Unfinished Business

Back in the summer of 2019 I revealed that I'd be exhibiting my 10224 Town Hall-inspired railway station MOC (below) as part of a collaborative display at the 2019 Great Western Brick Show, but that it'd need some fairly substantial modifications in order to fit into the display.

The display, a LEGO city made up of fan-designed modular-style buildings complemented by brick-built roads, roadside structures, a canal and appropriate landscaping, would also feature a working passenger railway. The plan was for the railway to be elevated for part of its course, and Simon the display organiser asked if I'd be willing to modify my MOC to incorporate a platform at the rear in order to serve the elevated section of track. This seemed like an interesting challenge so I agreed. Simon sent over some specifications and a few photographs to illustrate how my station would fit into the overall display, including the exact dimensions of the plot it would occupy and how high the platform needed to be, so I got to work. As usual I worked in LDD, modifying a previous LDD file to reflect the new design brief, and eventually I came up with the sketch below.

As you can see, my plan was for the elevated section of railway to run on top of the ground floor of the building, which would mean that I had to extend the ground floor backwards to a considerable extent. The roof of the new, extended ground floor section would serve as the track bed, meaning that it would have to bear the weight of the track and train and be constructed accordingly. I'd also need to build a station platform at second floor level and attach a canopy a suitable height above it. The 16 x 6 area of open studs at the rear and to the side would eventually accommodate a bridge support, carrying the rail track from a bridge onto the station. From a purely technical perspective the build would be pretty straightforward, but the existing rear of the station (below) would nevertheless require substantial modification.

After double- and triple-checking that my design would fit the specified dimensions I sent an LDD screengrab to Simon for his approval, and after a bit of back-and-forth he was happy with it and I had the green light to get cracking with the modifications. To my surprise it turned out that I already had most of the LEGO elements that I needed for the build, but there were inevitably a few parts that I didn't have. This necessitated a gratifyingly small, if depressingly expensive, Bricklink order. Still, at least the parts arrived quickly and in perfect condition, so I was soon ready to build. It was the first meaningful LEGO project that I'd undertaken for a while on account of work, holidays and family commitments and it felt great to get my head down and do some building, so much so that I really got into it, burned the midnight oil and managed to complete most of the work in just a couple of nights.

As you can see from the picture above, I didn't make any modifications to the front of the building. The rear (below) was however much altered. I followed my LDD sketch pretty much to the brick, although I did make a couple of additional minor tweaks at the end, supporting the floating platform canopy with four lengths of black rigid 3mm hose and swapping out the old window sills with tan 2 x 4 tiles to make them look a bit less chunky. The building remains modular and splits into four sections, namely the expanded ground floor complete with track bed, the second floor which includes the station platform, a third floor to which the canopy attaches, and the roof which features the clock tower.

With the modified station now complete my next job was to figure out how to get it to the Great Western Brick Show venue in Swindon intact, and transporting it turned out to be a bigger challenge than I had anticipated. While the upper levels of the building just about squeezed into a large plastic crate, the expanded lower level was too big to fit into any box or crate that I owned or could lay my hands at short notice. I therefore ended up having to wrap it in a bed sheet and shoehorn it into the pitifully inadequate boot/trunk of my car and just pray that it survived the 80 mile journey without disintegrating, which it thankfully did, just about. Simon had arrived at the venue the previous evening, as had many of the other exhibitors, so the display was already in an advanced state of completion when I arrived at the venue on the morning of the show. All that was left for me to do was drop the station into the vacant plot, stand back and admire the view.

My station was assigned a nice central position in the display. Thanks to some impressive planning by Simon the station was flawlessly integrated into the display's rail loop by way of a pair of elegant dark green railway bridges complete with tan bridge supports which flanked the station on either side as you can see in the picture above. The narrow pavement in front of the station conceals electrical wiring which supplies a number of working LED street lamps, and beyond the pavement lies a section of brick-built road, some more pavement, and then a canal which is spanned by a pair of brick-built humpback bridges. A small courtyard completely enclosed by a number of buildings lies to the rear of the station beyond the rail track (below).

In addition to the integration of new features such as a working railway loop, an automated level crossing and LED street lights, the display had also physically expanded to a significant degree since its debut appearance at the 2018 Great Western Brick show. Click on the image below for a brief video tour of the city; if you're having difficulty viewing the embedded video then click here to watch it on Flickr or here to watch it on YouTube.

