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On 01/06/2021 at 09:24, Bedders said:

Having recently read 'Historical Railway Modelling' by David Jenkinson, it contains an interesting section on his Little Long Drag layout, that contained what he thought was every element he wanted, but lost his interest before it was completed. It was too unwieldy to operate on his own, among other things. Well worth a read if you haven't, a work of modelling philosophy in it's first half.

I think there's a moral there, not so much as biting off more than you can chew in terms of the work involved in making it (DJ was more than capable of handling that), but if you like to operate on your own, then the layout needs to be capable of supporting that. The "Little Long Drag" struck me as quite close in concept to many North American "basement empires", and in these cases there always seems to be a regular group of guys who operate on various layouts, a different one each week or each month or whatever and the remainder of the hobby time is spent on building and maintaining the layout. Always a problem when someone dies or moves away, of course. What strikes me as really strange is that during such sessions, the host usually takes up a superintendency/oversight role* and doesn't get to "play" with their own layout - though they do get to enjoy it "in action" of course. Semi-automation (Buckingham, for example) is another option.

 

* Not to be confused with the role of the "dispatcher" in timetable and train orders operation.

 

In all the articles/books on designing layouts, there seems to be an assumption that this decision of "just me", "me and friends sometimes" or "a group of us always" has been decided up front, but actually...

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1 hour ago, Regularity said:

I think there's a moral there, not so much as biting off more than you can chew in terms of the work involved in making it (DJ was more than capable of handling that), but if you like to operate on your own, then the layout needs to be capable of supporting that. The "Little Long Drag" struck me as quite close in concept to many North American "basement empires", and in these cases there always seems to be a regular group of guys who operate on various layouts, a different one each week or each month or whatever and the remainder of the hobby time is spent on building and maintaining the layout. Always a problem when someone dies or moves away, of course. What strikes me as really strange is that during such sessions, the host usually takes up a superintendency/oversight role* and doesn't get to "play" with their own layout - though they do get to enjoy it "in action" of course. Semi-automation (Buckingham, for example) is another option.

 

* Not to be confused with the role of the "dispatcher" in timetable and train orders operation.

 

In all the articles/books on designing layouts, there seems to be an assumption that this decision of "just me", "me and friends sometimes" or "a group of us always" has been decided up front, but actually...

 

That is a very fair comment. I have seen a few layouts which were designed for multiple operators that were no fun at all to run solo or perhaps with two people.

 

I have run Buckingham solo and it is great fun but the Automatic Crispin is not yet up and running. Even without it, I can set a train up at one place, then move to the next operating position to drive it and it is very satisfying. When one friend visits, we have a station each. When two friends visit, they usually take a station each and I work the fiddle yard and act as shunter at Buckingham, so the operator doesn't have to get up and down to work the three link couplings.

 

We recently put Leighton Buzzard up in the right place but it still needs some track and wiring sorting out before we can use the branch. When done, I will have that station plus the fiddle yard.

 

There is a second timetable, for solo operation. The Leighton Buzzard branch and all the trains that stop or start at Grandborough are either not included or they run through to the fiddle yard and Grandborough is switched out.

 

That approach seems to cater well for different numbers of operators.

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I am also reminded (yet again!) of “South for Sunshine”, which used linked-section switching. Trying to remember if it was “reversed link section control”, which is very simple and very useful in these circumstances.

For those who are still firmly wedded to DC, this usually means supplying power to the station or section which is to receive a train. Each home signal long the line connects the power for the section in advance (“beyond” the signal) to it’s own section. This allows for signals to be cleared behind a train.

In linked section control, things are identical except that the feed comes from the starting point, which allows trains to approach a signal at danger. The wiring is identical: it’s just how you use it.

With an out and back line, as this was, you can set all the signals clear, except for exit from the (hidden) reverse loops, and drive trains all the way out, and then drive another all the way back in. With extra operators/signallers,  then you operate more signals until the layout is saturated. I suspect two or three was enough for that line, but one person could have a lot of fun.

