Waterbury Station Upgrade

 

The upgraded station has been place in its location and scenery added to the scene

The above two photos show the prototype station in Waterbury, VT

Upgrades To Improve Waterbury Station.....by Don Janes

         Several years ago Model Railroader published plans of the Central Vermont station in Waterbury, Vt.  I had been looking for a station to create a new town on my layout that would follow CV prototype and this fit the bill perfectly.  I guess I am what you would call a proto freelance modeler.  I try to create scenes to give the feel of the location I am trying to model but do not try to create exact replicas of the entire area I am modelling.  For example, all my stations are models of actual stations in the towns I model but the rest of the scenes are freelanced.  With these plans available, I contacted professional model builder Rich Cobb and asked if he would be interested in building this station for me using the plans from MR.  He had built my model of the Rutland's North Bennington station for me many years ago and did a great job.  Rich kindly agreed and a few months later the finished model arrived, built to full scale size.  The station sat on the layout for a few years until I recently got around to finishing the Waterbury scene.    

These are two of the photos that Rich sent me while he was building the station.  Most of the windows had to be modified to match the plans.

      While I was waiting to finish the scene I did an internet search and reached out to fellow CV modelers for more prototype photos of the station so I could finish the scene as close to the real thing as possible.  Upon closer study, I noticed a few things on the model that needed to be modified.  These included the chimneys, lower roof supports and mostly, I wasn't really fussy about the shape of the tower dome.  It just looked too "fat" compared to the prototype photos.  I didn't sweat it too much as I know it would have been quite a difficult thing to build but would like to replace it if I could.  I set about replacing the roof supports and large arch beams at the baggage roof end but the dome remained the same.  I also removed the windows and repainted them a cream colour which I think is closer than the white Rich used.  While I had the windows out I repainted the structure with a darker shade of brick red.  I built new chimneys using Monster Model Works brick columns and some strip wood.

The photos above show the new, heavier  roof supports, arched beams and repainted windows and doors.  The original dome still in place.

     A few years ago I was talking to my friend and fellow CV modeler, Marty McGuirk, at an RPM meet about the Waterbury station as I knew he had a model of it also.  I mentioned the dome and he said he had a spare dome that he would send me. When the new dome showed up I was very pleased to see how closely it matched the dome in the prototype photos.  It was just what I was looking for. I carefully removed the original dome and to my delight, the new one fit almost perfectly. I just had to do a little sanding and filing and it sat right over the tower walls.  Now the station looked a lot more like the real thing.  To top it of, Bernie Kempinski, of Alkem Scale Models, who I believe built Marty's station sent me some parts to build the ornamental finial on the top of the dome, which finished it off nicely.  With the new dome added, the station was ready to go once I got around to doing the scenery.

The new dome with finial added made a great improvement to the station

           The final step was to add a train order signal to the lower roof of the station above the operators bay.  I had an old Alder Models (now out of business) train order signal that I cut down and added to the roof. All that was left to do was to add some station name signs and posters to the building.  I am really pleased how the finished station looks. The following photos are the station in the finished Waterbury scene.