I finally finished the quasi-restoration project I've been working on for weeks, on and off. When I got it, it was a semi-restored 124(?) station with a TCA Restored sticker on the bottom and a few problems. Anyway I detest Lionel's pea green color, which JLC must have loved because it's on so much prewar tinplate, so I decided to change the colors and fix what needed fixing. This is the result. The walls and corners are done with two different colors of Rustoleum brand texture paint. The roof and window inserts are Krylon and the chimneys, roof trim, and window/door frames are Collector Color (600 Cream) from Henning. The maroon doors and spatter gray base are original.
I learned some things from the project. The Collector Color as it comes from the can is very thick. I thinned it with about one part thinner to five or six of paint to get a good consistency for brushing. If I were going to airbrush it I would thin it a lot more. The Collector Color should be baked; my homemade bake box with a heat lamp worked fine. I also baked the Krylon roof but did not find it necessary to bake the texture paint.
The most annoying and time consuming part of the job was replacing broken off tabs on the window and door frames and on the base plate. Each one of these had to be fabricated from brass flat stock and soldered in place. Not terribly difficult, but aggravating and time consuming. Soldering is not, unfortunately, one of my best skills although I've gotten better at it.
When I was editing the photos of the station I noticed that the roof seems to be sitting a bit crooked. I'll have to go back and bend the roof mounts - shouldn't be any problem.
There were some curious aspects to the station itself. It had an interior light but no hole in the floor for wires, so I'm guessing the light was added by whoever did the restoration and he just planned to run the wires out the back door. I went ahead and drilled a hole. The oddest part is the positioning of the front windows relative to the door. In the second picture you can see my station as I got it next to another, more normal Lionel station. The typical 124 station has the tops of the windows almost in line with the door frame. On my station, the windows are noticeably above the door frame. I don't know if this is an early version or what. I had to notch the blackboards to fit them in place; obviously the station did not originally come with them. Any light that anybody can shed on this difference will be more than welcome. I don't know if this was originally a 121, 124, or what.
What do you call a project like this? It's not really a restoration, since I intentionally didn't paint it in original colors, but it's more than just a repaint. Rebuilt? Refurbished? Redone?
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