Ok, here it goes. The idea of a train station appeared when I was working on some train stuff for a Lego display in Kielce back in 2008. The inspiration was a train station building from Sanok, a city of my childhood on the south of Poland.
After the display I decided not to destroy the main building but rebuild it a little to make it smaller and more convenient to store and maintain as a model. It was the beginning of the project as it looks now. Since the fall of 2008 every little single train-theme thing as well as the bigger parts (switching tower, engine shed) I have built were planned to be put on the bigger diorama.
Principles and constraints. More or less in the mid of 2011 I decided to start putting together all the stuff. A landscaping was necessary so I had to consider different techniques which will impact all the future work. It wasn’t an easy task but at the end dark green with different shades of dark gray was chosen. The tracks are placed on one plate over the baseplate. Plates under the tracks are to be black (main tracks) or dark gray (some of the side tracks). 1×1 plates used for ballast. All diorama modules are put on 48×48 baseplates (27 of them used so far). The biggest module is to be 1×2 baseplates just to be able to store and transport it easily. Roofs are to be made of tiles (just to make the whole thing look more sexy, hahaha). These were the principles.
The details. The main building is inspired by the real building of the train station in Sanok. The engine shed, looking more or less the same, is somewhere in the Silesia region in Poland. The engines you can see on the display are models of most popular diesel locos in Poland: SM/SU 42, ST43. Many small details are taken directly from photos I have gathered or taken during the research. The research is the most important thing as it allows getting the vibes of trains you can translate into Lego MOC. Most of the details were built spontaneously during finishing each module and sometimes I was surprised how well they fit to the rest. One of collogues of mine, after seeing the little black crane on the ramp said, that the train station is OK, but the crane rules. Yeah I know. Sometimes a single little detail is worth more than couple of thousands of bricks around. This is why I tried to fill the space with a lot of details.
The future. I won’t to say that the diorama is still not finished. After four years of working on it (with different intensity) I think it can be considered as finished. For now 🙂 Of course some details might be changing during its lifetime and maybe one day or another I decide to rebuild it completely or partially. As for today’s perspective I have got couple of ideas how to extend the station. I want to loop the tracks just to make all the trains running. The other thing is that I still want a water tower which I originally planned 🙂 I want some industrial area and maybe a post office, police station and so on and so on. The train building needs a road in front of it. A lot of work, at least for another four years 🙂
The very next step is to build a passenger train I cannot finish since 2008 or even 2007. Now I got enough old dark gray bricks to get back to the project. Hope I will be able to show something really soon.
The diorama was put together for the first time on Friday, 28th of September 2012 during Lego Fan Weekend in Skaerbaek. It was a real fun for me to see all the things in one place.
And last but not least – want to say thank you for all of those, who I was able to talk to during the event and all the nice comments I got 🙂
Enjoy the photos!
