Oostende Platforms

Oostende Platforms brings the platforms of Ostend station on the Belgian coast to the modular train station: the stepped canopy of coloured glass on its slender four-legged columns, the hardwood decks, the footbridge with its glass lifts, and the low tram platforms next door.

Everything is a module, so you can build Ostend itself or use the pieces in a station of your own.

What's in it

• Canopy: the coloured glass roof, in two directions so the steps can face either way, on paired steel beams with bolted joints. Lights come on at night. Columns stand on the platform below and carry the departure boards, clocks and platform numbers.
• Platforms: hardwood or concrete, both with the pale stone edge, furnished after the real ones: benches, sorting bins, yellow grit boxes, poster stands and departure boards with real destinations from Ostend. Two of the same platform side by side share their benches, bins and signs down the middle.
• Tram platforms: low platforms of speckled stone tiles, with the yellow and black stop poles, tram signals at the ends and long glass shelters (with a roof of their own where there is no canopy), or with benches instead. Next to a high platform they get steps and a fence.
• Underpass: in wood or concrete. On a double platform it moves to the middle.
• Overpass: stairs, footbridge and glass lift, in both directions, with a working or a decorative lift. A wooden deck and handrails, and over the tracks a perforated screen and a safety net.
• Level crossings: two kinds, for crossing the tracks at either end of a platform piece.
• Roof base: an invisible platform, for putting the canopy over tracks or anything else.

How to use it

• The modules are in their own Oostende category in the station's module menu.
• Available from 2010.
• Three ready-made stations are in the build menu: a station with hardwood platforms and canopy, one with concrete platforms and no roof, and a tram stop. Their options set the roof, its length and how passengers cross the tracks.
• The canopy goes in the roof slot above a platform, the track or the roof base.

Settings

• Animated lifts (on by default): passengers use the lifts, and the cabin and doors move with them. Off: every lift is decoration and everybody takes the stairs. It applies to an overpass when its station is next built or changed.

Good to know

• Passengers on a level crossing don't stop for trains.
• Passengers don't wait for the lift: the cabin follows whoever is using it.
• The tram stop has no underpass option.
• The departure boards are decoration: they don't show your own lines.
• Removing the mod removes its modules from your stations, so save first.

Ostend's station building and car park are not part of this mod. Somewhere in every station, a seagull is waiting.