Castle Aching

[bgman]

All change for Boadicea Central via Tut-bury & The Pharoah Isles !

[Nearholmer]

Instructions on how to design/build here http://www.follies.org.uk/buildyourownfolly.htm

Edited April 28, 2016 by Nearholmer

[BG John]

Instructions on how to design/build here http://www.follies.org.uk/buildyourownfolly.htm

Oh no! You've gone too far this time. I'm getting ideas

[Northroader]

The Taff Vale railway adopted the "Egyptian" style around 1900, but it was more detail finish than getting carried away like your sketch. You can still see bits at Pontypridd, and the derelict upstairs ticket office at Llandaff. Taffs Well had it, with unusual asymmetric end pavilions, but I'm afraid that got knocked down over 40 years ago.

[corneliuslundie]

I forgot when mentioning narrow gauge feeders the potato railways, mostly in Lincolnshire but a few further south. Once again, I have the book (sad, aren't I?)

For an alternative vernacular for station buildings, how about a hollow tree trunk - there was reputedly a prototype?

Or if the present weather keeps up, an igloo!

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

Or one that looks like two locusts caught in flagrante delicto.

 

(Cornelius -doubly sadly, I have both the original and second editions)

 

K

[runs as required]

Moreton on Lugg anyone?

 

 

a booking office in a hollow tree or or more ambitious head office and station facilities within the castle ruins?

 

dh

 

Edit

I knew I'd ripped this off somewhere - it's the S&M again. I used to take my lunchtime butties down to watch shunting at Abbeyforegate from the Salop CC offices

 

Edited April 28, 2016 by runs as required

[Donw]

Or one that looks like two locusts caught in flagrante delicto.

 

(Cornelius -doubly sadly, I have both the original and second editions)

 

K

 

I just cannot imagine that in Norfolk!.

Don

[Nearholmer]

Which: the locusts; or the in flagrante delicto?

 

K

[Edwardian]

Honestly.  I am absent from the topic for 24 hours or so and I return to find 23 notifications and a whole page of posts to catch up on, many of which are charmingly insane!

 

My train got in at 1.26 this morning, so am a bit tired, and have work to do, but I look forward to catching up.  Great sketches there Kevin.

[runs as required]

Phew! Twenty four hours without a Castle Aching thread posting from our sharp witted host.

The peasants are truly revolting, all manner of wantonly suggestive material has been  posted for all to snigger over.

 

Time for that cane with the horses head 'andle to be switched around a few peasant calves.

dh

[Nearholmer]

"The finest that Woolworth's could sell."

 

(Sticks with horses head handles)

 

In an effort to be helpful, I've identified a supplier of r-t-r miniature follies, in case construction time is short. They are mis-catalogued as aquarium ornaments, and these are only two of a vast, and largely tasteless, variety on offer at very reasonable prices.

 

K

Edited April 29, 2016 by Nearholmer

[corneliuslundie]

Abbey Foregate. Then you must have a pulpit in the goods yard. An excellent place for the stationmaster to conduct proceedings.

Back to Castle Aching. I am impressed with your progress. I have been doing lots of bits and pieces since the beginning of the year but nothing worth posting for months even though my original aim was a post a week. I am really looking carefully at our efforts not for my current layout but for the next one which will have South Wales valleys townscape and street scenes rather than fields of sheep. How much depth do you actually have, front to back?

Jonathan

[Shadow]

Some photo's of Blickling Hall and pyramid

 

 

 

Edited April 29, 2016 by Shadow

[Edwardian]

To ease this thread back into 'straight and level' mode - may I, on behalf of Edwardian's many followers, post a request for a mock-up (perhaps allied to an imagined narrative) of how the light railway tracks into Castle Aching?

Wil it have the usual tin buildings - or perhaps does it, thanks to its titled sponsor, avail itself of some partially unused structures of the once grand castle and its baileys/outworks?

   dh

 

Well, there's the rub.  I don't really know.

 

There have been several suggestions, which you all, bless you, ignore, that his is a small independent rather than a true light railway and, so, while modest, it is not necessarily as impecunious as some we know and love.  It's me, with my house unsold and my crippling mortgage, that is brassic, not my freelance railway.

 

But, one does affect the other, so the track plan is to be simple.  I had thought of a terminus with just 2 sidings to the yard and the run round completed by a turntable (because I am essentially obsessed with this as a device and the Isle of Eldernell stations all have them), which also gives access to the Engine shed road (basically Rothbury, the North British BLT in Northumberland).

