WIP Portland's Union Station (Or)(will be 2 year project)

[Barduck]

Hi everyone. I wasn’t going to post anything until I was further but I’m starting to get desperate. Desperate for more pictures of this station.

Living in Belgium, Europe, it’s not easy to build anything so massive and add as much details, both inside and outside, as I can. It’s impossible for me at this moment to go visit this station in person.

I do hope to go next year or the year after, depending on funding but in the meantime I find myself in a spot where there’s just not enough pictures around on the internet. And trust me when I say, I found all pictures that exist. I’ve even mailed to someone who works for the organization that owns the station, to the restaurant that is inside of it, and more but so far nobody answered my call for help. So hope by posting pictures of my progress so far someone may step up and provide me with more pictures.

My progress so far, from initial design of the main hall, till minutes ago:

Now to wait on orders to arrive so I can continue building. 

Edited June 4, 2022 by Barduck
typo

[zephyr1934]

Oh wow! That's crazy, but it also looks great so far. There are probably books written about the station. Your best bet might be to find a buddy in PortLUG or even join PortLUG, here's their webpage. If you are a serious researcher, there are probably historical archives that might have extensive photos, blueprints, etc. Places to look would be the Portland public library, University of Portland library, possibly somewhere in a state run archive like the state historical society, etc..

 

Here are a couple more leads,

Pacific Northwest chapter of the National Railway Historical Society

Oregon Historical Society (search their archives)

SP&S historical society

Oregon Rail Heritage Center (located in the Portland area)

 

 

[Barduck]

2 minutes ago, zephyr1934 said:

Oh wow! That's crazy, but it also looks great so far. There are probably books written about the station. Your best bet might be to find a buddy in PortLUG or even join PortLUG, here's their webpage. If you are a serious researcher, there are probably historical archives that might have extensive photos, blueprints, etc. Places to look would be the Portland public library, University of Portland library, possibly somewhere in a state run archive like the state historical society, etc..

 

Here are a couple more leads,

Pacific Northwest chapter of the National Railway Historical Society

Oregon Historical Society (search their archives)

SP&S historical society

Oregon Rail Heritage Center (located in the Portland area)

 

 

yeah, it's gonna be totally nuts when I can finish this, just over 3m long and that's just for the station. Reaching out to PortLUG might be a good idea, I'll try that. Posted this on some Facebook groups as well and someone there also suggested contacting museums and libraries in Portland. I had just send mails to 2 of the links you've suggested before you replied to this topic, hope something turns up

[Phil B]

I just love how you've used old and dirty tiles to break up the uniformity of the floor and create that marble effect that the real floor likely also has. Very creative and well done!

[Barduck]

2 minutes ago, Phil B said:

I just love how you've used old and dirty tiles to break up the uniformity of the floor and create that marble effect that the real floor likely also has. Very creative and well done!

it's not that they're dirty, a bunch have decals with marble effect on them

[EWay]

Really looking forward to following the progress on this, it looks great so far! Love the marbling too :)

Best of luck with the research!

[JopieK]

That is some project you have there @Barduck. LEGO should also do something with marbling as it looks stunning!

[Vilhelm22]

Very nice @Barduck!  I always love people’s models of these beautiful, vast stations - how I like to think stations should be.  It’s a dream of mine to do something like this one day and I hope to do so eventually…

 

 

 

On a side note, you might want to specify that it’s Portland Oregon rather than Portland Maine - I believe both are the largest cities in their respective states, but Portland Maine is significantly smaller.

[Feuer Zug]

I've traveled through this station a few times and it's a wonderful place. I can't wait to see the completed model. Your progress so far is superb. The shape and design is already recognizable. Having the work minifigs in a makeshift construction scene is funny.

[zephyr1934]

Yes, I noticed the marbled tiles too, they really make the large open floor pop.

If this were 10 years ago, I would say track down Steve Barile. He was a big mover and shaker in lego trains (e.g., he was on the hobby train crew) and lives (lived?) in Portland. Even though he isn't very active these days, if you can track him down he might be willing and able to help.