To my knowledge there aren't any plans to display the modular city at any further events. Even if future displays materialise I'd probably be hesitant to include my station as I don't think it's ideal for the same MOCs to keep appearing at multiple events over an extended period. It's therefore time for my station to come home and once again grace my own MOC City Layout. That'll mean that a lot of the recent changes will need to be reversed in order for the station to fit into its allocated space, but hey - it's all part of the fun!

Stay at home if you can, and keep safe.

Hit the Road

Some welcome time off over Christmas and New Year gave me a welcome opportunity to crack on with my LEGO city layout after a hiatus of over three months. Last time I posted an update I had started to significantly modify 10224 Town Hall with a view to creating a St Pancras-inspired station building for the layout, with the front of one 'wing' of the building completed (picture below).

Progress on the station subsequently stalled due to a lack of dark orange bricks, but during the run up to Christmas I was able to pick up 31050 Corner Deli from Amazon at a substantial discount; this set contains a selection of dark orange bricks including the ones I was missing, and while I'm generally loathe to buy brand new sets and immediately cannabalise them for parts, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to get what I needed to progress the build without the hassle of putting together a Bricklink order. Mirroring the modifications that I'd previously made to the Town Hall was fairly straightforward once I had the necessary elements, and I was soon able to complete the front of my station building as you can see in the picture below. The trickiest part of the build was figuring out how to fashion the number '1968' on the roof ballustrade in the same style as the '2016' (the year I started the station build) and the '1891' (from the original Town Hall set). It took some trial and error, but I got there in the end, utilising a variety of SNOT techniques to get it right.

The station is still far from complete, of course - I haven't even decided what the back and sides will look like yet, much less started to source parts - but with the footprint and front largely finalised I was at least now in a position to start figuring out how the building would fit into my layout. As a reminder, the station has been designed to occupy the area marked out by the light blue box below, with a canopy of some description protruding from the back of the building and overhanging the track.

Before placing the station into position on the layout there were a couple of things I wanted to do. First I filled the vacant space to the right of Cafe Corner with another of my venerable old Modular Buildings, 10211 Grand Emporium from 2010; as stated in a previous update I'm planning to eventually populate the layout with a mixture of modified 'official' sets and buildings of my own design, but for now the official, unmodified Modulars will do just fine. With the Grand Emporium in place my next job was to construct a few sections of brick-built road to run between the pair of Modulars and the station. As detailed in an earlier update I'd previously decided on the specifications for my brick-built roads in terms of their width and overall appearance, and I'd also figured out how to integrate the roads with the surrounding buildings and other structures. It was therefore a relatively simple task to build some new sections of road to those specifications and drop them into place on the layout as you can see in the picture below.

In addition to building a couple of full-sized road sections (32 studs in length) I also needed to fashion a smaller section to serve as a junction between the new road sections and the older section of road to the left of Cafe Corner. I also tiled the area between and around the railway tracks to the left of the road junction so as to create a level crossing; this will require a barrier of some description, but that's a job for another day....

With the new road sections in place I carefully lowered the station building into position on the layout as you can see below. There's obviously still a lot of tidying up and landscaping to do around the edges, but it was nevertheless nice to see it in place. I was also relieved to discover that the station's considerable weight was adequately supported by the structures below such that the whole building didn't crash through to the lower level of the layout....

If you've been patiently following along with this project for a while now then you'll perhaps recall that the layout includes an underground track loop complete with an underground station platform (more details here if this is news to you). The underground platform sits directly beneath the station building, and the intent is to connect it with the surface via a pair of staircases which emerge from underneath the twin arches at the front of the station. You can just about see the staircases disappearing downwards beneath the arches in the picture below.

The image below, which is taken from behind the station building, shows one of the staircases starting to take shape. The plan is for both staircases to descend down to a common underground concourse featuring a ticket office and a number of ticket barriers, through which the minifigure population of my LEGO city can access the underground platform.

While the station undoubtedly looks imposing from the front, the rear view above provides a sobering reminder of how much work there is still to do on the left and right 'wings' of the building which are currently only half built. Even so, it feels good to have made some tangible progress and moved the project along a bit, as evidenced by the picture below.

I hope you enjoyed the update. Feel free to share any comments below, and I'll provide further updates in due course.

Previous MOC city layout update here.

Station!

