Subway Entrance: Construction, Excavation & Installation

There is no TTC subway station called Mortimer, but there is on the OPL.

This was a surprisingly pleasant little project, and one solution to the PortaCabin Problem. 

I could have built a subway entrance that simply sat on the sidewalk with a perspective view of stairs down to a non-existent subway platform painted on its base.

But no, I went whole hog and built a flight of 20 stairs down to a fictional corridor that lead would be riders to a fictional subway station. I thought that the alternative would look too fake.

The subway entrance is simply a built-up box with side walls cut from 0.020" sheet styrene. 

Some strips of 0.010" styrene were glued on at the base of the entry box, and along the edge where the stairs attach.

Here are the pieces a little more completed. I'll note the weathering with powdered pastels is little on the heavy side and I knocked it back with a gum eraser after taking this photo.

That black square on the right piece is the opening to the fictional corridor down to the platform.

The tiles are just paper sheets printed on my computer. The hand rails are bent from some thin wire. They should have more intermediate supports, but that seemed a little too fiddly given their hard-to-see location.

The ground level box that surrounds the staircase was built up from pieces of 0.020" and 0.010" styrene to give it thickness and surface shape.

The back wall at the bottom of the stairs is not glued to the main structure, but just taped in place. This was done so that I could take the wall off and shoot photos up the staircase. I'm not sure if I'll use that feature much, but I'm in a frame of mind where I want to have as many pieces on the layout removable so I can take pictures from a variety of locations. 

There's an example, but it looks like there's a stray glue thread - or maybe a giant spider web ! - in the way. I need to clean that up. But, ok, it does give the impression of looking up the stairs into street-side daylight.

I should note that there was some bending and twisting required of the photographer under the layout to get this shot, but no pain, no gain they say :-)

Once the entrance box was all glued together, a hole was cut into the layout to receive it. No photos of the action, but it took much longer than I thought it would, and required a variety of Dremel cutting and grinding attachments, as well as saws, knifes, and sanding sticks.

But, after the cuttin' was done, it fit quite well in the hole. All that was left to do was repave the remaining hole in the sidewalk and do some painting.

I read that the TTC was, and maybe still is, experimenting with colourful mosaics printed on the road in the safety zone where passengers get on and off streetcars. Auto drivers don't always stop when the streetcar does, and it can be a little dicey getting off a streetcar if a driver is texting instead of paying attention. I decided to create my own safety zone with a custom decal - count the squares if you must :-)