So we have a location; a small market town in the heart of West Sussex deemed important enough to have its own branch line connection to the ???main line??™ two miles to the south. In hindsight it should have been clear to the LBSCR that they were on to a hiding to nothing, Petworth station was just about breaking even, so how the town could ever hope to sustain a branch of its own was a mystery ??“ the Lords of Leaconfield were a very persuasive lot!

Ever since I had this idea, to me there was only one location for the station site; what is now the town??™s main car park.

http://maps.google.c...petworth&tab=vl

Zoom in to the third notch from the top and pan down by two clicks; the car park is obvious.

The shape of the car park, along with the surrounding geography, lends itself perfectly to the site for a small station ??“ single platform with a couple of sidings. Nothing flash in terms of goods traffic as the heavy agricultural stuff was handled at the junction station.

Immediately to the north of the site is a large building which is the former bakery. For Petworth Town, this is an ideal, albeit small-scale, source of traffic. In addition, the main street up from the south passes at a lower level to the west of the site. The houses which line Pound Street are an interesting array of Georgian and earlier structures.

What of course is lacking are the railway structures, which inevitably will need to be scratch-built. There are plenty of candidates; however the first list of buildings and their prototypes are as follows:

Station Building ??“ Fittleworth or Selham ??“ I really like the idea of the LBSCR ???Country House??™ style, as at Midhurst, Cocking, Singleton and Lavant ??“ as well as the Bluebell railway and several others, however this may be a little large and overpowering for the site.

Signal Box ??“ Midhurst South

Goods Shed ??“ Fittleworth (more a small office than a shed of any substance)

Railway Cottages - Petworth

Passenger trains are in the hands of a set of Etched Pixels 4-wheelers (have the kit, still to build it!), freight stock will come from a variety of sources. Motive power, as already suggested this will be in the capable hands of the Terrier tanks ??“ until Dapol produce the Stroudley D1 that is??¦