Saturday, May 10, 2014

National Train Day

Historic Sandpoint Train Depot - 2008
Longtime followers of my blog know I have a thing for train travel, convenient for me since Amtrak stops in my town. We have a depot with Gothic overtones that has been shut to the public for years as it crumbled into disrepair and waited for word of rescue. That word finally came earlier this year but it will be some time before this historic station will be fully back on its feet. With any luck, it will be restored enough to allow passengers to wait out of the weather by the end of the year. Read more about that here.

Historic Sandpoint Train Depot - sketched 2014

What with that buzz, I was a little surprised that no event was scheduled here to celebrate National Train Day. No matter - I've been wanting to get over to the station to do some sketching, so I used this "celebration" to do just that. This is the view from the parking lot (very nearly the same angle the photo was taken from), done in pencil and across the spread of the sketchbook - a first for me. Tricky moving across that ditch. Of course, I can never resist adding some colored pencil when I get home.

For more views of the station, scroll down to the bottom of this blog post.

2 comments:

Christine Staver said...

Another nice sketch...a centerfold! Love how you go back and always add something in color.

Michele Matucheski said...

We saw some great little train stations in Scotland. And France, too. Thanks for sketching these out and preserving history in your own way. Makes me want to go out and sketch some old barns in the Wisconsin countryside--staked out in my car with the windsheild wipers clearing the rain every so often. ;) We had so much snow this past winter that many barns collapsed. No Historic Preservation grants to save them. Sigh!