[Barduck]

Making the decals was “fairly” simple, browsed the internet for a beautiful marble pattern (white marble), filled an A4 sheet in photoshop with it and printed it with a laserprinter on transparent vinyl. The hard part was measuring out where the cuts needed to be and applying them. 
Apart from more pictures, my biggest worry is the rounding of the main hall and the dome shaped roof on top that. It’ll be a challenge for sure

Edited June 4, 2022 by Barduck

[High_Admiral]

Portland Union is a nice little station, and you are certainly doing the thing justice so far. I would personally see about contacting the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation(the guys that run SP 4449, SP&S 700, and restoring OR&N 197) about this. I do know that the movie Come See the Paradise was filmed there as the 4449 was featured in that film for a scene. Might look up that on Youtube for some more details if applicable. You planning on any Portland native locos to go along with the thing?

[M_slug357]

It looks marbleous!

[mark6399]

Great progress! I like the marble decals as well!

[Barduck]

On 6/4/2022 at 9:13 PM, High_Admiral said:

Portland Union is a nice little station, and you are certainly doing the thing justice so far. I would personally see about contacting the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation(the guys that run SP 4449, SP&S 700, and restoring OR&N 197) about this. I do know that the movie Come See the Paradise was filmed there as the 4449 was featured in that film for a scene. Might look up that on Youtube for some more details if applicable. You planning on any Portland native locos to go along with the thing?

I wouldn't called it "a little" station, maybe it is in American standards but it's still huge. I've contacted the ORHF and recieved a reply but unfortunately they are unable to help as they are not located near the station. As for native loco's, I'm thinking of getting instructions for an Amtrak engine but I can very well add UP engines as the station was use by UP ( the "City of Portland", which is a sister train of my M10005 "City of Denver" served the station, so technically speaking I could let that one drive thru and it'll fit right in)   

Edited June 6, 2022 by Barduck

[Paperinik77pk]

Spectacular build so far - and it will surely get better - you have such attention to details and very good ideas (stickers for marble effect) 

I will follow this thread with interest, since building a train is a thing - but a station so big, and complex...well...this is a complete world apart!

Ciao!

Davide

[Barduck]

Got a bit more done:

Still no word on more pictures, not even from PortLUG, Hope someone from that LUG follows this forum and reaches out. Once the main hall is finished I'll be stuck because there's no pictures of the rooms next to it.

Today I did some extra work, added the windows and top wall at the trackside:

It was while doing that that I noticed I made a mistake in the height need of the main hall and that walls and thus also the roof beams that I've already added actually need to go higher. Also the inner parts of the arches need to be higher. So next few days I'll be taking a lot of bricks of those walls to do just that. Might take a whole week to be at the point I need to be. 

And yes, you'll notice I've cut the tile, it's the only way to hide the wires for the LEDs

And please, comments, input, ideas, ... all welcome. Still need to figure out how I can do the circular part of the main hall's roof, any ideas on that are most welcome (it is still my first building I'm doing so I'm a rooky on this)

Edited June 9, 2022 by Barduck

[bogieman]

Looks really great. Since you are adding lighting, you need to find a way to make the ceiling fans rotate! Kidding of course, but would be awesome.

Dave

[zephyr1934]

41 minutes ago, Barduck said:

Got a bit more done:

You got this far this quickly and it is still a 2 year project? Regardless, it looks amazing (even if the walls are not high enough). Just one observation, in the above photo the cross beams seem to be sagging. I THINK you could strengthen them by changing up the snot. Do studs up in the middle (as you already have) but using brackets on either side, e.g., 1x2 x2x2 up/down. Then on the sides use 2x16 plates with a layer of tiles on top.

 

50 minutes ago, Barduck said:

Still no word on more pictures, not even from PortLUG, Hope someone from that LUG follows this forum and reaches out. Once the main hall is finished I'll be stuck because there's no pictures of the rooms next to it.

What era are you aiming to recreate? I don't know much about this particular station, but I do know that most surviving large stations are now typically mostly shopping malls or similar (there is a former 20+ track station in Cincinnati that is now a museum complex but still has a single platform for Amtrak service, another in Indianapolis that I think still serves Amtrak on a single platform but is mostly a hotel). Whereas, back in the day, the station would have had large sections devoted to waiting rooms, baggage handling, mail handling, railroad administration, etc. etc..

If you are going for present day, according to wikipedia, "The station is owned by the city of Portland and operated by Prosper Portland, the city's urban renewal agency. The city earns $200,000 a year from nearly 30 tenants. Amtrak, the main tenant, has a continuing lease in 2021."

Here's the website of Prosper Portland.