Back in June of this year I posted a review of Set 10224 Town Hall (below). One of the reasons for building the Town Hall when I did, and indeed building Set 10243 Parisian Restaurant a few months earlier, is that I was planning to use these and other Modular Buildings to populate my work-in-progress LEGO city layout, at least until such time as I got around to designing and building a few suitable MOCs of my own to take their place.

Having finished building the Town Hall and placed it alongside a couple of other Modular Buildings, however, I started having second thoughts about dropping it into my layout. It dwarfed the surrounding buildings and just didn't look right positioned alongside them. So what to do with it, then - should I just omit it from my layout? Thankfully an alternative solution occurred to me. On account of the Town Hall's clock tower, its dark orange colour and its arched windows I've always thought that it was vaguely reminiscent of London's historic and spectacular St. Pancras railway station (image below from Architecture Week); given that I was planning to include a railway station in my layout, why not try to repurpose the Town Hall into a railway station?

The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea, although it was immediately evident that there would be a fair bit of work to do. For starters, the Town Hall would have to be expanded substantially to do the job. You can see the intended location of the station marked in blue on the picture of my layout below. The plan is for the station to occupy a total area of 96 studs by 48 studs, which would mean expanding the Town Hall to three times its original width and also constructing a 16-stud wide canopy at the rear to overhang the station platform and railway track.  

So how to proceed? Well, I'm a big fan of sketching things out virtually before diving into the bricks, and my sketchpad of choice is LEGO's own virtual building tool LDD which you can download for free from here if you don't already have it. The first thing I needed to do was to find an LDD file for the Town Hall, and in this regard I was indebted to Eurobricks which has a comprehensive library of LDD files of official sets which have been virtually assembled by Eurobricks members. Having located and downloaded the Town Hall LDD file I then spent a couple of hours on LDD virtually sketching out an idea for an expanded version which might conceivably fit into my layout. You can see a screen grab of my sketch below - I basically extended out the ground, first and second floors of the Town Hall, leaving an opening at ground floor level to provide access to a staircase down to the pre-existing subway platform below. A mirror image of the extension would attach to the right side of the Town Hall, creating a building which would occupy the best part of three baseplates in width.

Having arrived at a concept that I was basically happy with I was too impatient to develop the sketch any further and instead turned my attention to the job of sourcing the bricks I'd need to translate the concept into a full-blown LEGO model. Ideally I'd have taken the easy route and just shelled out for two additional Town Hall sets to part out for the elements that I'd need, but the price of the set has skyrocketed since its retirement, to the point where I'd likely have had to stump up between £350 and £400 for just a single unboxed copy. I therefore resigned myself to ordering the elements that I didn't already have from Bricklink and set about putting together a wanted list. This would of course have been a lot easier if I'd completed my LDD design rather than lazily skipping most of it, but as it was I ended up having to make a lot of educated guesses regarding of how many of each element I'd need. With my distinctly flaky wanted list drawn up, I placed a couple of pricy Bricklink orders and waited for the elements to arrive which they duly did over the next couple of weeks.

You can see the ground floor modifications above (click to enlarge). First of all I swapped out the Town Hall's tan baseplate for a dark bluish grey one; I anticipate that a small section of the side edge of the baseplate will be visible in the final build and I knew that I'd get irritated by the sight of a thin sliver of tan where there shouldn't be any. I then demolished the front left corner of the ground floor so I could attach the arch, after which it was basically a case of following my LDD sketch. My intention was as much as possible to incorporate architectural features and visual cues from the original Town Hall in the hope that my modifications didn't jar too much and the building ended up looking like a coherent whole rather than a Town Hall with a bunch of random stuff tacked on to it. Consistent with the original Town Hall design each floor of the building is topped off with tiles so that it can be readily detached from the floors above and below; this obviously provides access to the interior as well as making the model a bit more portable which will be welcome in the event that I ever manage to finish the layout and need to transport it. With the front of the ground floor extension complete I moved on to the first floor extension (below).

The first floor extension incorporates three additional windows which are pretty much identical to those found in the Town Hall's first floor, right down to the window boxes and the use of white car mudguards for the cornicing. I also constructed a variation on the Town Hall's central first floor doorway and balcony on the front left corner of the extension which required a bit of modification to get it to fit neatly on top of the corresponding section of the ground floor. As mentioned in my review of the Town Hall some of the elements found in the set such as the dark orange 1 x 8 x 2 arch, which you can see above the balcony, are fairly uncommon although thankfully they aren't very expensive on Bricklink; the dark orange modified 1 x 2 log bricks that you can see between the windows are also fairly uncommon, appearing in just 13 sets in total, but again they're thankfully inexpensive and also surprisingly adundant on Bricklink which is a relief given how quickly I burned through them while building this floor.

