Entry posted by dseagull
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Now that the layout plan is finally complete, I have spent a most enjoyable evening browsing various websites looking for scenic inspiration. Something which I have been keen to do since coming up with the idea is to keep a real 'Sussex feel' with regard to the scenics and the structures. As well as buildings, that also encompasses local building materials - I've even found myself looking quizzically at trees on my travels, thinking "I wonder if I could do justice to you and fit you somewhere". Apparently pills are available for this sort of thing, but as the Mrs hasn't caught me yet I will continue to do so for the time being!
Now I do it intend to have a drive out towards Litlington at some point and take some photos myself, but as the kids are in bed, you will have to make do with the first fruits of my digitally researched labours for the time being.
A good place to start is usually a map, and below you will see a link that takes you to an 1880 OS Map of Litlington and the surrounding areas as digitised by the British History Online website - if you first locate the word Alciston on the map, then zoom in just above the 'N', you will find the village.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/os-1-to-10560/sussex/079
As you can see, Litlington in 1880 was not a large place - a pub, a few houses, a manor house a little away from the centre, a post office and, to the north, the church. In my minds eye, the station is between the pub and the river, with a conveniently placed lane being the road which crosses the tracks just south of the station.
I'd previously looked at this map on old-maps and the like, but not at the same zoom level due to their paywall, so it has been a real boon to find this, especially when cross-referenced with other sources to fill in a few of the gaps with buildings that are not captioned on the map linked above. One immediate example which springs to mind is a blacksmiths, which would have been just round the corner from the station.
Moving on to initial ideas for structures, there are a couple of obvious ones - albeit moved from their actual locations to fit in with my geography - those being the church and the school. Unfortunately for my purposes, they would both be a little too big and would, I feel, overly dominate what is supposed to be a rural layout.
The School:
The Church:
So - those are buildings which I like, but don't think I can fit. Let's move on to some others which I think I can do justice to - albeit with 'representations' rather than true scale models to avoid having to ask some awkward questions of present owners! - but first, a diversion...
One of the key features of the local area is the extensive use of flint as a building material. We have a lot of it in Sussex, and we've certainly made use of it over the years - as indeed those images above demonstrate. With the 'main line' rising off stage, I need a retaining wall, and flint would have been the material most probably used for this. There may be a few more sections required, but the main section will be behind the loading bank;
If you excuse the placeholder shed and the wonky ex-mini rolls container 'bank', you will see what I mean. The card represents a wall which holds back the bank, but also continues to form a wall running alongside the track.
Unfortunately I can't show images of what this kind of wall looks like in reality, because I can't find a suitable image with the right copyright licence, but here are a few links to exactly what I mean:
https://ianfrithrn.wordpress.com/tag/horizontals/ - Third picture down
I've had various ideas on how to model this, but think I am set on using a 'core' of plasticard to get the thickness, with Wills 'Cobblestone Walling' painted accordingly for the flint. As for the brick course which can be seen in one oof those photos, some walls have it, some dont - as yet I'm undecided on if my walls will have or not. The 'capping' will be either DAS clay, scribed accordingly, or card, as used as ridge capping by the master Iain Robinson on this rather delightful model here . I was toying with the idea of scribing the lot from DAS, but I don't think I could keep the proportions right. Slaters do a flint wall product, but it looks a little too 'random' for what I've got in mind.
With the use of flint in mind, another wander onto the excellent Geograph.org.uk website has revealed a few ideas which are a little smaller and I think I could fit in. Again, these are all from Litlington - all images are credited accordingly using the nifty tool on the website with relevant info at the bottom of the pictures:
So hopefully this will give a little flavour of the actual area - as I continue to research I have no doubt I will find other 'possibles', but it will be nice to have plenty to try out and choose from. Any thoughts would be, as ever, very welcome!
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