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7 hours ago, ikb1954 said:

Hi Alex,

 

I was very interested when I found this topic yesterday as building a model of Yelverton station is something I have been working on for the last 3 or 4 years.

 

I was originally born and brought up in the village of Crapstone, which as I am sure you know is about a mile away from Yelverton station, when I was a young child we used the station a lot and I have very fond memories of it.

I have for the last 55 years or so wanted to be able to model this fantastic location but never really felt that I had the skills or the space to do it justice, that is until now. After retiring from work I decided to finally have a go even though I knew virtually everything would need to be scratch built and I had never scratchbuilt anything before.

 

I have attached a picture for your perusal.

 

Bill.

P1100039.JPG

 

I was born within the sights and sounds of 83D, or LA as it was known then.  Your work on Yelverton station is to be admired; are there any more pictures perhaps?

     Brian

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Hi Bill, that looks great. More pictures please. Is that the fallen tree in the old Princetown road, and is your footbridge, like mine, a bash of the Hornby/Gaugemaster one? There is a lot of scratch building involved, but I am keeping an eye open for commercially available parts that can be modified.

Alex

Edited by wiggoforgold
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Alex Hi,

 

Yes I have modelled the station based upon a similar timeframe that you are doing e.g. 1957 which is after the closure of the Princetown branch but before it was lifted and before the closure of the signal box and removal of the signals.

Doing this meant I could incorporate the overgrown branch platform and not have to use up masses of space for the full branch. The footbridge is indeed a kit bash of the Hornby/Gaugemaster kit although very heavily modified almost to the extent that it ended up being 85% scratchbuilt.

I also started using a kit for the signal box, but then ended up effectively using the kit parts as patterns for a scratchbuilt box.

 

I have attached another picture which shows the overgrown branchline and fallen trees.

P1100004.JPG

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That's a nice view Bill, complete with the fallen tree. Might I ask, how did you do the accomodation bridge at the north end of the station? I'm trying to work out the height of the sides, but any information you have would be gratefully received. It's a bit ironic that the bridge is one of the few structures left standing, but being on private land, it's not accessible to measure it. Do you know what the surface was like? Was it made up, or was it simply wood for people and animals?

It's proving to be a fascinating scenic project, and rather different from my previous East Anglian essays.

Alex

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Alex Hi,

 

I used the sides from the Dapol (Ex Airfix) footbridge kit. It took quite a few kits, six I think and the sides were then covered on the inside with wire mesh.

 

I will attach a photo for you.

 

I can also attach a couple of pictures I downloaded from the internet that show the surface, I think they came from the Cornwall railway society as they have visited the site in recent years. Please be aware I do not hold the copyright for these pictures.

 

I note that you said in an earlier post that you had been in contact with Pendon, I  also contacted them and communicated the Austin Attewell who was the Pendon archivist and he was able to supply me with copies of the photos taken by Roye England when he visited the station in 1958 with George Illfe-stokes Roys pictures are in black and white but show views I have never seen before such as the rear of the down waiting shelter and all the walls of the up building. I could supply you with these if you want them but as I dont own the copyright would not want to post them here.

 

Let me know if you want them.

 

Here are the pics of the accomodation bridge, you can judge the height of the sides from the people.

 

Bill

DSCN1091.JPG

6842723_orig.jpg

da120773_m.jpg

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Thanks Bill. That is extremely helpful. There are some colour pictures of the station buildings on Malcolm Mitchell's "A" shop Facebook page. I'd like to see the ones you have though, although having built the sides, they may best be used for comparison purposes to see how close my estimates were!

I was thinking about investigating mesh for the lattice work on the bridge, so interesting to see the results you have acheived - I may be following your lead.

Alex

 

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Thanks Bill

I'll email you as suggested. Looks like I may have to revisit the Princetown platform face! Not a problem at this stage of construction - it will be an easy job to make a new side. Your picutres of the interior wall layout are interesting - I was studying my model last night to work out the position of the interior walls - because of the position of the model on the layout I don't propose to make my waiting room as detailed as yours, but I'd still like to have an accurate representation of the interior walls. I have found as well that once a building is in position on the layour, it is sometimes surprsing how much of the interior can be seen through the windows.

Alex

 

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2 minutes ago, wiggoforgold said:

Thanks Bill

I'll email you as suggested. Looks like I may have to revisit the Princetown platform face! Not a problem at this stage of construction - it will be an easy job to make a new side. Your picutres of the interior wall layout are interesting - I was studying my model last night to work out the position of the interior walls - because of the position of the model on the layout I don't propose to make my waiting room as detailed as yours, but I'd still like to have an accurate representation of the interior walls. I have found as well that once a building is in position on the layour, it is sometimes surprsing how much of the interior can be seen through the windows.

Alex

 

Hi Alex,

 

Looking at recent photos and Bill's model I'm a bit worried about the proportional lengths of BC and CE. 

 

What do you think? The photo cache you're about to get might help with that.

