When you start to look at running in boards you soon realise that they are as individual as the stations they adorn, even within the same region. It's quite fascinating when you start studying their various designs. This site has some useful pictures of various Southern running in boards and may be of some interest to anyone modelling the Southern areas: http://www.semgonline.com/infrastr/ribs_01.html

Some aspects of the Hawkhurst branch differed from station to station, the platform construction being one. But many other elements were exactly the same across the board, including, by all appearances, the running in boards. This gave me less flexibility in terms of design as I wanted to be as true to the prototype as possible.

They appear to have been constructed from a pair of metal beams attached to a central board, an enamelled sign was affixed therein. A simple bracket supported both elements either side. The rounded tops and bolt detail is simple but striking. Older photos seem to suggest the outer frame of the name board would have been painted paler, possibly white. I'm not certain when enamelled signage would have come into use. Most photos I can find that clearly show running in boards were taken in the 50's and after - I'd be interested to learn what might have been used before if anything.  

The image above is the only one I have of this particularly curious setup on Goudhurst's second platform. The board looks to be identical to the others but the (enamelled?) sign is almost comically smaller! I suspect this was a spare that was placed here in lieu of something designed for the purpose. Or else the board itself is significantly bigger, it's hard to say for sure. 

Many of the plastic kits and parts that feature running in boards are rather generic and I couldn't find anything that matched the design exactly. So I decided to build my own.

I happened to have a sheet of rivets from Slater's Plastikard... yes, for the first time ever, my modelling takes me into literal "rivet counting" territory!

I selected rivets that looked about the right size for the bolts featured on the posts. I cut two strips, one for each leg.

I aimed to keep them the same width a some plastic strip I already had. Then came the tricky task of removing some of those pesky rivets as the spacing and amount wasn't right. I used the flat of a sharp craft knife and removed the remainder with some very fine sand paper. The result wasn't perfect and there were some scars from some dodgy blade wielding, but overall the effect was satisfactory to my eye.

The strips were glued to plain strips of plastikard for strength and thickness. The tops were rounded off by cutting the corners and using a sanding stick to even out the shape. Then another piece of identical strip was bent and wrapped across the top as shown below. I tried heating the strip in boiling water to aid bending, but actually found that caused the plastic to break instead of being more flexible. I also found adding too much liquid cement caused the plastic to weaken and split too, so this part took some patience.

I had a name board lying around from another kit - likely Peco/Wills/Ratio - which rather conveniently suited the size of the printed element I would be attaching later on. I backed this with another piece of Plastikard for the sake of width and stability and then glued between the posts. 

Next, some small strips for the brackets underneath the name board. These were half the width of the strip used so far, bent and glued in place. I got a bit excited and sprayed with primer before attaching the brackets, hence the images below!

I followed this up with a coat of primer (again!) and then, once dry, a coat of Phoenix Precision Paints Southern Middle Chrome Green. I'm quite pleased with the overall effect and the bolt head details on the side were well worth the (slightly) extra effort.

Finally, a custom made name board courtesy of Sankey Scenics. Even the miss-matched greens at work here seem to be prototypical! 

All for now,

Jonathan