If you are looking for historic station, you might want to contact the fellow behind streamliner memories at trainlover@streamlinermemories.info He is very big on historic Pacific Northwest railroading

 

 

[Barduck]

7 minutes ago, zephyr1934 said:

You got this far this quickly and it is still a 2 year project? Regardless, it looks amazing (even if the walls are not high enough). Just one observation, in the above photo the cross beams seem to be sagging. I THINK you could strengthen them by changing up the snot. Do studs up in the middle (as you already have) but using brackets on either side, e.g., 1x2 x2x2 up/down. Then on the sides use 2x16 plates with a layer of tiles on top.

 

What era are you aiming to recreate? I don't know much about this particular station, but I do know that most surviving large stations are now typically mostly shopping malls or similar (there is a former 20+ track station in Cincinnati that is now a museum complex but still has a single platform for Amtrak service, another in Indianapolis that I think still serves Amtrak on a single platform but is mostly a hotel). Whereas, back in the day, the station would have had large sections devoted to waiting rooms, baggage handling, mail handling, railroad administration, etc. etc..

If you are going for present day, according to wikipedia, "The station is owned by the city of Portland and operated by Prosper Portland, the city's urban renewal agency. The city earns $200,000 a year from nearly 30 tenants. Amtrak, the main tenant, has a continuing lease in 2021."

Here's the website of Prosper Portland.

If you are looking for historic station, you might want to contact the fellow behind streamliner memories at trainlover@streamlinermemories.info He is very big on historic Pacific Northwest railroading

 

 

Well, I did have the main hall figured out for quite some time, so on this I can work faster. This part is 2 XL MILS that are both 64x64 studs then the entrance for it (track side) is added which is another 16x64 studs. Looking at the photo from what've build, similar XL MILS are added on the left side and two times that on the right side. Those I still need to figure out and it's of those parts I don't have pictures.

Reinforcing the cross beams a bit more might be needed as you've pointed out, I'll have to look in to that. Though using brackets may create to much of an offset for the inner beams (you can see those on the second photo).

Prosper Portland was the first I reached out to but have not have the pleasure of getting a reply to my email.

As for era, I haven't given that much thought really, I'll already be happy if I manage to build this thing. I do have to admit that doing a late 1930's era would be nice as my M10005 would fit with it rather nicely then (although it would have been it's sister train, the "City of Portland", that served the station in it's time). So reaching out to the person you've suggested could help.

[Ropefish]

glad to see your progress, love seeing people do massive train stations!

[Barduck]

The height error has been corrected, still need to build the rest until I can put the roof beams back in place.

The 2 minifigs stacked on each other are to get a better view on the height of the door openings, to better compare to pictures I have so I'm sure it is as correct as possible. It does seem to be so.

specially when compared to this picture: 

Portland Union Station by Stones 55, on Flickr

As always, comments, suggestion, and most definitively pictures, all welcome

 

[zephyr1934]

On 6/9/2022 at 10:23 AM, Barduck said:

Reinforcing the cross beams a bit more might be needed as you've pointed out, I'll have to look in to that. Though using brackets may create to much of an offset for the inner beams (you can see those on the second photo).

Thinking about it more, you have quite the engineering challenge with this build. I have only attempted one or two large buildings (all smaller than this) and I had problems with the opposite walls trying to pull apart, so any sort of beams will probably need to also be structural to keep the walls together, no? Meanwhile, for this build it looked like the inner beams were only held on by a few studs, to which I assumed they were non structural. I'm sure it is all doable, but I bet it needs a little extra thought to find the right solution before building past it. I wonder if simply a sandwich of studs up 2xN plates would be a good solution.

 

On 6/9/2022 at 10:23 AM, Barduck said:

As for era, I haven't given that much thought really, I'll already be happy if I manage to build this thing. I do have to admit that doing a late 1930's era would be nice as my M10005 would fit with it rather nicely then (although it would have been it's sister train, the "City of Portland", that served the station in it's time).

Picking the era is important. Probably 1920's-1950's would be similar enough that it would be hard to tell the difference between years from the architecture alone (the number and dress of the people would be the main give away of the specific year, e.g., a lot of service men would suggest WWII. All of the non-public areas of the station would be occupied with railroad related freight rooms, offices, supporting services, etc. There might even be an integrated tower for managing all of the approaches to the station, and/or a power house for generating steam to heat the building. Then late 50's to early 70's would be a run down shadow of the earlier years (you probably don't want to do that)

The modern era, the waiting room might look similar, but where there once were dozens of ticket windows now there is probably a painted wall that might pay homage to the ticketing but the old ticket office is now probably retail or restaurant. Other public areas are probably converted to a food court. While all of the formerly non-public space is probably either retail or offices.

