When viewing the wonderful photo’s posted on this forum, it amazes me how often I see the little station that Atlas makes. It is often off in the background on peoples layouts but jumps out at me as something that seems to be a part of everyone’s empire. For ten bucks the price is right and it is a good little kit to tackle as a first project. I received mine as a gift for my fiftieth birthday along with a ton of other MRR stuff. So if you have that little Atlas station lets see it. You can show a close up or we can play where’s Waldo and try and spot it on your layout. And please tell us how you acquired it. Was it a gift? Did you buy it? Or was it in a big box of junk that came your way? I think it is the most common type of structure you see in the junk boxes at train shows.[(-D]
Oh yeah, the Atlas passenger depot… I’ve assembled about three of them - each previous one having been smashed, crushed, molested, or mutilated by pets, ex-roomies, moving, careless people, etc… It’s an omen - like when I used to assemble plastic models. I think I must have built about ten U.S.S. Enterprise models because of that. Perhaps when I build my layout this time around, I will select another depot - just to break the curse?
However, it won’t be on the new layout I’m building - if there is one, it won’t be for too long! I’m modeling all the stations on the interesting and varied prototypes along the line. There will be 5 in all, and none of them the same!
I have the Roadside Inn version in a box in the attic, No idea what to do with it (it was assembled decades ago, when I wasn’t quite as skilled with structure building (using globs of Testors Tube cement and lots of Testors enemal, brush painted on without proper thinning - ugh), but it won’t go onto any more modules of mine.
I also had (maybe it’s upstairs in another box) the Revel Station (might have been released under Lifelike), the other small town passenger station that was on HO layouts during the late 1970s.
You know, with the Atlas and the Revel stations, painted the same color, you can sort of have a railroad standard for passenger stations - they do resemble each other fairly well.
Here is mine at Greenvale Junction on my present layout. I got it in the 1960s for my first or second layout and have used it on most of the layouts I have built. This time, I did some restoration and repainting on it.
Bought mine myself from long since defunct Aurora Hobbies about ten years ago.
After revising my track plan I was able to add a few platform extensions. As you can see, it needs to have the paint and lighting finished on the platform extensions. This was the first structure kit I built.
While I don’t have the Atlas station, I do have the IHC station that’s been around for 40 years or so from different companies. With some RR correct paint and a bit of weathering and detail stuff it can really fit right in to most any layout.
My point is, never underestimate what you can do with a “cheap” old kit. It can be amazing…
I had two on my old White River Southern Railroad, in Enfield and West Canaan, NH. The WRS depicted the ex-B&M Northern Division from Concord, NH, to White River Junction, VT, as if it had been saved by the state and contracted out to a shortline to operate.
Intermodal hotshot MONA (Montreal-Nashua, NH) passes local LE-2 (based in Lebanon, NH) in Enfield.
Well I bought mine at a local Virginia Beach hobby store. There were a few of them in that town I shopped at and I dont remember which one. I built it for a trolly line and it was one of the stops. I have another model that is based on the same model but it is a resteraunt or something like that. It is modeled in different colors but the model is the same. Here is a pic.
If you look close there is a woman in the phone booth that may miss her train if she does not stop talking.
I may have a home for this station on my new layout if I find the station that I have in place right now proves to be too large.
My father is an antique dealer and about a year ago he found this in an old desk he bought. Mint in the box - I guess from the printing and box construction that it is from 60s or 70s. I built one years ago for a childhood layout, but I’m not sure I want to bust this one off the sprues!
Wow nice find. I would not want to build that one either, and not just for the antiquity of the model. I aquired a AMT 1929 Model A Roadster pickup model that was cast in 1963 which was the first year the model was available. I aquired it in 1993 and the plastic was too hard and brittle to work with. I ended up using parts of it on another model because of the poor condition of the model overall. The plastic would not work with the normal Testers plastic cement, it was too hard to melt and form the bond with other plastic. So while old models are cool they can be a pain to work with.
Well, it sure wasn’t Rockville, Maryland on the B&O, where I grew up. But of course, all the kids there had this on our layouts. The hobby shops always had stacks of them.