My strategy for the second floor extension (above) was basically the same as that for the first floor - build some additional windows similar in design to those in the Town Hall and then reproduce the central second floor feature, in this case a larger window with ornate cornicing and a windowbox, and modify it slightly to fit on top of the corresponding section below. I also continued out the characteristic cornicing pattern, consisting predominantly of white modified 1 x 2 bricks with groove, and the light bluish grey detailing beneath the windows, into the extension. The dark orange 1 x 4 arches, which you can see above the smaller windows, were probably the hardest elements to source for this part of the build; they've only appeared in two sets to date including the Town Hall and aren't stocked by many Bricklink sellers.

And so finally on to the roof (above). I did initially consider including a smaller version of the central clock tower on the front left corner of the roof, and I even had a play with a few designs, but the idea was eventually abandoned as everything I tried looked too fussy and it became evident that it wasn't really necessary. I did however retain the design of the balustrade running along the front of the roof, and I also decided to mark the construction of my Town Hall extension with the date that I started work on it; creating the '2016' numbering in the same style as the Town Hall's original '1891' provided an interesting challenge and I was glad that I had my Town Hall instruction booklets to hand.

With the extension on the left side of the Town Hall completed to my satisfaction the process of mirroring the design on the other side of the building should be considerably more straightforward, although I strongly suspect that I've underestimated how many bricks I'll need so another Bricklink order will likely be required. I also have to substantially modify the rear of the Town Hall to incorporate a station platform and a canopy to overhang it. I'll post an update when I've made further progress.

Shake Your Foundations

It recently occurred to me that I have a grand total of less than eight months to get my City Layout display-ready for the 2016 Great Western LEGO Show. It's therefore clear that after a few weeks of allowing myself to be distracted by the likes of the Gimme LEGO Awards, the new Ghostbusters Firehouse Headquarters set and life in general, it's high time that I got a move on....

When I last updated you on the project (here) I'd just completed the subterranean level of the layout and was starting to figure out how the various ground level components - rail track, roads, buildings etc. - would fit together (picture above). The next job is to crack on with the foundations which will support the whole ground level of my city, and hence the cringeworthy title of this update (with apologies for the obscure AC/DC reference). Just to recap, the plan is to construct a modular, brick-built scaffold to underpin all of the ground level structures and raise them to the height of the outer track loop. Common sense might suggest that I'd be better off just fashioning the foundations out of wood rather than LEGO bricks since they won't be visible - it'd be much quicker, significantly cheaper and almost certainly more robust - but as a purist/complete idiot (delete as applicable) I'm going to give 100% brick-built a try first....

I'd constructed the first couple of scaffolding modules ages ago and these were already in use supporting a section of road and my Cafe Corner modular building. A couple more scaffolding modules were quickly constructed and placed as you can see in the picture above (click to enlarge). They're attached to the existing scaffold by way of Technic pins which prevents them from moving about too much, and they'll eventually support a couple of road sections. In case you're wondering, there's an adundant supply of dirt cheap used basic red bricks and plates of pretty much every variety on Bricklink which is why the scaffolding modules are red.

I'd initially assumed that all the scaffolding modules would be the same, but that's not the case. For starters, the modules which will support sections of road need to be one brick lower in height than those beneath the buildings in order to accommodate the pavement and kerbs that will overhang the edge of the roads, while the modules which will underpin some planned track sidings need to be one plate lower still. The scaffolding modules look pretty flimsy, but they've turned out to be more robust than I'd expected, particularly when connected to each other; they certainly seem to be strong enough to support the weight of the planned ground level structures, as well as being able to tolerate a fair bit of pushing and pulling.

There's clearly a lot more building to do to complete the rest of the scaffolding modules, but having now figured out how they all fit together and built at least one example of each type of module that I'm going to need, wrapping up the foundations should be fairly straightforward from here on in. With the number of different modules employed, however, and the fact that each of the different types fits into a specific space, I'm going to have to figure out a way of readily identifying the different modules so that when I take everything apart in preparation for transportation I'll be able to quickly and efficiently put everything back in the right place at the other end.

On a different subject, one notable aspect of this project is how many times I've found myself changing course since I started out, with a prime example being my decision to ditch prefab roads printed onto baseplates in favour of brick-built roads. Well, since I last wrote I've had another change of heart, and you can see the consequences of my most recent course correction in the picture below. More details to follow in my next update....

