Eaton Hall Railway (Balderton)

[MarkAustin]

Balderton was the interchange between the Duke of Westminster's 15in Gauge Estate railway and the GWR. I am contemplating an 0-9 model of this location.

 

Mark A

[MarkAustin]

There are a few questions, which I hope the members of this parish will be able to help me.

 

Firstly, I have downloaded the relevant OS map from the NLS website, and I need to extract a section of this which must be dimensioned to suit (initial checks are for 7ft by 1ft 6in) to enable me to start planning and laying it out. Is there any software which will enable a sized box to be extracted from the map (I am assuming that the NLS download of the 6in map is to size).

 

Secondly, the plan is to model the interchange and not the GWR goods yard, but this requires a short length of standard gauge track, which is crossed by the 15in line. The question is how to do this? I am planning, for reasons of speed of construction, to use the Peco 00-9 track and turnouts (which is IIRC 80 thou). What would be the best way of construction the crossing. All using 0 gauge track, and fairing in the NG track at each end, or cponstructing the crossing using mixed track sections.

 

Mark A

[Nearholmer]

Mark

 

What a brilliant, and well-deserving to be modelled, selection of prototype.

 

I'm not totally sure of the answer to the scaling question that you ask, but I think that if you select to side-by-side option on NLS Maps, and choose Bing maps or aerial, you get a scale-bar on the modern view. [Edit: yes, see below. Detail from 25" map, and scale from side-by-side view of the 6" map.]

 

Gut feel, looking at the map, is that you might have to selectively compress to get it into 7ft, but the sidings were long enough that, if represented to full length in 0 they would be a bit boring anyway! It looks as if you might need upwards of 5m to do it to scale in 0.

 

Personally, I would make the crossing using 0 gauge rail, with transitions to the Code 80 either side ....... have a look at the well-known photos of the original, though ........ I'll do the same and give a further view later.

 

You are making me think about adding such a line to my layout!

 

Kevin

[Nearholmer]

Oh blast!

 

There's a loco right in the way on the photo I was thinking of!

 

GOof fun computer graphic of the site on line, too.

[FraserClarke]

I use the "georeferenced maps" feature on the NLS maps site a lot. That allows you to draw scale bars onto the maps between interesting features.

 

I draw a scale bar (either between two points, or 100m, or 100ft, or whatever). The then save the image (screen grab or "snipping tool" in windows) and load this into "paint". I measure the distance (in pixels) along the scale bar (pixel coordinates are shown on the bottom-left of paint). The image also has a native "dots per inch" (under File->Properties in paint; usually 96dpi for a screen grab).  The two of these give then the distance in inches along the scale bar (pixels / dpi) at the native scale of the image.  Hence, you can calculate the scale of the map you've grabbed.

 

If you're loading the image into templot, you need the image scale and the dpi, and it will do the scaling for you.

 

Unfortunately the 25in/mile map doesn't seem to cover Balderton yet...  But attached is a 6inch/mile image with a scale bar.  The scale of this image is 1:1350 at 96dpi.

 

 

(Kevin's approach above with the map scale bar is basically the same...)

 

 

EDIT -- also attached is the same image with a 7x1.5ft box marked on it (assume 1:43 for the O-9 scale?).