Queens Bridge Victorian Station by brickbuilderspro?

[Locomotive Annie]

http://www.brickbuil...n-instructions/

My original plan for Kotanga station was to build something fairly modest, but as time has gone on I've decided to develop the township beyond the baseboard I'm working on at present and build most of it on the adjoining baseboard. This means that I would now have room to have a goods yard as well as the loco shed and it's adjoining turntable, - AND also a proper railway station of an appropriately dignified appearance.

I'd seen the Queen's Bridge station on the brickbuilderspro website a while ago and fell in love with its Victorian era appearance almost straight away. I kept telling myself that it was far too posh for Kotanga, but on the other hand some fairly significant industries operated out of Kotanga in the past with the sawmill, the coathanger factory and the post hole mine being the main ones. And of course there was the Summer tourist trade and gold mining as well.

Soooooo I've come to the conclusion that a posh station was built at Kotanga afterall by the very well heeled county council of the time and later on when the NZ Government Railways took over the district's railway lines, all except for the Kotanga Tramway (because it was such a scruffy little concern back then), the glorious Victorian style station building continued in use and remains today as a completely unique relic of the Kotanga County's colourful past.

While I like shunting a goods yard and doing all the 'on shed' locomotive movements before a loco begins its working day, I also like to run passenger trains. And with running passenger trains you have to have a decent looking station for them to stop at; - especially if they happen to be posh looking trains and possibly even express trains. So there you are that's how I decided that Kotanga will be getting such a nice station building even though it shouldn't really.

Out of interest has anyone built this particular station before? It's supposed to fit on three 32x32 baseplates which happens to be as big as I could go with on the intended site anyway.

[Hrw-Amen]

It is a nice looking station and will be nice to see it made with some of your trains running through it or even stopping at it. It would be nice to have a room large enough to be able to have such a station set up. I don't know its exact size but 3 X 32 base-plates looks about right! When you have it done can you post some pictures with it and your trains running around and or through it?

One question if you do not mind me asking? Where exactly is Kotanga, I have tried to Google it and am getting lots of stuff about an island in Thailand but not a lot for New Zealand other than a single reference to a valley that hardly anyone can find? Is it a made up place or is it real? (Beyond the island in Thailand that is.)

[Andy D]

I don't know which came first, the "Queen's Bridge Station" or the one at Disneyland in California. This one reminded me of something, so I did an image search an found some images of the Disneyland, Main Street Station and they look remarkably similar.

It really doesn't matter, this one looks great!

Andy D

[Duq]

Haven't built the station but it looks nice and does indeed look like 3 baseplates, nicely modular. The outer ones will be eachothers mirror image.

Are you going to buy the instructions or just build it from the image you posted here? Can't be too hard....

[Locomotive Annie]

It is a nice looking station and will be nice to see it made with some of your trains running through it or even stopping at it. It would be nice to have a room large enough to be able to have such a station set up. I don't know its exact size but 3 X 32 base-plates looks about right! When you have it done can you post some pictures with it and your trains running around and or through it?

One question if you do not mind me asking? Where exactly is Kotanga, I have tried to Google it and am getting lots of stuff about an island in Thailand but not a lot for New Zealand other than a single reference to a valley that hardly anyone can find? Is it a made up place or is it real? (Beyond the island in Thailand that is.)

Ha ha, that reference to the valley that nobody can find was put there by me when I was still intending to build a Kotanga layout in 16mm scale. Kotanga is a completely made up place, but much of the background for it comes from the Hauraki District where I live as well as the surrounding Thames, Coromandel and Waikato districts. There were a good many tramways serving the logging and gold mining industry and interfacing with the river shipping trade as well as interesting branchline railways in this area back in the 1900s so it's a rich source of inspiration.

The original idea behind Kotanga was that it is a strange and somewhat mystical place with unusual localised concentrations of magnetic energy which cause such effects as the trees growing with a strangely curved shape which makes the wood ideal for making wooden coathangers of superior quality. The posthole mine is also a result of these strange anomalies, - and yes I will be printing up stickers for the boxes the ready to use postholes are packed in. It's all great fun and helps me to not take my brick based railway modelling too seriously.

Once I've completed the main Kotanga station baseboard I will be moving onto the township baseboards and hopefully I will be able to at least represent a part of the coathanger factory. Unfortunately I won't be able to model the posthole mine or the sawmill as I simply won't have the space for them. Even though my house is my own and I don't have to answer to anybody for what I do with it, it still might be a bit much if I push the trackwork for the Kotanga Tramway beyond my bedroom and into the rest of the house.

I don't know which came first, the "Queen's Bridge Station" or the one at Disneyland in California. This one reminded me of something, so I did an image search an found some images of the Disneyland, Main Street Station and they look remarkably similar.

It really doesn't matter, this one looks great!

Andy D

The designer says that he drew inspiration from the Disneyland station for Queens Bridge, but you are quite right it's a great looking station.

Haven't built the station but it looks nice and does indeed look like 3 baseplates, nicely modular. The outer ones will be eachothers mirror image.

Are you going to buy the instructions or just build it from the image you posted here? Can't be too hard....

I always like to buy the instructions if I'm going to use someone's original design. I think that's only fair since they've gone to all the trouble of developing the design for the building and making sure that it does indeed fit together as it should. It's likely that I will be changing the colour scheme and making minor alterations here and there, but essentially this is going to be the new Kotanga station.

[Hrw-Amen]

I see, so you made it up, that is OK it did seem a little odd with the references to coat-hangers and the like. I can imagine that a few archaeologists would be very confused if they came across a tram wreck from the turn of the century that had scattered about some ready made postholes, they may think they had a stone age train on their hands?