Pride Lines prewar-style mini-terrace

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, a manufacturer has a brilliant idea for a product that should have been obvious – but wasn’t – to everyone in the toy train hobby. The latest to accomplish this feat is Pride Lines. It did so by thinking small!

Specifically, Pride Lines realized that a classic Lionel Standard gauge accessory from the prewar era, the no. 128 combined station and terrace, would be absolutely perfect for O gauge layouts if the doors, windows, station building, and terrace were just a bit smaller.

Not a problem! Pride Lines took the earliest version of this accessory, which included an individually numbered 124 station and a 129 terrace, and reduced it by about one third. It’s the best idea of this sort that I can recall since another manufacturer, back in the mid-1990s, enlarged the American Flyer S gauge no. 586F wayside station to look right at home on O gauge railroads.

While the original terrace has a footprint of 18 inches by 311/2 inches, Pride Lines has artfully cut that down to 12 inches by 19 inches. The station itself is smaller in equal proportion.
Two color versions of the stamped-steel mini-terrace and station are available.

On our sample, the terrace features an ivory-painted base and fences with red details, while the station has Mojave walls, a red roof, and nickel trim. The other terrace has a Mojave base and green details, while its station is red with a green roof and brass trim. The baked enamel station colors match those of prewar 124 stations.

Both terraces have semi-circular grassy plots at each end. A 50-star flag flutters atop the white pole (how come we don’t have the prewar version of Old Glory with 48 stars?).

The reproduction of the 124 station looks terrific. The large lamps on the front of the station illuminate, as do the smaller lamps on the terrace. The station roof is removable, but on our sample the inner surface of the roof touched the arched decorative bracket of the station lamps, so it took some adjusting to get the station roof to sit level. The station sign reads “City Station”; original prewar stations were “Lionel Station.”

If you’re building a prewar O gauge layout, you’re gonna be screaming for this baby. It would not look bad on a postwar O or S gauge railroad, either. So take a look at the Pride Lines mini-terrace, a reminder that it’s okay to think small.