 

Personally, I now favour full signalling, but for it to be independent of traction control: DCC for that, but none of the route-setting macros, just control of trains!

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It was a mixture of operations, over-reach and practicalities that lead to my shelving the multi-deck idea.  It would be too much for one person to work alone, whilst the room is too small for more than maybe three operators.  It would have taken me decades to build it and whilst I'm not afraid of massive long-term projects, there are obviously a limited number that I can give attention to at any time (see restoring my Edwardian terrace house for details there...), and to be honest?- my enthusiasm would probably start to flag once I'd got a deck or two done and it would never get finished. 

 

My list of wants is fairly small, though what I need to do to achieve them is... well, just read through and see for yourself...

I want to be able to run trains in a railway-like manner from 'A' to 'B' through a landscape

 

Each of those is reasonable enough but taken together as a coherent whole is a bit ambitious in a space 12' x 8' (realistically reduced to about 9' x 7'6" when the doorway and chimney breast are factored in).  

 

So I went back through some plan books and I found this one in Freezer's '60 Plans for Small Locations'

 

51226909799_4b2875043f_c.jpg

 

And then I thought well if I flip it vertically I can fit the main terminus on the wall where I have got the full 12' length and that gives me some space to model the town, plus the inglenook in the far corner.

 

51226357038_2e275f3eda_c.jpg

 

Which gave me this, and then I was thinking that the small branch terminus could be 'Cremorne for Pittance' so I'd be re-using some of my earlier work, however I'm not much a fan of the main terminus as drawn because it seems to follow a typical Freezerism of squeezing absolutely everything into one area, whereas if he'd removed the loco shed the freight side of things could have been made a bit more realistic. 

 

So then I took that into SCARM and came up with this.

 

51227224665_be14023fcc_c.jpg

 

Where I've moved the loco shed and it becomes a bitsa scene accessed from the fiddle yard, and then the empty space by the main terminus becomes a more developed yard.  It all fits into my space- well, dependant how close I want to take tracks to the walls.  It measures up I think as a scale 400 yards or so between the two stations, which seems impossibly short, but then measuring up in Google maps the distance between Red Lion Square and Cremorne for Pittance would have only have been about 3/4 mile in any case. 

 

image.png.aa9734539364b108ab64bd89de88a3e0.png

 

And then I started looking again at how the MSLR might reasonably have gotten there in the first place.  I read somewhere that the Sherwood Section (let's not forget that my Rufford is inspired by that) would have followed the route of the A614 'Old Rufford Road' and considering that the Midland would have had to drive its metals right through a manor house and an abbey it is more than welcome to that alignment.  I was originally thinking that the MSLR would have built in from the west, extending from Beighton junction, almost making this a third 'Derbyshire Line' or more accurately the progenitor to them, but then between Sheffield and Rufford there's seemingly nothing but small villages and fields, so I can't see that being likely.  No, on reflection I think it's probably more likely that they'd have come in from the north, probably striking out from somewhere like Worksop and driving south. 

 

And then where does that branch fit in then? If it were a spur out to the London Extension you'd expect CfP to be an island station, if it were a connection to Annesley and the Derbyshire Lines it would be timber, and I've built it as an 1880s double pavilion type.  My best thought at the moment is that having built to Rufford the MSLR then built a branch to Mansfield via the Clipstone and Sherwood forests, and 'probably' linked with the Midland there.  Funnily enough that Midland line then heads north and connects with the GC at Worksop... circular reasoning, huh...

 

That still leaves a couple of plot holes.  Why is the Mansfield branch single track for at least the last 3/4 mile into Rufford?  Does the Mansfield Railway still get built in the 1910s?  Is a connection laid in between the Worksop- Rufford line and the LDEC?  I don't think I have the answers to those at the moment.

