Less than a thousand. As long as you have good drawings you can be pretty efficient, crap drawings are a nightmare. You just start with a wall, easiest wall first. Cut out all the window openings by sticky taping the drawing on the styrene and marking the corners of each opening with scalpel blade through drawing. After the openings, layer up the details. A lot of it is repeating of the same size so you can cut and or snap off pieces in multiples. A job like this is more administrative in managing parts.

Walls are pretty easy as each wall is in effect 2 dimensions. It's a completely different story with complex sloping roofs which often look ok on the plans but in reality don't work and it is the model maker who can see the "Escher drawings" before the architect.

I bought a Cricut cutter machine a couple years ago for my girls and I that is now collecting dust. We did a few tests on it but have yet to play with it more. My intention was to use it to cut out walls and make a few of my own scratch builds from it. I think now that I am still planning and working on benchwork for a new layout its hard to know exactly what I will build and where until I have my track laid. But the wheels are turning in my head.

That, along with having dozens of kits I have hoarded from shows (stations mostly) and online purchases and probably about 100 or more already built models, including several Faller factory built stations from the 50s or earlier, (I will have to get Marco to help me date them sometime), its going to be a juggling act. I will need to make a push to sort and decide what to keep so that I can find more space in my somewhat small urban dwelling.

Having said all that, I can see great satisfaction in building a series of models from scratch to have something completely unique on your layout. Yet in the end, it seems to be how you put all those ingredients together that gives a layout one's own particular branding; landscape with trains running through and functioning as we dream of them.

I still greatly appreciate the Märklin Leipziger Bahnhof 2036 as a bit of history.

Not sure that the Vollmer kit could be an alternative for a potential buyer of this item as it is advertised as "O" scale rather than "HO". I suppose it is still a collectable piece of history to the right buyer but that price is obscene.

As an old friend of mine once said: "Someone, somewhere wants exactly what you are selling and they will pay your price. The trick is to find them!"

Hi Mark,
That O gauge Märklin station really is a thing of great beauty.
Being made at a time of political upheaval in Germany, there might be some relevance to the more hegemonical attitudes of the day.
This would be as grand a model as any you might purchase in a toy shop.
But if you had the money to buy it (likely twice a weeks office worker wages?) why wouldn't you.

Kimball

Well, I have to say I am thoroughly disappointed by that 'replica' version and the price of the station.
The colours do not look right, printed roof tiles (come on, really?) instead of the original embossed roof.
Surprised to see the labels/signs in English and wondering if the original was in English. I would rather have them in German. Seems to me to be a cheap and somewhat cynical knock-off of the original. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh for anyone who many have purchased it, but to me that is not really a replica of the original.

I had to look again at photos of the prototype, IRL Leipzig Hauptbahnhof.
I have to say there are some fabulous historical and contemporary photos of the station on the wikipedia entry. Well worth scrolling through the slide show. Inspiring photos for Era 3a 1954 and 1957. All those trenchcoats and hats.
https://upload.wikimedia...bahnhof%2C_Bahnsteig.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_Hauptbahnhof

And Marklin may well have made a version of the original with English names as they did supply a lot of product to the UK market between the wars - for example the locos in LMS and other British lines colours and lettering, so supplying a station like this would have been logical with English lettering back then.