Umber is the New Black

[Nearholmer]

Now, here is something extraordinary

 

http://thesussexmotivepowerdepots.yolasite.com/sussex-railway-scenes.php

 

If you look down the page, there is a picture of an E2 running on the sand tramway at Hassocks! I'd always understood that is was worked by a combination of gravity and horses, but no. And, not only that, but a main line loco let loose onto a private tramway.

 

The Sussex motive Power Depots website is enormous, and contains vast amounts of lore and many unique photos, so, if you haven't explored it already, I strongly recommend it.

 

Kevin

[Edwardian]

Wow, that is interesting.  Thanks. Either that is an E2 on the sandpit tramway or it's a sketch for an illustration to Tank Engine Thomas Again. If it could happen in 1923, I guess it could have happened ten years earlier.  The tramway appears to have quite a tight loading gauge!

 

Today is a dark, misty and solidly raining day.  Not a good day for photographs.  BUT. Something Rare and Beautiful arrived in the post yesterday.  Indulge me, please, if I post a picture to illustrate why I simply must attempt a LBSC layout:

 

 

[Nearholmer]

You can't not, can you?

 

Very smart indeed.

 

K

[Edwardian]

Still have other suggestions to check out, but the sheer number of sidings at Hassocks, and its length, argues against this; I would need a lot of track that I'd probably barely use.  The next station up, Burgess Hill, was suggested, so I am looking more closely at this.  it seems more practical:

[Nearholmer]

Persons of a Fine Scale disposition are advised to look away.

 

Here is what umber looks like to those who pursue the art of coarse railwaying in 0 scale.

 

K

 

PS: still trying to think of something nice to say about Burgess Hill, and failing. The same space and general disposition could be used for Eridge, which was a far more interesting station.

Edited October 28, 2015 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

Full of character - like it very much.

 

Like Eridge, too, but it's not on the main London-Brighton line!

[Nearholmer]

Mornington Crescent!!!

 

Oh, no, sorry. Wrong game.

 

K

[Edwardian]

There is, of course, the famous 'Stroudley Variation", by which one progresses via places on the system that were also Brighton locomotive names until the concluding cry of "Stepney!" can be uttered.

[Edwardian]

Looked at Purley.  It cries out to be modelled, with the SECR shed and the line snaking under the high level Brighton line. I realise, though, that if I were to expand my collection (of one) SECR engines, I'd go for the mid-1900s and probably choose the route to Folkestone-Dover.

 

Looked at Croydon Central, but the early closure make it only really viable for a might have been.  The absence of long distance traffic would be a problem.  The pertinent Croydon is East Croydon, as rebuilt in 1898 and combining New Croydon, but would prove a monster.

 

Earlswood still comes to mind.  Not sure that it would be a better choice than Burgess Hill. It is very straggly, so a model of Earlswood would probably omit the goods facilities entirely.  

[Nearholmer]

Edwardian,

 

Earlswood station has gone up in the world since I knew it well 40+ years ago. It was exceedingly dowdy then, but it did still have the buildings on the island platform, including a waiting room with a coal fire in winter, which was seriously unusual by then.

 

Now, you have to have a look at the picture that Mark Carne has just put in the Vintage/Collectable section here

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/84210-coarse-scale-o-gauge/page-7

 

Not umber, I admit, but the next best thing.

 

Kevin

[Edwardian]

Mr Carne's excellent M7, no. 109 built 1904, in Drummond livery.  An object of desire.  Thanks for the link:

[Edwardian]

One thing about East Croydon; it's somewhere to use those Wills kits!

[Edwardian]

Like the idea of Earlswood.  Just the passenger station.  Only a few sidings/head shunt.  Nice relatively narrow site with no straggly bits.  Happily placed road over-bridge (upon which I shall delight in placing a horse-drawn omnibus from time to time).  Mind you, might easily be a motor 'bus by 1914!

 

My main motivation is the 1905 station building, executed in a sort of late Queen Anne revival style and, from the recent pictures I've seen, bright and clean as a pin, much as it would have been when newly built. An added advantage is that, being an Edwardian re-modelling, the station sort of gets me off the hook with a certain forum member and saves me from renaming myself for the sake of this one, post-Edwardian, layout plan. Ahem.

 

Have map.  Have Google 'Street View' shots of what's left.   Have found just 2 period shots, so far.

 

Here it is again:

[Nearholmer]

Well worth including the siding to the coal yard on the Down side, which was for the benefit of the Earlswood Asylum (Idiots), as the map so insensitively terms it.

 

It would make a good little scene, hemmed-in by the station and the backs of houses.

 

Are you envisaging basically a circuit?