Edited by James Harrison
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It certainly feels like it is coming together, however it felt like I'd got it back in 2017.  And, after a bit of a rethink, in 2018.  And '19.  And '20.  But I think everytime I go back and have a rethink and come back with *another* track plan and *another* backstory, it gets refined a bit, and some of the plot holes get smoothed out (even if one or two new ones get introduced).  It certainly feels a lot more pinned down than it was four years ago, when I had the idea of what I wanted and how I wanted it to look (and really, the overall picture there hasn't changed), but getting it to feel right was the stumbling block.  Well, that and not having anywhere to build it!

 

I've found another little cameo to work into it too, space allowing.  To be pedantic, it would be nearer the Midland's line, but...

 

 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, James Harrison said:

It certainly feels like it is coming together, however it felt like I'd got it back in 2017.  And, after a bit of a rethink, in 2018.  And '19.  And '20.  But I think everytime I go back and have a rethink and come back with *another* track plan and *another* backstory, it gets refined a bit, and some of the plot holes get smoothed out (even if one or two new ones get introduced).  It certainly feels a lot more pinned down than it was four years ago, when I had the idea of what I wanted and how I wanted it to look (and really, the overall picture there hasn't changed), but getting it to feel right was the stumbling block.  Well, that and not having anywhere to build it!

 

I've found another little cameo to work into it too, space allowing.  To be pedantic, it would be nearer the Midland's line, but...

 

 

 

 

 

If it's any consolation, you're still going faster than I am!

 

I really like the new plan.  Much as I liked the earlier plans, it's this latest that clicks in my brain with a sort of "of course, that's the way to do it!" 

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51240505658_b84dc2cc0c_c.jpg

 

Well of course it was too much to hope that that was an end of the track plan doodling. 

Two issues with the last design.  One, the goods yard was at the back of the board, not ideal for three link couplings.  Two, the junction between the branch and the main line.  Can you imagine trying to work a train across that, all the shuffling back and forth and whistling, waiting, shuffling, meanwhile blocking another departure in and another arrival out?

 

So I figured it needed a more sane approach, ideally something where a train from either route can use all the platforms, and then go out down the other line.  I was also able to bring the goods yard to the front whilst I was at it.  On the debit side the MPD is gone, replaced with just a stabling road between the platforms and the goods lines, but I think that's a trade I'd be happy making.  

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The loss of the MPD may in my opinion be a good thing.

 

WE as modellers tend towards having far too many locos at the expense of coaches and wagons.  The lack of an MPD to show off our (excess of) locos may be no bad thing in that context.

 

 

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I've dug out my Ordnance Survey maps...

Explorer 270, Sherwood Forest, Scale 1:25000

 

Handily, this pretty much covers the entirety of the route. 

Starting out at Worksop, the line follows the MSLR mainline to the east for a short distance and then peels off to the southwest just after crossing the River Ryton and the Chesterfield Canal.  It describes a large, lazy '?' sort of a route to double back around the south of Worksop and then start heading south.  The alternative would be tear through the town...

It then follows the alignment of the Ollerton Road, continues on south where that meets the A616, sweeps past the western edge of Edwinstowe and makes a large sweeping curve to the east, concluding just to the west of the A614 roughly parallel with Rufford Manor Farm.  This would be the double track line built in the 1840s.

 

Forward to 1861.  Historically the MSLR submitted a bill to build a branch to Mansfield at this time, which was shelved in favour of running rights over the Midland route between there and Worksop.  In my timeline, 1861 sees a line built from Rufford to Mansfield.  This line would run from Red Lion Square station, skirt Pittance Park and Cremorne Wood (which in my Rufford become developed as park suburbs between the 1860s and 1910s) and then cut through the Sherwood Forest.  It then, unfortunately, sequestered the Mansfield to Clipstone section of the Mansfield Railway as its own and terminated in the Midland station at that town.  Being something of a branch off a branch, and with the development of the coal seams being still decades away, traffic isn't anticipated as warranting double track- yet.  The Mansfield branch results in minimal improvement to Red Lion Square station, beyond the single platform gaining a bay. 

