Did I say CUT? I meant to say CUT.

You are not in the wrong place.

As much as I have tried to come up with an acceptable plan for Cleveland Union Terminal over the past few months, I finally reached the point where I was spending a lot of time getting nowhere and I have decided to abandon the Cleveland Union Terminal project. I now switch the focus of my project to the Cincinnati Union Terminal.

Here are some of the problems in modeling Cleveland Union Terminal.

• All of the passenger platforms are underneath the station. This essentially would turn the terminal into hidden staging. I want to be able to see the beautiful passenger trains parked at a platform. I also want to be able to access couplers to switch out cars in a passenger consist, although at Cleveland I have come to realize that there wasn't a whole lot of consist switching going on there. Kind of hard to do that underground nonetheless. I thought about using a material such as lexan or plexi to allow the platforms to be viewed, but I never could visualize that as having any semblance of a realistic looking model and it still wouldn't fix the accessibility issue.

• "Selective Compression" ended up never looking the way I wanted it. As mentioned in previous posts, to model the terminal to scale would take up the entire train room at 13' x 27'. Selective compression to reduce the model to an acceptable size to still have room for more layout just wasn't doing it for me.

• The more research I did on Cleveland Union Terminal, the more I discovered how much the place was disliked by the railroads that used it (and the one that didn't use it - PRR). This had the undesirable secondary effect of also causing me to dislike it! I eventually found myself trying to reduce the passenger operations to more of a background role and focus on freight operations, but that is not what I set out to do. I ran into one description of CUT during WWII and it was described as "CUT was a dismal place during and after WWII. The beautiful skylight windows in the main concourse were painted over black during WWII and it had the effect of darkening the whole place, giving it a sort of dungeon feel". Hard to keep positive thoughts about a place with a description like that.

• Electrified operation by CUT power. This would not normally be a big deal, but the P-1a's used by CUT are only offered in HO scale by one manufacturer at $1000 each. That makes it a big deal. The P-1a's were still in use during the time frame that I wanted to model, so removing them from the picture just didn't seem right.

I could go on.

Exit CUT, enter CUT.

One day a few weeks ago while doing some research, I entered "Cleveland Union Terminal" into a search engine bar. Other suggested searches popped up as usual, but one caught my eye and that was "Cincinnati Union Terminal". I clicked on it and the rest is history.

Things I like about Cincinnati Union Terminal.

• Open platforms. I am really looking forward to modeling a station with open platforms.

• I really dig the Art Deco appearance of the terminal. It almost has a Gotham City look to it. Indeed, the DC Universe Hall of Justice is modeled after it.

• There are SEVEN railroads that use Cincinnati Union Terminal. B&O, C&O, N&W, PRR, NYC (CCC&StL or Big Four), L&N, and Southern. CUT was one of the busiest railroad passenger terminals in the country.

• Hand in hand with the above bullet, I already have a starting collection of HO scale passenger equipment from B&O, C&O, and PRR. If I had stuck with Cleveland Union Terminal, most of that equipment would not be of any use.

• The terminal appears to be easier to scale down by selective compression and the trackwork will be easier. In reality each of the 8 platforms was 1600' long but the yard throats are essentially straight in. I struggled with this on the Cleveland terminal because the throats on both ends are on nearly a 45 degree angle to the platforms. The shorter I made the platforms at Cleveland, the more it made the whole terminal look like it was on one big curve. 

• The express & mail facilities are separate but adjacent to Cincinnati Union Terminal. At Cleveland it was all done on the passenger platforms, again - all underground.

• The coach yard and engine facilities are separate but close to the terminal. At Cleveland the coach yard was part of the terminal but there were no locomotive service facilities there.

• I still have a river to model (the Ohio River). Not as crooked as the Cuyahoga River though.

• The real thing still exists as a passenger station (albeit on a much smaller scale and now with only Amtrak), and it is also within a day's drive if I want to go see it in person.

I am one of those guys that really hates to admit defeat, but sometimes you just have to move on.