If your design must include a geographic location as part of the play or story line, have fun with finding creative ways to let your audience know where your production is taking place. Geography-specific stage props for train stations may include distinctive city skylines, famous railway stations or railroads, or unmistakable landmarks such as clocks, statues and fountains. Just a simple station marker can evoke a sense of place in the audience, whether of having arrived, waiting for someone else to arrive or boarding a lonely train in the night.
To get design ideas for a train station stage prop, study real train stations for architectural detail. Notice how they are lit, especially at night. Incorporate that atmosphere and detail into your props. Create a waiting area, a ticket counter, a small cafe in or near the station -- all places where important scenes might take place. Look for moments in your script that could be effectively staged in a train-inspired setting. Characters look more furtive, somehow, when they are in a railway depot, waiting for something to happen.
Modern technology makes it possible to incorporate design ideas into stage settings using not just canvas-and-wood props. Through the mixed media of sound, still images and video, a train station can be created without building a single prop. Theaters use this technique to convey flashbacks in memory, dream sequences and futuristic fantasies. It can certainly be used to create a train journey, as well, whether in silent images or loud, jolting combinations of movement and sound.
A stage set involving props for a train station must include sound as part of the design. What is a train without a whistle or the chugga-chugga sound of the wheels? Sound effects can easily become part of the tech design and include not only the train approaching, stopping, passing or leaving, but also the interior noise of the station. What train traveler has not been thrilled to hear the announcement of a certain destination or the arrival of a train bearing a loved one from afar? The dramatic sounds that accompany train travel are endless.