 

Forward to the 1890s and the LDECR is built.  The Midland and the MSLR succeed in stifling any attempt made to run a branch into Rufford and the LDECR has to be content with serving just the outlying villages of Ollerton and Edwinstowe.  At this time the MSLR's London Extension is built however the Mansfield branch remains just that.  The Mansfield Corporation starts to agitate for a better rail service (this actually happened in our timeline) and approach the GCR to extend their branch to the London Extension.  And are ignored.  

 

1907 and the GCR take over the LDECR.  A junction is made at Edwinstowe and now Rufford can see services to Chesterfield and Lincoln too.  It's finally acknowledged at this point that the 1840s station is woefully ill-suited for this number of trains and the original Jacobean Revival building is pulled down, a second platform built, the junction between the Mansfield and Worksop lines reconfigured to allow easier reversal and new station buildings and canopies provided.  

 

1911 and a group of people in Mansfield propose to build their own railway, to the GCR at Annesley via Sutton-in-Ashfield and Kirkby-in-Ashfield.  This concludes with an end-on junction with the GC's single track Rufford-Mansfield line.  Realising the potential for a cut-off, the GCR build a short length of track from King Clipstone and double the branch between Clipstone and Mansfield.  Their express services can now run from the East Coast to Annesley avoiding Sheffield.  All GC services are then concentrated at Mansfield Central.  By the time this is done it is 1915, the railways are under government control and the area is being opened up to mining. 

 

This remains the situation in 1920.  Traffic on the single track between Rufford and Clipstone is becoming increasingly heavy and plans are being made to ease this bottleneck, but doubling is still seen as being in the future when 1921 brings the Railways Act.  It will be left to the North Eastern Group to complete the development of the area....

 

 

Edited by James Harrison
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There was a discussion on the LNER Forum some years ago about the Newark & Ollerton Railway, which later became an LD&ECR branch line proposal.

 

It was disclosed that there was at one time a proposal to extend the N&O to Worksop, at Kilton. This is copied from the discussion, written by 'Chuffinel'.....

 

Interestingly, in the Duke of Portland's papers (in Nottm Archives) there are significant ref's to the Ollerton-Worksop extension to the Newark-Ollerton line and goes into length as to how the route had been planned to avoid as much Ducal conflict as pos!. For anyone that knows that locality......, the route as planned would've left Ollerton in a NW direction and paralleled the present A616 (about 100 yards to the West), then around the back of Budby village, crossed the current B6034 at Carburton, then paralleling that road, to the east of it, then veering further east, just past Truman's Lodge, through Clumber, to east of the Worksop College, passing between what is now the eastern edge of Manton village and the former site of (at that time the "planned") Manton Colliery (the colliery spoil heap later (and still does) occupy that part of the planned route), then finally crossing on what would've been an interesting viaduct or span of bridges over the B6040, the Canal & River Ryton to form a South to West junction with the GCR (then MSL) Sheff-Lincoln line at Rayton Lane, Kilton.

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Right, I'm going to start trying to come up with something in the way of a working timetable. 

 

Worksop to Rufford: alignment holds at roughly the 60 - 70 metre datum line, so there are no huge gradients to cope with.  With a length of string, a tape measure and a calculator I've measured the route to 10 miles.  From the MSLR 1863 route map in Vol.1 of Dow I've likewise measured the distance between Worksop and Sheffield at 10 miles.  From the reprinted Summer 1903 GCR passenger timetables, I can see Worksop had 23 trains both up and down on a weekday, and that those took about 35-40 minutes to get to Sheffield (stopping at all stations) or 25 minutes nonstop.  Let's say, at the moment, that I pencil in three intermediate stations (at Budby, Carburton and Clumber) and therefore time between Rufford and Worksop at 30-35 minutes stopping or 25 minutes nonstop. 