 

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Phil

I think I'm happy with what we arrived at, however I'll be interested to see the photo cache, and that may change my opinion. Remember out discussion as to whether the corner at "E" was a right angle? Depending on whether it was or not influenced the lengths of BC and CE.

Bill - do you think the corner at "E" (The South East wall and the Princetown platform wall) was a right angle?

Alex

Edited by wiggoforgold
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Alex,

 

Sorry I have just re-read my previous post and realised that I failed to tell you where I got the 'known' measurements from. During my research into Yelverton I came across pictures of the waiting shelter that the South Devon Railway have re-erected as their station building at Totnes Riverside and whilst it is not identical to the down platform shelter at Yelverton it is very similar.

 

During a holiday in Devon 3 or 4 years ago I was able to measure the various aspects of the building at Totnes such as door and window sizes, and of course most importantly the sizes of the timbers used. These I used along with the Roye England photos to build my model. As both buildings at Yelverton were put up at the same time I presume the GWR used the same standard components on both.

 

Now for the bad news, I stupidly threw away the bit of paper with the measurements on after I finished my 2 buildings, sorry. I guess you might have to make a visit to Totnes yourself, not really a hardship !

 

Bill

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For the record, I got my measurements from a scanned 1953 OS 1:2500 map and used the 100m grid on that map to set up the scale factor to then take smaller measurements.

 

The resolution of the scan, the accuracy of the survey and the thickness of the lines affect the precision of the measurements.

 

Here's an adjusted version (red outline) that maintains the right angle at E but moves CE so that the proportions of BC and CE are more like the photos (to my eye, anyway).

yelpent4.png.9b28aece12567e89103f9175aa752e08.png

Edited by Harlequin
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Phil & Alex,

 

I have just been up to the layout room and measured the building that I produced and mine has come out slightly larger as follows;-

 

Wall A to D = 7.2M

Wall D to E = 11.43M

Wall E to C = 5.5M

Wall c to B = 7.08M

Wall B to A = 12.57M

 

I won't claim these as totally accurate as measuring a building on a layout when it is not easy to reach across all the surrounding trees etc is never going to produce 100% accurate results.

 

I am not suggesting that mine are more or less accurate than Phils, just that that is how mine came out based on the 'known' dimensions as stated in my earlier post.

 

It's all about what looks right and what you are happy with as there are no definitive drawings to work from.

 

Bill.

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Bill and Phil - you  guys are posting and measuring faster than I can check the dimensions, run up and down stairs and post myself!

I've looked at my part-built model, checked the photos and measurements. What I think is this:

I'm happy with walls A-B and B-C.

I plan to shorten walls A-D and C-E slightly, which will allow me to make wall D-E longer and retain the right angle at E. Looking at the photos, and having consulted my trusty sheet of 2mm planked plasticard, I think wall D-E needs to be slightly longer.

I think that will work. I have a few weeks to think about it! As Bill says, there are no definitive drawings - I think we can be happy we've made a "best guess" and used the available information to come up with a useful representation. Thanks for the input to date - any more can be incorporated in the work!

Alex

 

 

Edited by wiggoforgold
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11 hours ago, Harlequin said:

For the record, I got my measurements from a scanned 1953 OS 1:2500 map and used the 100m grid on that map to set up the scale factor to then take smaller measurements.

 

The resolution of the scan, the accuracy of the survey and the thickness of the lines affect the precision of the measurements.

 

Here's an adjusted version (red outline) that maintains the right angle at E but moves CE so that the proportions of BC and CE are more like the photos (to my eye, anyway).

 

 

I've much enjoyed both these examples of very nice scratch building - which far exceed my humble skills (or the lack thereof). :scratch_one-s_head_mini:

 

All this talk of measurements and angles reminds me of some conversations I've had with an old friend who used to be a Surveyor for the Ordnance Survey. That is, one of the blokes that roamed the countryside, with trig points and theodilites measuring things. Their main job was measuring distances between trig points, but they always recorded field sizes and "significant buildings", and railway buildings seem to have been a favourite of theirs.

 

e.g.
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=19&lat=50.4867&lon=-4.0865&layers=168&b=1

 

So I asked him how accurately they measured the buildings.

 

Quote

I think our staffs were measured in metres but we worked horizontally to the mile, furlong and inch, and we were extremely accurate even if we did work on nails hammered in the road measured with a length of string.

 

Quote

Measuring buildings : The surveyor would have a hard pad to work on and I would hold the staff on the corner of walls so he could take readings from a variety of angles. We would also take in buildings that were already on the map to tie the new building in to them and he would fill in the bits with me moving about with the staff until he had got every edge and angle.

 

But there's a bit of a catch - all their carefully recorded measurements (in the field) were sent to "head office" at the OS in Southampton, where the boys and girls did the actual fancy cartography (rivers, contours, etc), and then drew-in the buildings - by eye and by hand. So field measurements of "itty-bitty" things like buildings would often get rounded up or down depending on the whim or accuracy of the individual cartography draughts-person.

