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Great Southern Railway (Fictitious) - Signalling the changes...


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Looking through a few photos, I estimate the platforms on the Mid-Hants to be about 10-11 bricks from sleeper top to coping - so at 3" per brick plus 4.5" for the coping (bricks on their side) gives 34.5 - 37.5", or about 11.5-12.5mm in 4mm.

 

Old photos of Cowes showed a distinct ramp midway along the platforms there where they'd been extended, with the newer bit being at least 3" higher than the old...

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14 minutes ago, Nick C said:

Looking through a few photos, I estimate the platforms on the Mid-Hants to be about 10-11 bricks from sleeper top to coping - so at 3" per brick plus 4.5" for the coping (bricks on their side) gives 34.5 - 37.5", or about 11.5-12.5mm in 4mm.

 

 

The Mid-Hants stations were originally built in the 1860s. Is your brick counting for the platforms as they currently are? What height were they in the early 20th century?

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Just now, Compound2632 said:

 

The Mid-Hants stations were originally built in the 1860s. Is your brick counting for the platforms as they currently are? What height were they in the early 20th century?

That's current heights. As far as I know they are still original, I'll see if I can find any earlier photos to compare.

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@Nick C Here's a grouping-era photo of Ropley. (I'm not well up on Southern liveries but is that the "sunshine" style of lettering on the engine - late 30s at earliest?) The top of the platform is about level with the bottom of the buffer beam, so about 36" above rail level, confirming your estimate. However, I've also been looking closely at some modern photos of the same section of platform; [EDIT: I've now realised this is on the other platform, but anyway: I think one can make out a line of redder bricks at ballast level, then four regular courses, a row of side-on headers, three more courses, then the final course of side-on headers making the current coping. That suggests that the original platform may have been 13.5" lower than at present. This is in the vicinity of the wooden waiting room with canopy; it's not so clear in other photos.] I'd have to see it in the flesh to be fully convinced. Of course there might be other reasons for putting in a row of side-on headers - if the foundation had sunk, for example.

 

In this photo we also see that the Southern used spare plots of land at out-of-the-way stations to grow chairs.

 

image.png.749a647a4ae312d98b6aebeb7d35d0e6.png

Edited by Compound2632
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Bear in mind that the other platform at Ropley was taken out of use in the 1930s, so by the time our lot moved in there wasn't much left.

 

Alresford and Medstead provide a better guide, if the step down from the MK1s is anything to go by. I think the steps we provide are about 10-12" in height. Worthy of note is the fact that Medstead kept both of its platforms in use until 1967, Alresford always had two platforms. The photo below was taken just before dispatching the last train on Wednesday (The last one before we go back to Alton!).

IMG_20200101_161029.jpg.e2dda556d56d42d5e2ca72ed3e46f449.jpg

Same coach, same place, but back in October. Complete with me modelling a BR Porter's Jacket... :P

IMG_20200103_235601.jpg.d68b0d34166e419015ece52187e98bd1.jpg

I reckon Medstead's platform is near to original height. If you like I can probably measure it properly when I'm up there later this month?

 

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I've often found myself staring at the platform opposite while waiting for a train - looking for tell-tales in the pattern of the brickwork that indicate that the platform was raised at some time. Almost a hobby in itself... Unfortunately all too many platforms have been completely renewed with concrete block-work over the last three decades, so evidence has been destroyed.

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As Compound2632, I've often stared at the platform facing walls, either from another platform or a train. I particularly note that at Whitchurch (ex LSWR) where there is a steep ramp down from the platform to either end of the station building with a surrounding retaining wall. My guess is the station booking office exit to the platforms must have been raised.

Photo here  (geograph, © Copyright Chris Talbot, CCL)

1423157_9287101e.jpg

 

It opened 3 July 1854 and is a typical Tite building in style.

 

As a child I recall seeing at the old Southampton station a wooden ramp in the booking hall up to the platform. At Gosport which I'm modelling the platform slopes down from the platform edge to the station buildings with platform extensions at a higher level.

 

The LSWR had a reputation for low platforms and I recalling reading once that the BoT told them (c1900?) to raise them. An early painting of Gosport (1841) shows very low platforms, in fact Queen Victoria seems to be walking on air as she alights in 1845!

 

gosport_old(1845)5.jpg

Note: picture is reversed - should have carriage on the left. The picture shows Prince Albert in the carriage doorway and King Louis Philippe is helping the Queen alight. Outside a huge storm was blowing and it was decided that the King could not return to France by his boat moored in the harbour. By the evening the King was restless to get home in case another revolution was brewing. The LSWR were told to provide an engine to take him back to London. He left Gosport at 7:45pm and arrived at Nine Elms at 10:30pm. His party crossed London to New Cross station where a huge fire was raging. The King reached Dover at 02:30am. Reading the historic accounts it's incredible that so many dignities and troops met the King at short notice on his journey including  directors of the railways and mayors of the London and Dover. I doubt the railway companies today would pull out the stops and achieve such timings. On the inward journey a week earlier the King asked for his congratulations to be passed to the engine driver for an outstanding performance from such a small engine!  It would be another 2 years before the Paris to Le Havre railway would be fully open.