 

Buildings?

 

Well, the mad thing to do would be to build the station in the style of a Norman castle, but Romanesque Revival was not really big as a style of railway architecture.

 

A modest alternative, from a different county but from a GER sponsored line such as the WNR, would be Castle Hedingham, and I did get so far as to purchase this kit and print it off last year before the money and the printer ink ran out.  It does not use local materials, but, the point about having a railway is that it doesn't have to!  Image below from the Smart Models' website.

 

I have a yen, however, for a modest wooden pitched roof trainshed, open to the sides, except perhaps for having the engine shed alongside.  I like the look of this early Brighton example from Lewes. In that case I could use Castle Hedingham station building for Flitching Station (assuming I get that far).

[Edwardian]

A Folly for a station.

 

I tried to flog this idea to Edwardian before, for a Sussex layout, so will try again.

 

While the WNR still had pretensions, and hadn't yet fallen to become the WNLR, the owner of Aching Hall required a station to be built for his sole use, in exchange for the line being permitted to cross his land, and dictated that it had to present a picturesque aspect when viewed from his study window across the fields.

 

I think that there is a Pyramid at Blickling Hall, which could serve as a model, or inspiration could be taken from any number of faux-gothic towers, faux-classical temples, Chinese-style pagodas, etc. If the date of construction of the line is established, it should be possible to identify what was fashionable in the way of follies at the time.

 

K

 

PS: Blickling Hall, Norfolk was, quite logically, the home of The Duke of Buckinghamshire, who presumably looked after the county while his peer was down in Sussex.

 

OK, that's brilliant and funny and quirky.  A brilliant sketch.

 

To try to do some justice to this and other posts:

 

• The idea of an aristocratic connection, perhaps an ornate waiting room for His Lordship, is something I had not considered for this project, but, it is perhaps worth further thought as I had envisaged a nearby estate of sufficient importance to boast its own estate railway that could run into Castle Aching.  My inspiration for this was the Edenham line and I had supposed that Havilah, one of the lines engines, after having been sold back to the manufacturer in the 1870s, had been sold on to a line in Norfolk.  So, His Lordship could even arrive in his own train! 
• Folly architecture, could overlap with said aristocratic waiting room.  Love the pyramid.  Might be pushing the whimsical effect too far on this layout, given that there is already a castle?
• Love the idea of using old bits of the castle, but think that the line runs just too far from the nearest masonry, separated by village houses.  Something to try to do at some stage; the idea of Georgian or Victorian widows set in ancient castle or ecclesiastical masonry.
• Also love the waiting-room-in-tree, truly there is a prototype for everything, but if I put it on a model, no one would believe it!

Must cut this short, supper calls, and I am conscious that I have not nearly done justice to all these splendid ideas and posts.

[agt613]

Over the weekend I managed to finish the next two cottages on Bailey Street, though I have not yet modelled the shop interior; I still have not decided what it is that Mr Ahern purveys.  I need to make window displays, and fill the shop's de-mountable interior module.

 

The group is designed to be view obliquely, as the scale at the left hand of the street frontage is around HO whereas the right-hand end of the shop is up to about 94% of 4mm scale. Building a shop front going up-hill and in slight perspective was not at all easy, I found!  Hopefully it will all work when it's in situ.

These buildings are terrific. One point, however. I'm pretty sure that very few people would have white window woodwork then as cheap white paint is quite new. Surely most would be browns, greens and creams. Just a small quibble over some lovely modelling. Graham

[Nearholmer]

Edwardian

 

Oddly enough, I never really expected the pyramid idea to get adopted.

 

Two stations you might like to look at, given the clearer brief, are Wateringbury in Kent, and Battle in Sussex.

 

When thinking about them, it struck me that it would be better if they were flint, and I remembered the Trevor Arms, next to Glynde station, in Sussex, which is another piece of Victorian-antique architecture, looks as if it was really designed to be a station, and is built from that very material.

 

I can't find a picture that does it justice, so this will have to do.

 

K

 

PS: I've also just remembered Downham Market station. And, that actually is in Norfolk!