 

What I need to do, as the 1903 timetable is incredibly clunky, is to try to diagram Sheffield- Worksop and then see how I can get my Sheffield - Ruffords in without disturbing any services that ran historically.  Of course this is only the passenger timetable so I'll also need to look at my 1950s Sheffield District working timetable for freight movements to likewise avoid.  I'm not hairshirted enough to lose sleep over mixing and matching and picking paths through timetables 50 years apart.  I'll aim for probably in the region of 10 trains each way a day.   

 

Rufford to Mansfield: alignment drops from the 60 metre mark at Rufford to the 30 - 40 metre datum at Mansfield.  That's say 30 metres over 6.5 miles; a ruling grade of roughly 5 metres to the mile or about 1 in 320.  From Robert Western's "The Mansfield Railway" I have the working timetable for.... the Mansfield Railway, so I'll take it that the passenger services shown terminating Mansfield extend on to Rufford; about 3 services each way a day.  Once out of Mansfield the only intermediate stop will be Cremorne for Pittance, so that's a 5 and 3/4 mile run for all traffic.  Then theres's that single track section, which I've scaled out at about 2 and 3/4 miles.  I'll need to sort out the mileages Nottingham- Mansfield to get a feel for how quickly the stoppers would have run.  I anticipate also though that there will be a Rufford- Marylebone direct train, 1 per day in each direction (basically the Mansfield- Marylebone direct but started a bit further back).    

 

Rufford to Lincoln; I'll say there's an east facing junction onto the LDECR where the two cross, and pencil in a Rufford- Lincoln service.  Which means recourse to the 1950s working timetable to see I don't snarl anything up there, except for High Street and Brayford Pool level crossings of course.  The LDEC wasn't exactly heavily loaded, passenger wise.... maybe 4 trains each way a day? 

 

I don't envisage a direct Chesterfield- Rufford service, nor Cleethorpes- Rufford.  Got to have a couple of places that you can't get to without changing trains and a long wait. 

 

So there's my first very outline thoughts on a basic passenger service to aim for, freight I think could be a lot easier as other than coal most of it will be leaving in the late evening and arriving in the early hours.

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Very interesting.  The only timetable I have made up is for a narrow gauge line, which was interesting, especially as I had decided where the crossing points were before I started it.  Some freight just has to wait for the passenger train to clear the line.

 

I started with graph paper and pencil, but as technology progressed I finished with an Excel spreadsheet.

 

(Drove through Rufford yesterday, shame I could not get there by train, but I suppose you have not built it yet.  :))

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9 hours ago, ChrisN said:

Very interesting.  The only timetable I have made up is for a narrow gauge line, which was interesting, especially as I had decided where the crossing points were before I started it.  Some freight just has to wait for the passenger train to clear the line.

 

I started with graph paper and pencil, but as technology progressed I finished with an Excel spreadsheet.

 

(Drove through Rufford yesterday, shame I could not get there by train, but I suppose you have not built it yet.  :))

 

Interesting, I hadn't considered a spreadsheet to write the timetable but can see how I might use one in the process.  (My laughing response is in connection with your 'pity I can't get there by train' comment).

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Work has started on Red Lion Square's station building, in a specific and very limited sense. 

 

You may recall a few years ago I bought a Walthers 'City Station' kit with the intention of Anglicising it.  Well, that remains the plan but I was struggling to get a clear idea how I might do this, what I want the station to look like, so on and so forth.  I can see the signature elements of 1890s to 1900s GCR station design- there are no shortage of photograghs of Nottingham Victoria and Leicester Central I can fall back on for guidance- but if you just blindly draw up elevations you can easily end up with a building that doesn't make any sense when you start dividing it up into internal rooms.  We saw this when I used the station kit from the Your Model Railway Village partwork as the basis of a goods yard office. 

 

Whilst what I want the finished model remains in abeyance however, I've recently taken delivery of a privately-published work on Leicester Central station and it looks like a real gold mine of information for architectural details, so much so that I think I can see a way of how to convincingly turn the kit into something the GCR might reasonably have built had they found themselves in need of a new mid-sized terminus in the middle 1900s. 

