I've been wanting to take a crack at the "Vintage Lithograph Station" project over on Paul's Tribute to Tinplate site for awhile now...finally got around to it. It is based on the American Flyer no. 90 station, a version of which was marketed as the Hyde Park. The idea of replicating an embossed tin toy using cardboard has intrigued me, and this simple little structure offered an opportunity to try it. Paul and Howard did a terrific job of production on the "kit", so it doesn't require a tremendous amount of effort to make something pretty nice:
I made a few minor changes to the graphics, primarily a blackening of the windows and the addition of shades; otherwise as designed. I cut out the doors and windows and pasted copies in from the back to give the facade a bit of depth. The later version of the original no. 90 featured an embossed tin roof rather than the "lithographed" version included in the kit. I made a roof for this one using a base of artist's matt board, overlaid with a cut-out using some cardstock to give the illusion of the raised embossing. A coat of dark red satin enamel seemed to produce a good result. The base is a scrap of masonite from the shop, painted a battleship gray satin similar to the original.
The sidekick to the no. 90 was the no. 91 Flyer Town Freight Station. I'm fortunate to have a friend with an extensive collection of prewar tinplate, and I asked him to send me a couple of photos of the front and side graphics. Using these and a few hours on MS Paint, I was able to produce some graphics that would work. The original 90 and 91 stations were the same size, but the graphics on the 91 look quite small by comparison. To make them look a bit better, I expanded the station's footprint by about 25%, which made the station's details approximately similar to the no. 90:
Basically the same construction methods as the no. 90, just slightly larger. The original's graphics included the partially opened door in a printed format...I created an actual partially open door by cutting it out and cementing a duplicate in from behind. Roof technique was the same.
Bonus project :: After completing these, another friend sent me pics of someone's attempt to make a garage to mate with their Lionel 184 Bungalow. It was pretty crude, but an interesting concept, so I thought I'd try to make something.
The 184 came in a number of versions over the years, but the earliest had lithography featuring plants/vines growing up the sides. Paul had produced a kit for the 184 on his Tribute to Tinplate site that included some nicely done graphics similar to the original, so I sampled those to use as the basis for the garage (thanks Paul!). I drew a vintage garage door using the pics my friend sent me as inspiration, then basically just cobbled it together with some cut/paste. Here's a pic...original Lionel tin bungalow on the left, the attempt at a matching garage on the right:
Lionel produced some landscaped plots that they sold for use as scenic items for the train layout, designed to accommodate their tinplate structure series. Rather than put the garage on a plain gray masonite base, I fashioned a mini-plot for it to sit on. A small piece of 1/4-inch thick masonite and some classic green-dyed sawdust gets you something that approximates the original plots.
Anyway, done with these (for now), but thought someone might find them of interest. If you stumble onto some free time, build yourself a station from the Tribute to Tinplate site...I think you'll be pretty pleased with the results one can achieve.
