During one trip to a hobby shop, I came upon Micronart's Interlocking Tower kit.  I didn't have any plans to include an Interlocking Tower at the time, but the kit intrigued me, and I thought that I should be able to find a place for it somewhere on the layout, so I bought it.  I soon found a spot for it between the diamond crossing and the interchange track.

 

For the longest time, I couldn't seem to decide on a color for the tower.  First, I tried UP Armour Yellow, but then changed my mind to caboose red, so I stripped the brass and repainted it.  That turned out okay, but then I wanted to try a dark green, so I stripped it again and tried CNW green.  It wasn't a bad color, but it didn't work well with the brown I had on the roof.  I could have changed the roof to a black to match better, but before I did that, I changed my mind again, and decided that I wanted to go back to Armour Yellow after all.  I'm normally not this indecisive, but it just took me awhile to settle on the color for this particular project.  It is the reason why it took so long to get this building finished (I had been working on it off and on for almost two years).

Once I had finally settled on Armour Yellow, I had CNW green building walls to paint yellow.  Instead of stripping the building walls, I decided to paint two thin coats on top of the dark green paint instead.  The two thin coats of yellow won't completely cover the green, but it will give the yellow paint the look of being worn and in need of a fresh coat.   Brush painting will give it a less uniform fading, enhancing the weathered effect.  The windows/doors were already painted white, but were covered pretty well, and stood out too starkly against the weathered walls.  So, I stripped them, and painted them with only one or two thin coats to get the same effect.  Unfortunately, the effect doesn't show up well with my low-end camera.  Then, I finally assembled the tower.  Eventually, I plan on weathering the roof and walls further. 

 

This kit takes some effort, and there are a few items that aren't perfect (for example, the parts for the smokestack didn't match up well), but that's okay.  The kit enables one to put together a very nice structure.  I wish they produced more kits that I could use.  The second floor, stove, and switch levers are included.  I painted two Preiser figures, and installed them in the second floor (as seen to the left).  Later, I plan on adding a desk and some chairs, and lighting the interior.

 

Once completed, I added a concrete foundation made out of .040" styrene, and placed it on the layout.  As you can clearly see in the picture to the right, the building site isn't completely level.  The "roof" of the tunnel below this area sticks up slightly.  In the picture to the right, I was in the process of getting styrene some shims to the correct thickness to level out the tower.  Once that was done, the tower was white glued into place.

After the tower was secured, I built up the area around it with ground foam and gravel, and created a gravel drive and parking area, and I placed a couple of GHQ trucks that I assembled and painted.  I covered the body of the red pickup with high-gloss, to represent a truck that someone cares for, while I left the dump truck flat, to represent a vehicle that doesn't get washed as often.

 

Later on,  I will add posts to the parking area (to keep parked cars from getting too close to the tracks), other little details like trashcans, and possibly some telephone poles and wires. 

The small, finely detailed building and vehicles, along with the fine foliage, helps give the trains the sense of size and mass of the real thing that can get lost in such a small scale, and on a small layout.  Giving the trains a sense of size and mass is one of my main goals, and the more I scenic and detail scenes, the better the effect, and the better the effort that goes into super-detailing the engines pays off. 

 

Additionally, installing the structure, vehicles, and surrounding scenery does make the area seem "larger".  Not in the sense that there appears to be acres between the interchange and crossing, or that the scene appears bigger than it does.  But in the sense that there is more "separation" between the interchange track and the crossing, and the two sections seem more  like they are in different places.  Now, I am not going to be able to recreate the separation available in a larger layout, but detailing scenes like this can keep different portions of a small layout from seeming like they are on top of each other.