Minecraft: South Station

Last time, I’d laid down track to my other house; now it’s time to build a train station!

The site for the station

After some pacing around, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the station. But I’d always planned for it to connect with an eventual second floor of the house (which didn’t even have a ceiling yet for its first floor!), so I decided to start there. I’d already built stairs running up the back of the first floor through the hill near the train station; I dug another corridor next to them, and started putting blocks in place to form the second story.

Trying out options for the roof line and the second story

The first floor now has a ceiling

Eventually, I decided that the second story would be smaller than the first story, with a balcony around most of it, to ease the transition with (most of) the surrounding area.

Putting the balcony fence in place

Starting work on the walls of the second story

The side of the walls near the sand

A view of the moon through the corridor from the second floor to the train station

I decided to put a flat dirt/grass roof on top of the second story, partly to blend with the hill and partly because I couldn’t think of anything fancier that I liked.

A view of the pool from the roof

A view of the tracks from the roof

By this point, I’d already put the train station proper in place; in fact, the above two pictures were both taken from the train station roof instead of the house roof. The train station ended up quite small (and was set back from the tracks instead of enclosing it): large enough to provide a space to enclose the stairs to the first floor and the corridor to the second floor without feeling cramped, but not much larger than that. For better or for worse, I left the sand in place; I’ll have to change that if I end up digging beneath it, obviously.

Inside the train station

A side view showing how the train station connects to the house

Here are some more pictures of the finished house/station combo:

The completed front of the house

The sand side of the house

The pool side of the house

The front of the station

Christening the station

The sand side of the station

Finally, a couple of pictures of the surroundings:

A view of the tracks from the second floor balcony

A mountain in the distance

And with that, this project is done: I have a working train track connecting two house/station combos! Of course, there’s so much more to do: I’d like to put a whole little village around this house, I’d like tracks to go in other directions, I’d like to explore more underground. But, for now, I will instead sadly and somewhat reluctantly bring this series to a close: it’s time for me to spend more time on other things. I’ll write more about that soon on my other blog; many thanks to those of you who have been reading here. (And, of course, the Rock Band 3 posts will continue here, so don’t go away!)