Good to see a pre-Grouping project taking shape. There will be others far better qualified than I to comment on SE platforms, but here are two examples that seem to offer some encouragement.

Halstead, a SER station opened 1876 and later known as Knockholt. This is a wooden station.  The platform appears to be masonry, however, as it looks to be edged with brick (quite common a common alternative to edging stones). The view is given as c.1880.

Another SER timber wooden station of the period, Bromley (1878) is said to have had platforms "edged in timber".  Quite what that means, I'm unsure.  Considering Bromley, is it possible to interpret the edging at Knockholt as timber planking, not brick?

Whatever the construction of Knockholt station platform, the effect is of a smooth, rendered, platform face beneath the edging.

The only other example I have so far spotted is at the LCDR's Canterbury, later known as Canterbury East, of 1860, in a picture dated to the 1890s. Here the platform is very striking, with no apparent edging/coping or overhang, it looks like nothing so much as a huge concrete slab, you can even see where it's chipped at the edge to the right.  

Someone I know said he would only use an adjustable spanner on adjustable nuts

On 27/05/2021 at 00:46, Edwardian said:

Good to see a pre-Grouping project taking shape. There will be others far better qualified than I to comment on SE platforms, but here are two examples that seem to offer some encouragement.

 

Halstead, a SER station opened 1876 and later known as Knockholt. This is a wooden station.  The platform appears to be masonry, however, as it looks to be edged with brick (quite common a common alternative to edging stones). The view is given as c.1880.

 

 

Another SER timber wooden station of the period, Bromley (1878) is said to have had platforms "edged in timber".  Quite what that means, I'm unsure.  Considering Bromley, is it possible to interpret the edging at Knockholt as timber planking, not brick?

 

Whatever the construction of Knockholt station platform, the effect is of a smooth, rendered, platform face beneath the edging.

 

The only other example I have so far spotted is at the LCDR's Canterbury, later known as Canterbury East, of 1860, in a picture dated to the 1890s. Here the platform is very striking, with no apparent edging/coping or overhang, it looks like nothing so much as a huge concrete slab, you can even see where it's chipped at the edge to the right.  

 

 

 

 

Thank you James, that was most informative.

Wood edged platforms could be a possibility. They would have noticeable disadvantages over conventional materials though, such as the cost of having to have some whopping great big pieces of oak creosoted probably up in Sunderland at Armstrong Addison Ltd. Or if the SECR creosoted its own sleepers in bulk then perhaps those would have been used at no cost to the company? 

On an unrelated note, are those what we call in the USA "dwarf signals" to the left of No 16's tender in your post?

Douglas

On 28/05/2021 at 22:53, Florence Locomotive Works said:

 

Thank you James, that was most informative.

 

Wood edged platforms could be a possibility. They would have noticeable disadvantages over conventional materials though, such as the cost of having to have some whopping great big pieces of oak creosoted probably up in Sunderland at Armstrong Addison Ltd. Or if the SECR creosoted its own sleepers in bulk then perhaps those would have been used at no cost to the company? 

 

On an unrelated note, are those what we call in the USA "dwarf signals" to the left of No 16's tender in your post?

 

Douglas

Re the top photograph, there is no trace of planking on the platform surface.  I would be tempted to treat such a platform as masonry, to surface with something like fine sandpaper or chinchilla dust and to interpret the edging as brick with an overhanging single course of stretchers above the rendered side and then bricks set with their headers facing the line to form the coping.

Re the lower photograph, the dwarf signals are what in the UK would be referred to as ''ground signals''. I could not say off hand whether they were a LCDR design of a type adopted or introduced by the SE&CR.

On 28/05/2021 at 17:02, J. S. Bach said:

On the Pennsy, they were referred to as "pot" signals. If it survived my move, I have one somewhere.

 Might I suggest setting it up at the end of your driveway?

8 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Re the top photograph, there is no trace of planking on the platform surface.  I would be tempted to treat such a platform as masonry, to surface with something like fine sandpaper or chinchilla dust and to interpret the edging as brick with an overhanging single course of stretchers above the rendered side and then bricks set with their headers facing the line to form the coping.

 

Re the lower photograph, the dwarf signals are what in the UK would be referred to as ''ground signals''. I could not say off hand whether they were a LCDR design of a type adopted or introduced by the SE&CR.

 

 

 
Yes that would make more sense than timber. I was thinking of just coating the entire platform(s) in a fine plaster rather than working with chinchilla sand.