 

K

[Edwardian]

Earlswood v Burgess Hill at the moment.  As the mainline is unhelpfully straight, I think it will need to go off-stage at each end in order to loop round to a fiddle yard. 

 

The Asylum (Idiots) turns out to have been a rather splendid mid-century affair, and the result of a reforming movement to assist those with learning difficulties.  One must assume that, at the time, "Idiot" was a non-pejorative technical term, and, whatever the modern view on institutionalising people may be, it seems to have been well-meant endeavour intent upon providing a positively luxurious setting for the hapless "Idiots". Couple of the late Queen Mum's relatives were inmates at one time.

 

Still, Earlswood, sandwiched between a gas works and work house on one side and an asylum on the other.  Still, seems to have been all leafy gentility judging from the pics:

[Edwardian]

Mind you, Burgess Hill looked pretty genteel too:

[Nearholmer]

Can I suggest one more candidate: Merstham.

 

The old SER line and the Quarry Line are very close together at this point, and the area had a stack of industrial railways, the last until quite recently. There was the very steep and curved Holmethorpe line to the sand quarries, and another set of non-railway-owned sidings, both to the south of the station, and the stone quarries and lime works to the North, plus some Fuller's Earth mines for good measure. All, I think, because the geology of the area is exceedingly complicated, with the Weald crashing into the Downs.

 

More interesting than Burgess Hill!

[Edwardian]

Merstham.  Well it offers:

 

• Two double-track mainlines in sufficiently close proximity.  As I understand it one is the old L&BR line originally shared with the SER, which is now used by the SE&CR.  The other is the LB&SCR mainline to Brighton.

 

• Dramatic scenic breaks at one end, with deep and steep cuttings, tall bridges and tunnels.   Query, would I be able to see the lines!  There is a great place somewhere on the Brighton line for photographing trains, but I doubt that viewpoint could be reproduced on a model.

 

• A station, albeit it a SE&CR station. Rather plain compared with the Brighton stations I have been eying, but commendably modest.

 

• A standard gauge industrial line that dramatically crosses the Brighton line.

 

If suitable near track or bridge-level view points could be achieved, this has all the makings of a dramatic watch-the-trains-go-by set-up.  Obviously the trend in recent years has been for track-level, or near track-level viewing. I might say that, even as a child, this struck me as necessary. In addition, however, I like the idea of models that can reproduce something like real-life view points.

 

Thus, having avoided a perspective only achievable by a passing seagull, I don't want to have to look at a scene from an angle unknown to those viewing the real thing.  For many sites, that involves the ability to look obliquely up or down the line and to do from a modest height.  I fear I would never be able to see into those cuttings properly.

 

I just can't tell from the maps and Google Earth how the complex contours might effect viewing, and, of course, I don't know the site.

 

[Nearholmer]

Ah, yes, the contours ......... Complex, and lots of 'em! And, constantly evolving, because of quarrying.

 

You really do need to go there to get a proper feel, because the pictures on Britain from Above seem to flatten everything, whereas, from the ground, the face of the Downs forms quite a formidable "wall" to the north.

 

Also, there are multiple possible scenes, viewpoints and view-blocks that could be chosen. For instance, while you have focused on the northern end of the area, one could move south, and "stand on the west", with the old main line in the foreground, and make the entry into the Holmethorpe sidings the focus, using the Quarry line on its embankment as the backdrop.

 

Or go all spectacular, and make the scarp of the Downs rise above head level.

 

One final point before I leave off Mersthamania: there were plenty of LBSCR services on the old main line even after the Quarry line was opened, and the moment the Quarry line was closed for works (usually clearing minor chalk falls), everything had to go along the old main, causing a total snarl-up at Redhill. So, one could create something that focuses only on the old main line.

 

K

 

PS: Of course, if you do go for the northern end, worth remembering that the bridge over the track entering the lime-pit was on the route of the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Railway. OK, it was almost certainly buried under a cart-road by the early-1900s, but parts of it were still there until the motorway was built, so a bit of history-bending could give you a horse-drawn Plateway too!

Edited November 3, 2015 by Nearholmer

[Oldddudders]

From memory - I'm in Torbay at present, my books are in France - the Quarry Line wasn't complete until well into Edwardian times. Until it was available, the Brighton's trains suffered at the hands of the SER/SECR signalmen at Redhill, which was still referred to as Stop'em Junction a century later, and this was the motivation for an expensive second breach of the Downs. Evidently the money ran out by the time the Brighton got to Balcombe Tunnel Junction, where the four-track finishes. Both Earlswood and Merstham thus lend themselves to simple side platform models, the latter with a really interesting variety of trains from two Companies, if you choose an earlier date.