Previous City Layout update here. Next City Layout posting here.

The Countdown Begins....

Regular readers may recall that I posted a piece on Gimme LEGO a couple of weeks back about my preparations for this year's Great Western Brick Show, a.k.a. STEAM, and my experience of exhibiting at the show - you can read it here if you missed it. As luck would have it, I was allocated display space next to Brickset's Huw Millington who was exhibiting his excellent Brickton train layout (picture below) at the show. Because our displays were adjacent to each other, I ended up babysitting Brickton on a few occasions when Huw took a break, and I therefore got to have a play with the trains (which mysteriously derailed a couple of times on my watch, but we'll not dwell on those unfortunate incidents....).

Brickton by Huw Millington, Photograph by Jamie Douglas

I have to say that it was great fun to spend some time presiding over Brickton during the STEAM weekend, so much so that it's inspired me to crack on with my own work-in-progress City Layout. Not only that, but I've somewhat rashly decided that I'm going to try to get my layout sufficiently display-worthy to exhibit at next year's Great Western Brick Show. Yes, really.... I accept that those of you who've been patiently following my painfully slow progress are probably shaking your heads in bemusement at this news - I have after all been working on my layout since November 2010 and I don't exactly have much to show for it - but I'm going to give it a go. As an added incentive, Huw has confirmed that he's going to continue to develop Brickton and plans to show a new and improved version of it at STEAM next year; if I can get my layout ready in time, and if STEAM organiser Martin Long will let me display it there, then Huw's agreed that we can link our displays together at the show so that trains can run from one layout to the other. So I'd better crack on, then....

Last time I posted an update on my City Layout I'd just completed putting a roof over the subterranean track loop as you can see in the picture above. Since then I've started to think about how the next level of my city will fit together. The first thing I did was lay down a few track sections at what will be ground level. Dark bley track on a dark bley base looked predictably monotonous, so to address that I used some reddish brown tiles as sleepers and filled the space between and around the sleepers with ballast consisting of dark tan 1 x 1 plates as you can see in the picture below (click to enlarge). The sleepers are obviously too wide to be true to life, but I still think that the effect is quite pleasing. The ballast also looks okay I reckon, and the addition of a few plant stalks and the odd flower here and there helps to give the track a slightly more realistic feel, not to mention perfectly complementing the colour scheme of the tanker truck (Set 10016) that I've posed on the track.... Running some dark reddish brown fencing down the outside of the track helps to stop the ballast from falling off the sides of the layout, as well making things look nice and tidy.

Having made a start on the ground level track loop, the next thing I wanted to do was to attach a section of road alongside the track. It's interesting that having recently experimented with a variety of techniques for constructing and integrating brick-built roads I've ended up going back to something not too dissimilar to what I worked out back in August 2011 when I first played around with with brick-built roads here. One of the things I needed to figure out was how best to neatly transition from track to road; I ended up building a three stud-wide pavement to separate them (picture below - click to enlarge) with more reddish brown fencing employed trackside to protect pedestrians. The road is supported underneath by a modular brick-built scaffold, and I envision that the whole ground level of the city inside the outer track loop will eventually be supported by similar scaffolds. The road itself is predominantly built from one stud-wide black bricks which are laid on their sides; by building the roads in this way I figure that I'll be able to create a studless road surface relatively inexpensively, and it also enables me to fashion suitably thin road markings out of yellow and white plates and tiles sandwiched between the black bricks. I spent a while debating what colour the roads should be before eventually deciding to build them in black rather than dark bley; while black is probably less realistic I do think that it'll provide a better contrast with the surrounding structures - my city already features more than enough bley and dark bley I reckon. The outer edges of the road section incorporate a number of modified 1 x 4 bricks with four studs on one side; the studs on the side of these bricks attach to the underside of the pavement, thus holding the road firmly in position.

With a section of brick-built road in place the next task was to neatly transition from the road to a building, and for this I called upon my trusty Cafe Corner (below - click to enlarge). Modified 1 x 4 bricks with four studs on one side attached to the edge of the road section are again used to anchor the road to the underside of the pavement next to the building and hold everything nicely in position.

I'm planning on populating my city with a mixture of modular buildings, for example Cafe Corner and Green Grocer, and a selection of MOCs. Over time my intention is to gradually phase out the official sets and replace them with more of my own creations, but until that time comes LEGO's beautiful and iconic modulars will more than suffice I think.