Full account here London Illustrated News 19 Oct 1844  (scanned copy - hard to read)

 

Edited by Alan_LSWR
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I have two photos of Thankerton Station (between Carstairs Junction and Abington) which clearly show how the building has been altered to accommodate the increase in platform height.

 

The first can be dated to summer 1885 as Central Station Hotel opened on 1st June that year.

1745264337_Thankertonoriginal.jpg.449cb3ffd9b2d8f679b1817a321c5f91.jpg

 

I would put the second as perhaps 1920's-30's going by the clothing.

546794209_Thankertonaltered.jpg.7e39bbc6ab10a2addc21fdb9f7111154.jpg

 

If you compare the positions of the lintels you can see that the windows and doors have all been raised by around the depth of a quoin (9- 12"?).  Friends of ours converted the building to a house when it closed and they distinctly recall that the window sills on the platform side were unusually high, so it would seem that the internal floors remained at the same height.

 

Jim

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A funny thing happened on the way to the forum supermarket...

I stopped in at the model shop to pick up some bits, and there, languishing in the second-hand bin with a 50p price sticker on was this:

20200104_174513.jpg

 

At first glance it looks like the standard Hornby 4-wheeler, lengthened by a compartment, but the beading is actually raised on this toy. The wheels are huge, and the chassis looked like it would be an easy conversion to take pinpoint bearings, but further investigation suggests that a Ratio chassis would be a better bet, as even using 12mm wheels the original solebar is far too high. There's also a moulded face (well, nose) at the other end. Clarabel had a quick nose job with a file, and the end windows have been filled in, ready to add microstrip beading to the other end. This should be a quick, cheap bit of fun, which will hopefully result in another piece of 4-wheeled rolling stock.

I then found some DPM modular building parts (HO scale, intended for building big American warehouses and industrial buildings. Before I knew what was happening, an hour and a half had passed and this appeared on the layout:

1495248213_GoodsShed.jpg.06589ca9b6895ed12f8ed549a8eebee2.jpg

 

The windows are rather large in comparison to the horse! The stretcher-bond brick leaves something to be desired also. How long this will last remains to be seen - I suspect it will suffice as a placeholder for now. 

 

I then had a thought that it might look better with some of the soldier rows of bricks (the vertical, edge-on ones) and the arches picked out in engineer's blue... but I got distracted picking out bits of the station building instead, which has a much nicer representation of English bond brickwork. Possibly too distracted, I may have gone a little over the top! But there's still more to do...
 

1072482073_LintonStationBuilding.jpg.0d607db128f564e5919e3870c7102d61.jpg

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All in all a very productive trip to the supermarket.  Some TtTE toys are highly bashable into becoming proper models.  I've more than likely still got some in a box somewhere.

I don't think the windows on the goods shed look that far out of proportion and they look reasonable enough to me.  Some paintwork detailing on the arches and a little weathering to pull it all together would work wonders in my opinion.

 

I like what you've done with your station building.  Staff often had a lot of pride in the stations where they worked and kept up their appearance so I don't think you've gone over the top.

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I think the panes on the goods shed might be a bit big for an 1870s-1880s-designed building, so they may need breaking up with glazing bars. Those panes must be at least 3' tall! I agree it needs a bit of paintwork detailing (more blue brick, you say?), and the windowsills could do with being picked out in a similar stone to the station building, in order to bring a bit more uniformity.

 

Progress on the carriage is slow. I've nearly got the end windows filled smoothly enough that I'm happy with them. Then will come the beading, before a repaint, new roof, new underframe... 

I did however get distracted on Sunday evening by a wagon kit that was found while unpacking... a Cambrian kit, it was looking rather lonely, so I decided to paint and build it.

20200105_232941.jpg

 

Then another, built but unpainted, one showed up in another stock box I was sorting. Couldn't have that... 

 

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And then last night another unbuilt kit showed up!

 

20200107_001626.jpg

 

The coal merchants of Linton appear to have all acquired their private owner wagons, but I foresee a lot of lettering and weathering in my future. Unlike my usual wagons for Linton, I'm considering lettering these the same on both sides for ease of stock management. "Regular" wagons will get lettered the same on both sides, while "occasional visitor" wagons can have different names on each side. 

 

The private owner fleet is growing... and, as far as I can tell, no two wagons are the same type either, which is nice. There's a lot of layouts out there with almost-identical wagons under different liveries, so I'm enjoying the variety!