Edited April 29, 2016 by Nearholmer

[runs as required]

These buildings are terrific. One point, however. I'm pretty sure that very few people would have white window woodwork then as cheap white paint is quite new. Surely most would be browns, greens and creams. Just a small quibble over some lovely modelling. Graham

I've turned this issue over a lot in my mind while driving Britain's B roads (wife's and my  'Nuts in May' Mike Leigh game, with her in my rear view mirror doing the map reading). It is mostly b&w photographs or sketches that we have of the pre colourfilm era a century ago

I reckon it is due to Farrow and B#### (gosh that was rude!) influence that lots of old cottage house owners are now using their browns greens and creams colours to be more authentic.

I think the true answer is more to do with researching the old lead based paint specs - and the colours those specs. delivered.

 

I scraped down to the oak some 1795 12 pane sliding sashes on the back of our house some years ago; their original coats of paint appeared to be white lead based.

If oak or elm (the trad wood for coffins) was used for a cottage, I doubt the joinery would have seen a coat of paint.

 

dh

Edited April 29, 2016 by runs as required

[The Stationmaster]

I've turned this issue over a lot in my mind while driving Britain's B roads (wife's and my  'Nuts in May' Mike Leigh game, with her in my rear view mirror doing the map reading). It is mostly b&w photographs or sketches that we have of the pre colourfilm era a century ago

I reckon it is due to Farrow and B#### (gosh that was rude!) influence that lots of old cottage house owners are now using their browns greens and creams colours to be more authentic.

I think the true answer is more to do with researching the old lead based paint specs - and the colours those specs. delivered.

 

I scraped down to the oak some 1795 12 pane sliding sashes on the back of our house some years ago; their original coats of paint appeared to be white lead based.

If oak or elm (the trad wood for coffins) was used for a cottage, I doubt the joinery would have seen a coat of paint.

 

dh

 

I believe the most common coating for external woodwork was white lead paint as it was the most weather resistant (for most part of England), was relatively cheap, and offered excellent preservative qualities.  Other colours were available and there was - so my dad told me - quite a wide range of colours around by the 1930s although that is obviously somewhat later than the setting of Castle Aching.

[Trains&armour]

Edwardian

 

Oddly enough, I never really expected the pyramid idea to get adopted.

 

Two stations you might like to look at, given the clearer brief, are Wateringbury in Kent, and Battle in Sussex.

 

On the same line as Wateringbury, and to the same design is Aylesford station. But where Wateringbury is built in brick, Aylesford was built in Kentish ragstone. I think it wouldn't look out of place.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Aylesford_Railway_Station_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1740442.jpg

 

And I happen to have a set of drawings of Wateringbury Station, so if you're interested, send me a PM

[Nearholmer]

You are right, T&A, Aylesford is even better than Wateringbury.

 

On Edwardian painting and decorating, try reading 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'. In among the politics, and little details of working class daily life, it contains a stack of detail of how paints were mixed, and used, including grinding and adding pigment to white lead base.

 

K

Edited April 29, 2016 by Nearholmer

[Donw]

White lead did make good paint and was used (still is if they can get it) by Artists. It does seem to discolour a little and I suspect that Landlords would use darker colour if available because they didn't show there age so much hence they could leave it longer before repainting. Incidentally wasn't it White lead that was used for carriage roofs.

Tradesmen used to mix a lot of their stuff themselves. Glaziers would mix whiting and Linseed oil to make putty. My grandfather said freshly mixed putty was much better.

Don

[Edwardian]

These buildings are terrific. One point, however. I'm pretty sure that very few people would have white window woodwork then as cheap white paint is quite new. Surely most would be browns, greens and creams. Just a small quibble over some lovely modelling. Graham

 

Must respond to the many excellent posts, but just on this point, I think this is an interesting issue, but I am not wholly convinced.

 

My sense, based on what I have seen, not on either research or systematic observation is that:

 

• The dark browns tend to be associated more with mid-Victorian
• There were a reasonable amount of black painted windows, but I have a feeling these might have been a bit old fashioned
• White windows and frames, or white windows with black or dark frames, were fairly common.  The use of white seems supported by what others have said regarding lead based paint

It is a subject that would no doubt benefit from further research.  in the meantime:

[Edwardian]

White window frames were common enough, but as said, were based on white lead.

 

It was brilliant white which was the new thing from the 60s (?) onwards. As long as things are muted and maybe slightly off-white (add something like BR coach grey) then things should be fine.

 

I must not be lazy then, and leave the unmuted white of the address labels showing.  Fair point!