And that's as far as I've got for now. Having started to figure out how the various components making up my city will fit together, the next step will be to get to work in earnest on the modular scaffold which will underpin all the ground level structures, although given that I've used up most of my supply of loose red bricks on the frame of my Manic Miner mosaic, it looks like I'm going to need to raid Bricklink once again to stock up. So raid Bricklink I shall - there's no time to waste as the countdown to STEAM 2016 has well and truly begun.....

< -- LEGO City Layout : Previous Blog Entry

Leaps and Bounds

Having posted an update on my MOC City layout last time out (you can read it here if you missed it) I'm willing to bet that there are a few sceptics out there who predicted another 2 year wait for the next installment.... I can't really blame you, to be honest - my track record on this project has been pretty abysmal - but on this occasion I'm delighted to prove you wrong. Truth be told, I actually couldn't wait to start working on it again, and despite a busy last few weeks since I last wrote I still managed to carve out a few evenings to dive back in and make some progress. OK, so perhaps not exactly leaps and bounds, but tangible progress nonetheless.

The obvious place for me to focus my renewed construction efforts was the front left corner of the layout which was looking decidedly bare, consisting as it did of just a bunch of dark bley baseplates held together by a few lengths of 9V track and a sprinkling of 1 x 2 and 2 x 2 dark bley tiles. As you can see in the pictures above and below (click to enlarge) I started out by finally completing the job of boxing in the track loop with light bley bricks to a height of 3 bricks. While this might not seem like a significant milestone, given my pitifully slow rate of progress to date - almost four and a half years to get to this point - it's still probably worth celebrating....

That minor milestone having been achieved, I continued to lay down successive layers of light bley brick, increasing the height of the inner and outer walls on the left side and front left corner of the layout to 7 bricks. It was a repetitive task but therapeutic nonetheless; people talk about being 'in the zone', and so far as building with LEGO is concerned I reckon that simple building tasks like this are about as 'in the zone' as it gets - you rapidly slip into autopilot and it feels almost hypnotic at times. Certainly the time seemed to pass very quickly.

The volume of brick needed to build on such a scale is considerable and easily underestimated, but having initially sketched out the design on LDD I already knew what would be required and had long since sourced the necessary elements - you can see some of them bagged up and ready to be pressed into use in the pictures above and below (click to enlarge).

Encouraged by my progress I pressed on and eventually got as far as raising the whole left side of the subterranean level of the layout up to full height (below - click to enlarge) before calling it a day. All that's left to do now is finish up the right side and then cover the lower track loop with a roof and the visible sections of the subterranean level will be complete. That'll be another milestone worth celebrating as at that point I'll finally be able to start work on the upper level where most of the action will be.

I've also now finished up the left side of the underground platform, thus completing the platform section adjacent to the tracks. I'm clearly not going to be able to fit many minifigures on it, but that having been said, there's probably about as much space on there as on some London Underground platforms so maybe it's more realistic than I'd anticipated....

One thing I've tried to remain mindful of is the question of portability. Sure, a 288 x 160 stud LEGO layout built on two levels is never really going to be truly portable, but I'm nevertheless taking the view that there's no point in just building something which will forever reside in my study unseen by anybody but me and readers of Gimme LEGO.... It's always been my intention to build with a view to eventually displaying the finished layout at events, and so to this end I'm trying to address potential portability issues as they arise rather than trying to figure it all out at the end.

A good example of this is provided by the underground station platform above. I figured that this would need to detach from neighbouring sections in order that it could be safely transported. It soon became evident however that the way I'd designed it in LDD would necessitate me literally breaking it apart for transportation and then having to rebuild it at my destination. I therefore needed to devise a different way of joining the sections together which would enable the platform to detach in a non-destructive fashion and I arrived at the solution below (click to enlarge).

As you can see from the picture above, the main platform section is attached by way of Technic pins and detaches with a minimum of fuss. The arch overhanging the front of the platform is part of the inner wall enclosing the track and will eventually help to support the roof and the structures above. When the platform section is attached, the lower aspect of this arch rests on a 1 x 1 tile which is part of the outer wall of the detachable platform section; this will help to support the weight pressing down on the arch while still allowing the detachable platform section to be easily removed.

So now there's finally somewhere for the minifig residents of my City layout to catch the train; my minifig alter ego seems to have missed this one, but there'll be another along in a minute....

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