[Edwardian]

Thanks, both.  I would love an earlier date, as I am a great fan of both Stroudley passenger and goods liveries, and of the "Full Wainwright", but my OO Works I3 dates from 1908, my Bachmann E4 of 1903 shows, I believe, her condition from around 1912, my kit-built K Class dates from late 1913, and my Bachmann C Class is in the simplified livery of, I think, about 1910-1 on (no books to hand either)!

 

I assumed had that, while the expresses would use the new mainline, there would be LBSC stopping services remaining on the old joint line.  Some work, perhaps for an E4 or a D3?  What you say about the Quarry line closures does open the possibility of running expresses on the old joint line and only modelling that.  Potentially it would allow depiction of a wider period.  Of course, there will have been some changes to Merstham, but the overall appearance seems unchanged from mid-Edwardian period at least. 

 

Sadly, I cannot see any prospect of visiting the locus in quo in the foreseeable future, as I am currently sitting 80 miles north of The Smoke and in the process of moving to the North East, where any layout project will be commenced. 

 

Below, I think, is where the classic track level views of the Brighton expresses with the bridge back-drop were taken; slap between the 2 mainlines! The colour shot I take to show the train 'posed' between the 2 signal posts seen on the map.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Yep, that's the location, just where the cutting turns to Embankment. The "skyline" pictures are from a bit further south, near where the Quarry Line passes over the Holmethorpe line.

 

As with all these ideas, I now want to build about 56 layouts based on them myself; it may take some negotiation to get domestic planning permission to turn the entire garden into an 0 scale representation of an industrially-scarred slice of Surrey, and to squander any small possibility of the children getting an inheritance by buying track. Maybe not!

 

K

[phil-b259]

The Purley - Coulsdon - Merstham - Redhill lines was authorised as part of the London & Brighton railway and construction began under that company. Shortly after, MPs displaying their usual "we know best" despite having no expertise in the subject concerned, decided that only a single railway outlet was needed to the south, so they forced the L&B to sell the Coulsdon - Redhill section to what became the South Eastern Railway, although the L&B retained running powers over this section. Hence Redhill, and the key junctions became managed by the SER, who, particularly after completion of the Reading via Reigate) line sought ever opportunity to delay Brighton trains.

 

Although things got better over time, it was only after the LBSCR built the Quarry lines and the SER completed their Tonbridge - London (via Sevenoaks) cut off did things really settle down as both company's express traffic was able to avoid Redhill

[Edwardian]

Thanks.  Phil, that is helpful.  Nearholmer - I have yet to identify the Holmethorpe line crossing, so will look at the maps further south.

 

In the meantime, Wiki says that the Quarry Line opened in November 1899, and opened to passengers in April 1900.  So, in fact, the Quarry line is Victorian (just). This means that, as and when I had stock to run earlier stuff, I could.  Of course, I'd have to check changes between 1900 and 1914, but I imagine that the infrastructure stayed relatively unchanged.  

 

So, now I am thinking "BOTH MAINLINES"!  Come on, who wouldn't want an excuse to have a train-set with 2 double track mainlines side by side?

 

Further, think how colourful it would be.  One mainline with traffic from both companies. About 6 distinct locomotive liveries over the 1900-14 period; Stroudley Improved Engine Green and Goods Green, Umber, Lined Goods Black, and the full and simplified Wainwright liveries. You can probably get examples of 3 Brighton coach liveries, plus Pullmans, and, of course, SECR livery. What about through services from other lines? Would the Sunny South Special have comprised/included LNWR stock?  What about the short-lived ex-Paddington service?

 

Then you have an industrial line with it's own motive power, just like we all want to add to our layouts, with excuses of greater or lesser plausibility. 

 

It would be long, I grant you, but it pretty much fills the whole brief in a single location, so "well done" Nearholmer! 

 

Not that many buildings for the size of layout, especially if cinched at the waist as I am considering.  I enjoy architectural modelling, but inclusion of a town or village would really slow things up, and I thought that Burgess Hill, and particularly Earlswood, would each need a bit of town to set them off and this would be time-intensive for what is, after all, not destined to be my main long-term project.  Here it is all dramatic civil engineering.  The bridges and tunnels will be work enough!

 

Need to work on those visibility issues.  My thoughts are:

 

• Wide baseboards at the point the lines go from embankment to cutting.

.

• The boards then narrow, perhaps to no wider than the railway fence for the raised sections.

 

Why?

 

Well, that would hopefully facilitate both oblique views up the cuttings, and, broadside views of the embanked sections.

 

Hard to tell if that would work, because, as I say, I can form only a limited idea of the effect of contours from the maps and pictures.

 

This is starting to seem too good to be true!

Edited November 3, 2015 by Edwardian

[westerhamstation]

Hi, this link may be of interest, all the best Adrian.

http://www.oldreigate.com/?goto=mersthamquarry