How To Build a Model Railroad Canadian National Fenelon Falls, Ontario depot drawings

Canadian National Fenelon Falls, Ontario depot drawings

By Angela Cotey | May 21, 2013

| Last updated on January 12, 2021

An online extra from the July 2013 Model Railroader

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MRRLC0912_AFenelonstation

During a family vacation several years ago, I photographed the former Canadian National Ry. Fenelon Falls, Ont., station. This building stands on a now abandoned 55-mile-long rural branch line that once connected the town of Lindsay to Haliburton.

The station houses an art gallery and now has board-and-batten sheathing. However, I’ve found several old pictures that showed the station was originally covered with Insulbrick or some other type of simulated brick siding. See www.niagararails.com.

When I took my photos I didn’t have a tape measure with me, so determining the station’s major dimensions became a matter of counting boards to estimate the window and door sizes and the wall heights. Thus my HO model is a scale 48 feet long, 16 feet wide, and 16 feet tall at the ridge. The operator’s bay is a scale 9′-0″ wide, 4′-6″ deep, and 16′-0″ tall. From this data, I made my own scale drawings.

 

23 thoughts on “Canadian National Fenelon Falls, Ontario depot drawings

  1. thanks for sharing this to all of us. its a nice building and I cant wait to build it. i also have the opportunity to make a much larger building too

  2. Thanks for responding Lorne! Thanks for a great article and what will be my first hydrocal structure!

  3. Message to Al Schwarz (New Jersey) concerning keeping the
    Hydrocal in the molds at the gable ends. Wait until the plaster becomes a little stiff … then fill the sloping parts of the mold with a knife or similar tool. The Hydrocal is just on the verge of hardening so it will not sloop.
    Good luck

  4. I am having a hard time visualizing pouring the wall castings with the molds as shown in MR. What keeps the hydrocal in the mold once the the level reaches the peaked walls on the ends of the station, or the peaked front wall on the operator's bay??

  5. Nice plans for a great station. This will probably be my next project, as I have a wooden station that dates from waaaay back in my scratchbuilding days and is not as good as I'd like.
    Thanks for the plans!

  6. I must be missing something….the drawing comes up but no way to save it. Must be operator error…………?

  7. They are some really nice plans. I will get my autoCad and make framing templates for construction. Thanks a bunch, Bob

  8. Shahar, the directions you want on how to make the molds and pour the wall castings are contained in the article in our July issue. Happy railroading!


    Steven Otte
    Model Railroader associate editor

  9. The plans are great but it would be nice if you would actually show us how the make the molds to cast this building.

  10. Good to have preserved, too many of the old stations have vanished without even a picture

  11. I have been looking for a plan for a station and this CN model just fits the bill. Thanks.

  12. I have passed the Fenelon Falls Station many times on fishing trips in the area. Many times I forgot my camera, but did get pictures back in the late sixty's. I wanted to build this unit but never got around to it. Maybe now I will. Great plans!

  13. Great to see more Canadian content. I hope to see more as it can be hard to model Canadian RR when buried in stuff about US lines.

  14. I built the same station this winter for my G gauge railway in my garden at the cottage using a 1:29 scale. Since my cottage is just outside of Fenelon Falls I did measure the footprint. It is approx. 57 ft. by 19 ft. Other than that the plans look very close to the existing structure (without some of the fancy woodwork on the roof) and probably are closer to the original station.

  15. Thanks, I think I can use the drawings for my layout, maybe I'll drive over to have a better look at the place and get some shots.

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