 

As the kit is built up as a large number of subassemblies that are then erected, what I see I can do is to build some of the larger units as-per the instructions, and then use them as scaffold or sub-base to then fit my own facades to.  Or rather, half facades, as it's only the upper halves that need anything like major surgery.  And I think there what I can do will be to cut some sections of plastic brick sheet to fit neatly in there, and then cut in my new window and door openings away from the rest of the model and then neatly just secure them over the kit components and cut away any superfluous material from behind afterward.  

 

So this evening...

 

51305063568_0765b19f97_c.jpg

 

51305590194_12b6534e2c_c.jpg

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Going back, for a few moments, to the Triang clerestories I was working on a little while ago.  I wasn't too happy with my homebrew PVA 'varnish' so I scrubbed that off and bought some Vallejo matt acrylic varnish to try out, I haven't done that yet but I have spent a little time today just touching in the final details and....

 

51307581882_351dba2da4_c.jpg

 

51307581862_203a1b93e5_c.jpg

 

Well, for toolings that are 60 years old or so I think they're remarkably fine, even considering that the only work I've done on them has been a repaint and an interior.

 

Moving back onto the station building, I've roughed out a floor plan today that I think should work well enough.   Schedule of accommodation reads thus; 1) booking hall, 2) ticket office, 3) general waiting room, 4) ladies waiting room, 5) ladies WC, 6) refreshment room, 7) Station Master's office, 7) Porter's room, 8) luggage and parcels office.  The gent's WC intended to be a separate block.  I'm just wondering whether there's any reasonable function or official that I've missed in that list. 

 

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41 minutes ago, James Harrison said:

Going back, for a few moments, to the Triang clerestories I was working on a little while ago.  I wasn't too happy with my homebrew PVA 'varnish' so I scrubbed that off and bought some Vallejo matt acrylic varnish to try out, I haven't done that yet but I have spent a little time today just touching in the final details and....

 

51307581882_351dba2da4_c.jpg

 

51307581862_203a1b93e5_c.jpg

 

Well, for toolings that are 60 years old or so I think they're remarkably fine, even considering that the only work I've done on them has been a repaint and an interior.

 

Moving back onto the station building, I've roughed out a floor plan today that I think should work well enough.   Schedule of accommodation reads thus; 1) booking hall, 2) ticket office, 3) general waiting room, 4) ladies waiting room, 5) ladies WC, 6) refreshment room, 7) Station Master's office, 7) Porter's room, 8) luggage and parcels office.  The gent's WC intended to be a separate block.  I'm just wondering whether there's any reasonable function or official that I've missed in that list. 

 

 

That looks covered to me.  Did they have First and Third class refreshment rooms?  I know at some period on some railways they did.  Also, is the Ladies WC in the Ladies Waiting Room.  The only one I have ever been in was.  (I was a little lad at the time with my mum.)

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Stations near posh country houses sometimes had a private waiting room for the bigwigs. Rufford Abbey was definitely quite posh. The station may also have been forseen to entertain royalty, as the king regularly visited the Dukeries. Also, somewhere to store the coal, newspaper kiosk (sometimes built into the main structure, sometimes a separate structure)

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Thanks.  I'm finding a little difficult, to say the least, to find dimensioned station building floor plans (at least, any that fit the bill of being steam age and medium-sized). I ultimately settled on a drawing I found of Edwinstowe for hints of the likely dimensions of various rooms, and that only had the one refreshment room so I think it would be OK.  

 

I could, of course, look at preserved or new-build heritage examples (eg, Loughborough Central, Kidderminster Town and Broadway) but the drawback there is preservation-era alterations or plans being adapted for tourists rather than travellers.  I'm mindful for instance that the new Broadway is something like half as large again as the original station, whilst Kidderminster Town is largely given over to a pub, tearoom and souvenir shop.  

