Brick colours......... yellow is GOOD

Yellow was one of those brick colours which I never used. I owned yellow bricks, but they tended to be ones I'd picked up in second hand job lots and they mostly remained unsorted in a large plastic container along with the light blue, lime green and orange bricks which I also didn't use much and had come from job lot purchases as well. During a weekend recently in which I was feeling pretty miserable with joint and muscle pain I decided I needed a Lego project to take my mind off things. Most of my layout is in a complete mess because it's being rebuilt and I was was waiting for baseplates to arrive for the goods yard so I couldn't work on that, so I decided to build the smaller of the two stations at Kotanga.
Unfortunately I can't show photos at the moment because my daughter has gone to stay at a friend's place for the next two days and she's taken my digital camera with her. "Can i borrow your camera? Bye Mum, luv ya, - see you Friday......" - all said as she went out the door while putting my camera in her bag. (sigh) I can't complain really as I was just the same at her age.

Anyway, back to the bricks...... Since I've been struck by the friends bug I've decided to use more pastel colours in my buildings, but when I came to trying to find enough bricks I found myself really struggling. I mean I own thousands of bricks, but somehow I found myself lacking enough of one basic colour to actually tie the whole structure together. I had a pile of light tan bricks, but they were all earmarked for the loco shed, my white bricks had taken a hiding when I built the police station and the cafe, I was short of grey bricks, my greens weren't much better, I didn't fancy red- so there was nothing for it but to start peering into the big storage drum of unsorted bricks. In short I tipped the whole thing out on my bed and started picking out bricks and sorting them into colours.

I could not do anything with lime green, - I tried and ended up bagging them all up and putting them to one side. After an hour or so a nice little signal box emerged from the mound of bricks on my bed. I wanted to build it in mostly light blue, only I didn't have enough bricks so it ended up being built on grey foundations with a yellow course of bricks next and then light blue up to the top or the windows. Above the windows there's another course of yellow, a two plate thickness of white and then another course of yellow. The gable ends are pink and the peaked roof is medium grey slopes with the odd darker one here and there Windows are older type frames in white like this http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3853 with red panes like this http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3854. The door is red and is one of these http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3861 I know it sounds like an amazing selection of colours, but it does work. I will take some photos as I built the signal box to be opened backed so i could put working point and signal levers in it since it sits right on the baseboard edge.

Moving onto the station building itself I found I had a problem. I had almost no light blue or pink bricks left and the only bricks I seemed have plenty of was yellow. Somehow I couldn't get my head around a yellow station building, but then I remembered the various old ideas books as well as the older Town sets where yellow was used a lot as a major building colour. So I gave it a go and I'm very pleased i did. I've actually got 500 yellow 1x2 bricks on order so i can build more yellow railway buildings to match the station; - that's how much I've come to like yellow as a building colour.
One problem with yellow is that some older bricks can fade a lot, so i just sorted them out and used them in the same brick course together so they looked like they should be there. Foundation courses are good places to use faded bricks. I used the same windows and doors as on the signal box, but this time I used white shutters as well. I'd run out of grey roof slopes so i used black which looks Ok and the gable end bricks are pink the same as with the signal box.
Going back to the signal box I built a toilet block in yellow on one end and pretty much made up my mind to change out the light blue bricks for yellow once my brick order arrives.
Overall it's a pleasant little country station built in a style that is very much 1920s steam era. Not very big, but it has a ticket office and a small waiting room as well as seats out on the platform so minifig folk can rest their legs while waiting for the train. The train that serves this station is a bit of an unusual one that I'm keeping a secret for the moment, but all will be revealed once my daughter gives me my camera back

So yellow, - who would have thought it could be such a useful colour afterall

I think yellow can work really well but it needs to carefully done. I've seen some very nice eastern European palaces and town houses, and it can work for some civic buildings as you've found with your station. The critical factor in my mind is you need to break the yellow up with neutral embellishments like windows, roof and stonework.

I built a post office in second empire style for Brickvention in January, unfortunately I dropped it while trying to put it in the back of the car, so I have no photos till I rebuild it.

I'm looking forward to seeing your photos.

peterab wrote:I think yellow can work really well but it needs to carefully done. I've seen some very nice eastern European palaces and town houses, and it can work for some civic buildings as you've found with your station. The critical factor in my mind is you need to break the yellow up with neutral embellishments like windows, roof and stonework.

I built a post office in second empire style for Brickvention in January, unfortunately I dropped it while trying to put it in the back of the car, so I have no photos till I rebuild it.

I'm looking forward to seeing your photos.

Oooooo my heart goes out to you; - at least with Lego a dropped building can be put back together and it will look as good as ever it did, - but after all that work building your post office in the first place it still must've been disappointing.

I agree that yellow does need to be used with care as it's possible to end up with far too much of it in a solid block which looks just plain odd. I think I've managed to do that with my station building because after some days of staring at it now I don't feel any urgent need to make any changes to it.

Well you could combined those colours together......a rainbow effect.

Lightningtiger wrote:Well you could combined those colours together......a rainbow effect.

Ha ha! I sort of did that when I built the cafe, - i even managed to use some lime green.

Locomotive Annie wrote:Oooooo my heart goes out to you; - at least with Lego a dropped building can be put back together and it will look as good as ever it did, - but after all that work building your post office in the first place it still must've been disappointing.

It wasn't so bad since I already had plans to rebuilt it to improve it a bit. The first build was rushed to complete it in time for the show, but at the end there were some tweaks I wanted to do to the dimensions and I'd like to make the floors removable and add an interior.

Don't forget that classic train station from mid 90s

All yellow, and it looks great! I always dreamed of getting this one as a kid...

I love yellow bricks