Doing the modern era is potentially a lot easier,  you just need to find someone to take pictures of the current. But doing the historic era would be a lot more interesting.

When push comes to shove, I think it is like building a lego train interior, you can't get all of the detail in there at minifig scale, but you can get a really good caricature. In that sense you don't have to be perfect, you just need to get the key elements in roughly the right places. I bet a detailed minifig scale ticket window might be 4 studs wide and you could cheat it to 3 studs if you had to. But there were probably way more ticket windows in the real station than you can fit in the model. So if you put 8 ticket windows where there once were 30, it would still work. Similar ideas with the support spaces. Maybe there were 40-50 offices in the building, but get 5-8 at minifig scale and it works. There would have been baggage and mail handling areas. One or more large departure boards, a station master's office...

Anyway, I hope I'm not being a bother, the station looks fantastic and the interior is already excellently detailed.

 

[Barduck]

3 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

Thinking about it more, you have quite the engineering challenge with this build. I have only attempted one or two large buildings (all smaller than this) and I had problems with the opposite walls trying to pull apart, so any sort of beams will probably need to also be structural to keep the walls together, no? Meanwhile, for this build it looked like the inner beams were only held on by a few studs, to which I assumed they were non structural. I'm sure it is all doable, but I bet it needs a little extra thought to find the right solution before building past it. I wonder if simply a sandwich of studs up 2xN plates would be a good solution.

 

They are not going to be used as support, its more to give the proper look when watching inside. And the roof will come of anyway to show the inside when viewers ask for it.

3 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

Picking the era is important. Probably 1920's-1950's would be similar enough that it would be hard to tell the difference between years from the architecture alone (the number and dress of the people would be the main give away of the specific year, e.g., a lot of service men would suggest WWII. All of the non-public areas of the station would be occupied with railroad related freight rooms, offices, supporting services, etc. There might even be an integrated tower for managing all of the approaches to the station, and/or a power house for generating steam to heat the building. Then late 50's to early 70's would be a run down shadow of the earlier years (you probably don't want to do that)

The modern era, the waiting room might look similar, but where there once were dozens of ticket windows now there is probably a painted wall that might pay homage to the ticketing but the old ticket office is now probably retail or restaurant. Other public areas are probably converted to a food court. While all of the formerly non-public space is probably either retail or offices.

Doing the modern era is potentially a lot easier,  you just need to find someone to take pictures of the current. But doing the historic era would be a lot more interesting.

When push comes to shove, I think it is like building a lego train interior, you can't get all of the detail in there at minifig scale, but you can get a really good caricature. In that sense you don't have to be perfect, you just need to get the key elements in roughly the right places. I bet a detailed minifig scale ticket window might be 4 studs wide and you could cheat it to 3 studs if you had to. But there were probably way more ticket windows in the real station than you can fit in the model. So if you put 8 ticket windows where there once were 30, it would still work. Similar ideas with the support spaces. Maybe there were 40-50 offices in the building, but get 5-8 at minifig scale and it works. There would have been baggage and mail handling areas. One or more large departure boards, a station master's office...

Anyway, I hope I'm not being a bother, the station looks fantastic and the interior is already excellently detailed.

 

You're bringing very valid points. From the few pictures I have recieved I can deduct that the ticketstation is basicly the same as it used to be, but with the Amtrak symbol added. For the rest I'm still facing the same problems. It's already hard to find pictures from others room than the main hall, boarding and waiting rooms in present time, it might be close to impossible to get pictures from other eras. And, you're not being a bother, this interaction is really helpful to go forward and get a sight on where I want to go with this building

Edited June 10, 2022 by Barduck

[Barduck]

Well, finally I've got a response to one of my mails inquiring for pictures. Someone at Portland's Architectural Heritage Center contacted me. They do not have any pictures themselves but he's is going to pass my mail to some people he knows that are local railroad and Union Station experts in the hope that one of them might be able to assist me. So a bit of good news at last, now to hope that I'll be getting the much needed pictures