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2 minutes ago, Curlew said:

Stations near posh country houses sometimes had a private waiting room for the bigwigs. Rufford Abbey was definitely quite posh. The station may also have been forseen to entertain royalty, as the king regularly visited the Dukeries. Also, somewhere to store the coal, newspaper kiosk (sometimes built into the main structure, sometimes a separate structure)

 

Puts me in mind of Redmile, with its ducal waiting room.

 

7 minutes ago, James Harrison said:

Thanks.  I'm finding a little difficult, to say the least, to find dimensioned station building floor plans (at least, any that fit the bill of being steam age and medium-sized).

 

Consider Alnwick. 

 

1880s, medium-sized terminus catering for higher aristocracy. 

 

I believe I have drawings in a Hoole volume, so dimensions you may certainly have.

 

Alnwick-Station-interior263.jpg.818d1b90c8d4890924f6b4dbbf7e2e0d.jpg1807862539_Alnwick01.jpg.41aeaf85b56133878ae2953a8f47f0cb.jpg

 

 

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6 minutes ago, James Harrison said:

Thanks.  I'm finding a little difficult, to say the least, to find dimensioned station building floor plans (at least, any that fit the bill of being steam age and medium-sized). I ultimately settled on a drawing I found of Edwinstowe for hints of the likely dimensions of various rooms, and that only had the one refreshment room so I think it would be OK.  

 

I could, of course, look at preserved or new-build heritage examples (eg, Loughborough Central, Kidderminster Town and Broadway) but the drawback there is preservation-era alterations or plans being adapted for tourists rather than travellers.  I'm mindful for instance that the new Broadway is something like half as large again as the original station, whilst Kidderminster Town is largely given over to a pub, tearoom and souvenir shop.  

 

I think whatever you decide you will be right.  Stations should have had all sorts of rooms but often they did not, or had different ones.  I know on the Cambrian, the only railway I really know about, if the Station Masters house was part of the building(s), he would have to work at home.  I have seen other rooms included, like the lamp room, but it is your station, and if the passengers do not like it they can write to the Rufford Gazette and complain.

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12 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Puts me in mind of Redmile, with its ducal waiting room.

 

 

Consider Alnwick. 

 

1880s, medium-sized terminus catering for higher aristocracy. 

 

I believe I have drawings in a Hoole volume, so dimensions you may certainly have.

 

Alnwick-Station-interior263.jpg.818d1b90c8d4890924f6b4dbbf7e2e0d.jpg1807862539_Alnwick01.jpg.41aeaf85b56133878ae2953a8f47f0cb.jpg

 

 

 

Thank you, just a rough idea of various room or office sizes would be useful.  A Ducal or private waiting room, I could consider one I guess, could be squeezed in I think if I made use of the attic space in the kit. 

 

 

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Alnwick (1888)

 

Internal measurements of rooms.

 

Main station building, at right angles to stop blocks, is approx 19' deep. The rooms, left to right, with their approx. widths are: Porters (11' (but loses some due to the corner)); Extension to Parcels Office (10'); Parcel's Office (18'); Entrance Hall (18'); Booking Office (10'); Station Master's Office (10'); Lamp Room (11' (but loses some due to the corner)).

 

Island Platform Building 1, approx. 14'6" wide:  The rooms in order from nearest to main station building, with their approx. lengths: General Waiting Room (24'); Third Class Ladies' Waiting Room (11'); Ladies' Lavatories (6' + 6'); First Class Ladies' Waiting Room (11').  

 

Island Platform Building 2, approx. 14'6" wide:  The rooms in order from nearest to main station building, with their approx. lengths:  Island Platform Building 1, approx. 14'6" wide: First Class Gentlemen's Waiting Room (11'); Boiler Room (20');  Unmarked Room Off Gentlemen's Lavatories (6'); Gentlemen's Lavatories (15'); Refreshment Room (28').

 

 

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