Restoring Ken Brunt's Hesperus station

rmccown-admin · April 16, 2025, 7:44pm

I was lucky enough to get two stations from Ken Brunt’s Estate. This one is his Hesperus station. I found some mention of it here (in his Dolores station build from 2009) but the pictures are long-gone since his domains have expired.

It’s sturdy, but needs a bit of care. I’ve reattached various corner supports. The roof will get a new coat of paint and weathering. I might build some light boxes for some of the windows.

And I’m building a large platform for it to sit on. It will end up at Williamsport.

I’m printing up some station signs for it.

I hope to have this in place this weekend.

ctown2 · April 16, 2025, 8:13pm

What’s the core made out of? PVC?

rmccown-admin · April 16, 2025, 8:15pm

Coroplast and 1/8 acrylic. The building would be incredibly light, but he added a few pieces of 1x6 PVC as a base to act as weight.

Rooster · April 16, 2025, 9:34pm

That’s awesome…Thank you!

rmccown-admin · April 16, 2025, 9:44pm

These will work nicely.

JRad · April 16, 2025, 11:21pm

So glad this station will live on at your RR. I still have “Radder’s Mill” outdoors on my severed main line. It no longer lights up as I removed to power supply a few weeks ago. For lighting I simply coated the underside of the roof with some orange and yellow vinyl then pointed a cool white LED at it to reflect the color.

Ken’s buildings were built pretty simply, but look great.

rmccown-admin · April 17, 2025, 11:08pm

Station signage in place. Still need to find some replacement advertising posters.

And sitting in place on the frame for the station platforms. I need to spend some quality time with the table saw and some cedar boards.

rmccown-admin · April 24, 2025, 11:20pm

Got the platform assembled. Need to trim some boards to length, add some legs and maybe a set of stairs on each end, set the nails, and give it a coat of some kind of stain and preservative.

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Found some signs to replace the faded ones.

rmccown-admin · April 25, 2025, 7:59pm

I opted for a couple coats of boiled linseed oil. I might stain the support legs and cross pieces a darker color like walnut, but I like the wood look for now. I need a bunch of typical station clutter (benches, boxes of freight, etc) and I want to add some lighting, but I’m calling this done for now.

Thanks, Ken.