 

Of course (stating the bleeding obvious), pre-decimilisation, all that was done in imperial measurements wasn't it?

 

So measuring an old map in metres might obscure a few key "units of measure" in feet. My gut feeling is that a traditional architect and/or builder of the original railway building(s) (in that era) might pride themselves on building "on the square". Which meant common whole numbers of feet whenever possible. (Like a 3-4-5 triangle)

 

Just supposing - if the preferred "builder's unit of measure" was six feet (and with allowance for our best guestimates from old maps):

 

Wall A to D = 7.2M    = 23.622048 ft =  6 x 4 ? (4 units)
Wall D to E = 11.43M = 37.5000012 ft =  6 x 6 ? (6 units)
Wall E to C = 5.5M = 18.04462 ft =  6 x 3 ? (3 units)
Wall C to B = 7.08M = 23.2283472 ft = 6 x 4 ? (4 units)
Wall B to A = 12.57M = 12.57 = 41.2401588 = 6 x 7 ? (7 units)

 

With some on-the-job trimming and optimising where they joined the two right-angled triangles ABD and CDE.

 

But I might be completely wrong!

 

Talking of making maps, here's one they made earlier (1961):

 

 

British Pathe news at its imperial finest. "With a girl to help" indeed. I'm told the Old Boys always pulled rank and used their elbows to get to the front of PR films like this. In reality, the OS was a pretty good "equal opportunities" employer, not least because the girls were often better than the boys at the most delicate of draughting.

 

A bit like my dear old Mum, who as a wee lass in the 1930's, used to do Gold Leaf Illustration work for the best quality bibles. But that's another story.

 

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I was just wondering about downloading ScaleScene's Station Platform, for a GWR-ish branch line station.

 

https://scalescenes.com/product/r008-station-platform/

 

But then I paused - I don't know whether to choose ashlar stones (or which type) or bricks (or which shade).  Is the Yelverton station typical?  It looks like brick - but I'm assuming that from what looks like three or so lines jutting out below the platform surface.  Which option would be best? Red, Brown, Dark Red or Dark Brown?

 

On 13/05/2019 at 10:16, Miss Prism said:

yelverton.jpg

 

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3 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I was just wondering about downloading ScaleScene's Station Platform, for a GWR-ish branch line station.

 

https://scalescenes.com/product/r008-station-platform/

 

But then I paused - I don't know whether to choose ashlar stones (or which type) or bricks (or which shade).  Is the Yelverton station typical?  It looks like brick - but I'm assuming that from what looks like three or so lines jutting out below the platform surface.  Which option would be best? Red, Brown, Dark Red or Dark Brown?

 

 

 

 

Looks like rough stone with brick corbells. I suspect that the bricks might well have come from the GW brick works at Steer Point on the Yealmpton branch, not sure what the clay colour is there,  it's been a long time since I was out that way.

 

 

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Hi Keith, I've been giving this some thought. Be aware that the Up and Down platforms are different construction. The down platform is stone, the up platform (including the Princetown branch platform) is brick.  I haven't finally decided which Scalescenes sheet to use for the brick, but it will either be the red or possibly the London brick.

If you haven't already seen them, there's some useful pictures of the Yelverton platform sides to be found on the net if you Google "Yelverton station"

Alex

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I've found that the South Hams Brick Works gets a very brief mention in the Steer Point section, about 3/4's of the way down this Cornwall Railway Soc. page:

http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/turnchapel-branch.html

 

But no mention of any traffic from the brick works. "Old Plymouth" mentions the brick works as well.

 

Quote

Owing to competition from road transport, sparked off by the Great Western Railway Company itself, the line closed to passenger traffic on or as from July 7th 1930, although it remained open for goods traffic which came mainly from the nearby Brickworks.

 

https://www.oldplymouth.uk/Railways-Steer Point Station.htm

 

But no mention of who originally owned or worked it.

 

I was expecting to find that it was bricks made from red Devonian sandstone (or something like that), but a page on the geology says that it was slate bricks of various colours:

 

Quote

Grey, buff weathered, reddened and tuffaceous slates are selectively excavated and blended to produce a range of brick colours. The rather coarse texture of the ground slate produces a relatively light-weight brick of high quality

 

http://www.seddepseq.co.uk/devon_geology/RIGS_Website/PDF/HSX55SW2.pdf

 

I guess those kinds of bricks could easily be confused for grey granite (if that was ever used). I wonder what kind of wagons were used to move the bricks?

Edited by KeithMacdonald
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Keith, further to your guest ion about suitable brickwork for the platform face: Browsing the web yesterday I came across this site: https://www.railwayscenics.com/index.php

i'm going to try their old orange brick for the platform face. They also do a diamond pattern paving, which looks to have possibilities for some GW platform surfaces, including the down platform at Yelverton.

Alex

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