 

20200107_090547.jpg

 

Oh, and I found a 1-plank wagon kit... and a 5&9 models early private owner wagon... and some other bits... I love these kits as they can go together in an evening and give a real sense of having finished something when the motivation is low. 

Edited by Skinnylinny
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Glazing bars sound just the thing to sort those windows out Linny.  The size and shape of the window apertures in the goods shed's walls are fine, but not the size of the window panes.  And a going round with the blue brick paintbrush with other details to match the station building and I think it will look very nice indeed. 

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Another busy weekend, with a friend visiting, so I didn't get much modelling done. However, as they didn't arrive until Saturday morning, I found myself at a loss for what to do on Friday after work. I discovered by having @AVS1998 visit the weekend before, just having company at the workbench really boosts my interest in modelling and makes me more productive, so I decided to give this streaming malarkey a go. I'm not expecting to make a regular habit of it (yet!) as there are plenty of other folk doing it far better than I, but I sat down and over nearly two hours (where did the time go?) I assembled, painted and lettered one side of a particularly truculent Slater's kit of a Midland horse dray. Truculent as Plastic Weld didn't seem to want to stick the plastic at all! 

That being said, the lettering came from an old transfer sheet for BR Mk1 carriages ("Guard", "Luggage" etc), and the letters had to be cut out individually and aligned by eye - no small feat given they're about 1mm tall! I reckon that with a little more attention to the paintwork this is going to look just fine...

 

20200110_224034.jpg

 

The horse in the background is a Dart Castings one, from my other dray, which also got lettered that evening (after the stream), but still needs paintwork attending to as I built it before painting, and there are many fiddly bits to get to yet! The lettering on this one was rather larger, as the Dart Castings kit came with a display name board. I feel like this needs an emblem of some sort in the otp section, though.

 

20200110_230214.jpg

 

Clearly the roads of Linton will start to get busy quickly at this rate!

Edited by Skinnylinny
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17 minutes ago, Skinnylinny said:

there are plenty of other folk doing it far better than I

 

You did a grand job of streaming!! You clearly picked up the issues with working around a camera very quickly, and I would definitely watch again. I had a great time!

 

Gary

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8 minutes ago, BlueLightning said:

 

You did a grand job of streaming!! You clearly picked up the issues with working around a camera very quickly, and I would definitely watch again. I had a great time!
 

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed. I think my previous experience at the Oak Hill Works really helped. I think I only bashed the camera twice all stream!

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Thank you! It's almost like having a place to myself, several more hours in the day and people encouraging me to model is good for the mojo! Tonight I'm hoping to start getting some lettering onto the first of the private owner wagons at the club meeting.

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I said I'd be doing lettering on private owner wagons... I wasn't wrong! 

 

20200114_225549.jpg.dfb0923855ddcee6add8e4cf087c72d9.jpg

 

Not bad for an evening's work, now just need to do the other side! This marks the second local private owner wagon for the layout, although this (in)famous trader may also end up residing in Linton, I haven't decided whether to transplant him from Ankh-Morpork! 

 

20200114_230238.jpg.aebb2e787ba7177803b9fb3037209158.jpg

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Now, I know that it would be uncommon to see a coal merchant's private-owner wagon far from either the colliery or the merchant's local station, but how far can I stretch this? I ask because of this photo of a rather wonderful private-owner wagon based at Guildford (one end of the GSR) - can we come up with a (plausible!) reason for it to appear at Linton? I'm trying to avoid having too many "branches of existing coal merchants" as I don't think that was particularly common.

L9358_samp1.jpg

(Image source: http://lightmoor.co.uk/books/private-owner-wagons-a-seventh-collection/L9358 )

 

Then again, do I really want to have to letter all that? There isn't a POWSides transfer available...

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True... but I'm trying to avoid doing that too much, mostly because a) Linton Town is rather short on siding space and b) I've already got a few coal merchants using that limited siding space!

I suspect I may be guilty of the "But I want it, it's pretty!" school of modelling from time to time...

Edited by Skinnylinny
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Coal merchants could sell coal to other coal merchants.

Merchant A might have taken advantage of a summer special price offer from his regular colliery, and have some surplus to requirements, which he can sell at a higher price than he paid for it.

Merchant B has an urgent need for a wagonload of this particular coal, so shipment is arranged. 

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That is a very good point! So it'd have to be an unusual working, but that would allow such a wagon to appear, especially as Guildford's less than ten miles away and on a direct line. Thank you!

 

As a thought, might also a coal merchant not from the local station be able to supply certain grades of coal to a small business owner in Linton? For example for one of Mr Dibbler's harebrained schemes honest business propositions, guv'nor?

 

Edited by Skinnylinny
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