marvel by itself. At a mile long, this tunnel directs all trains originating at Seattle and going East to go under the city and emerge slightly north west of Pike Market Place, and eventually follow the Puget Sound Coastline towards Vancouver BC in the North, or Chicago in the East.





The previous post talked mostly about where I ended my project in 2014. To begin with, the most important thing to finish was to add all the doors and windos to the bottom portion of the station. I painted the entire Lower Level with Stone Gray spray paint to give it the concrete color. All the windows are painted with Tamiya TS-7 Race White and the doors are painted with a Teal Color (left over from my Flagstaff Model). With this, my model was almost done.





If you remember my first design decision on this model, I wanted it to be modular so I could dismantle it and take it with me to Phoenix (or wherever I was going to end). This design decision was one the best decisions I ever made with this model. Here is a quick view of how to put together the model in 6 easy steps.
Step 1: Position the base of the base of the model
Step 2: Attach all the Awnings to the Lower Part of the building
Step 3: Attach the Lower part of the building to the base
Step 4: Attach the lower piece of the tower to the Bottom part of the building
Step 5: Inset the Main Building into its place around the tower
Step 6: Attach the top portion of the tower





In my first ever post of this model, I showed you guys the Bachman 4-8-2 Pacific Steam Locomotive that I modified with an Vanderbilt Tender to make it mimic Great Northern 2517 Passenger train. I wanted to pay hommage to the fact that eventually Northern Pacific started servicing this area, and ended up merging with GN to form Burlington Northern Railway. Also, I wanted to buy one of the really great Kato Steam Locomotive models, the FEF3 UP 4-8-4, just because how cool it looks. I ended up buying one of these Kato models and repurposed it to look like Northern Pacific 2600 Series Freight Trains. While I ended up numbering it as 2600, the 2600-2610 were entry level engines in 1906, which looks smaller than the FEF3s. The number should have been more like 2670 or so, but I am happy to live with this small variation in historic representation.


Img5 by sreekar_krishna, on Flickr


Here is my complete model. Its not the best picture I have taken, but you get the idea. I hope to shoot some good pictures and videos with my SLR soon. I will post them on follow up posts.





One would think, this should have been the end of all my building, but no. While I was rushing to complete my model, I realized that this model is going to be too big to be displayed anywhere in the house. This started another desire to make a smaller version, a display version of the station, with just the Upper Portion of the building. The below is pure creative license to display the model. It does not represent actuality, but just the desire to enclose my model in plexiglass case and showcase it in my Office room.


The full model is 31" long, 17" deep and about 19" tall. The smaller version I designed is 15" x 14" x 19". The base is 1/8" MDF board with two tracks and exact placement for the Main building and the tower. The area between the tracks and the building are covered (spray-on glued) with finely filtered river sand (collected from Central Arizona Verde River, near Cottonwood, AZ)(Fig A). The base fits into the profile of a slightly larger MDF board (Fig B) and the gap between the two boards holds the Plexiglass enclosure.


[


Here is the final smaller model displayed in my office with a plexiglass enclosure around it.





So, here is the total effort sper post
By Week 1: 14 hours
By Week 2: 14+7 = 21 hours
By Week 3: 21+12 = 33 hours
By Week 4: 33+5 = 38 hours
By Week 8: 38+45 = 83 hours
By Week 9: 83+45 = 128 hours
By week 14: 128+23 = 151 hours
By Week 16: 151+33 = 184 hours
By Week 18: 184+20 = 204 hours
By Week 26: 204+40 = 244 hours
By Week 30: 244+36 = 280 hours
By Week 36: 280+35 = 315 hours
By Week 85: 315+75 = 390 hours
By Week 345: 390+100 = 490 hours
By Week 346: 490+50 = 540 hours


So 6.65 years in the making, with 22.5 days worth of continuous work. If I had worked 8 hours per day on this model, its a total of 67.5 working days.Hope you all enjoyed this build. I will post more videos and images when i get around to taking them with my SLR

[Janbouli]

Absolutely fantastic , a work of art.

[sreekarkrishna]

Absolutely fantastic , a work of art.

Thanks a lot!

[Jugtown Modeler]

Quite an impressive model. From planning and design through building and finishing, nicely done and explained well in this thread. Inspiring for many modelers to come.
Great job.

[couryma]

I found your post while surfing "King Street Station" Very impressed with what is shown. Did you finish the project? Would you be willing to share, or sell, the drawings you were able to get from the city? I would like to build the station for my layout.

[African Pirate]

Hi

Take a look at the January, 2022 issue of the N Scale Magazine for an article on the King Street Station (Page 28).

https://nscalerailroadingmagazine.co...022-JAN-01.pdf

[Jugtown Modeler]

Thanks for sharing @African Pirate. I would have missed this article.
@sreekarkrishna, the article came out great. The station was a huge commitment to one structure project and to your perseverance to see it ALL the way through. Hope the whole project was a rewarding experience.
Let us know what else you are working on.