Minecraft: Finished Digging out the Train Station

At the end of last weekend, the final outlines of the train station were taking shape; the remaining tasks were to flesh out the west side (in particular, how the alcove would merge into the station roof lines), and to actually dig out the back (north end) of the station.

I decided to continue another line of windows around the edge of the roof of the alcove, and then put a layer of dirt with a skylight in the middle:

The side of the west alcove roof

Skylight on top of the west alcove

As I went to clean up the lines of the train station roof, though, it became clear that the alcove was a little larger than I thought, so I extended the skylight a bit.

Sunset over west alcove, with inappropriately small skylight

Enlarged skylight

The west side of the station roof

With that in place, it was time to start digging out the back of the train station!

Just beginning to hollow out the top

Looking down from my perch on top

When I came down from my digging that night, a duck had stopped by to check on things

One issue that I had to deal with at this point was that the stairs going up from the back of the fourth floor of my house now didn’t work: they ran straight into the glass roof of the station. For now, I removed the top of the stairs but left the door in place near the top (which, conveniently, was right at the back of the station), and I also made a left turn near that door to start hollowing out a potential viewing area in the top back of the station.

Stairs running into glass

Looking back as I dig down at door and alcove in wall

After that, it was dig, dig, dig.

A bit of the top is cleared out now

Hitting a patch of gravel part way down

Looking east as we dig down

Nighttime view from the bottom of the progress we've made digging

Another view from the door in the wall, much further down now

After I’d gone down further, the window pattern on the west side changed; that meant that I’d hit the top of the alcove, where the windows loop around the alcove instead of continuing to the north. So I started digging it out as well.

The end of the windows shows the alcove location

Starting to dig out the top of the alcove

Sunset through the alcove windows

A wider view, showing how the station is taking shape

As I reached the bottom of the train station, I ran into that cave on the east side; it turned out that its bottom was indeed lower than the station’s floor. I decided to mostly leave the cave in place, but to finish it off a bit and put in stairs.

Looking out through the cave on the east wall

The view into the station from the cave

The finished cave area

And, shortly after that, I was done digging out the station. Which is huge!

A sheep has come to inspect the final stages

The complete station, looking towards the front

The complete station, looking towards the back and west side

There was still that door and hole way up high in the back wall of the station. I ended up removing the door and putting a glassed-in viewing area that I could reach from my house.

Looking out from the viewing area

The viewing area's window from beneath

Here’s a tour of the completed outside, going counter-clockwise from the west alcove. I like how the house and train station work together.

The entrance to the train station alcove; you can also see the balconies on the house

The west side of the station

The south side of the station

The east side of the station

The east side of the house, and some of the station

The arch at the north side of the house

The main entrance to the house

The next step, I suppose is to lay tracks! And then I’ll build a (much much smaller!) train station at the other end of the tracks, and connect that to my second house.