White-lining on platform edge

[GDR]

When did this become standard?  I'm doing late '30s LMS-ish. Photos from the time show that some stations didn't, some did.  Ditto the white-washing of the bottom half of poles/posts in the yard.  I've heard that both became universal in the WW2 blackout. Another theory is that it was just used anywhere that had rubbish lighting.

 

Mind you, if I keep getting the advert below here that Russian ladies are waiting to meet me the painting might be deferred for a bit.

[pH]

There are a few threads on here about this topic.

[Steamport Southport]

Wartime. 

 

It was to stop accidents which rose enormously. Even before the bombing had started.

 

More relevant to roads than railways but you get the drift.

The wartime blackout, when regulations required streetlights to be turned off and traffic signals and headlights to be dimmed, led to a dramatic increase in road casualties. The King's surgeon, writing in the British Medical Journal in 1939, complained that by “frightening the nation into blackout regulations, the Luftwaffe was able to kill 600 British citizens a month without ever taking to the air”. The number of deaths peaked in 1940 at 9,169. One person died that year for every 200 vehicles on the road; today the figure is one for every 20,000.

 

 

https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/transport/look-out-in-the-blackout/

[Wheatley]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

Wartime. 

Except where it was already being done. There are pre-grouping photos showing whitelined edges, but it became much more common in wartime and carried on afterwards. Like pH said, we've been here before. 

 

Intetestingly, it is no longer a requirement that it be white, the current PRM regs merely say that there shall be 'a contrast'. 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Wheatley

[Dungrange]

28 minutes ago, Wheatley said:

Interestingly, it is no longer a requirement that it be white, the current PRM regs merely say that there shall be 'a contrast'. 

 

Presumably 'contrast' is for the purposes of making the platform edge more obvious to the visually impaired and the assumption is that the station is well lit.  The older requirement for 'white' was probably because that gives the best contrast in poor lighting.

 

I agree that there are other threads on here covering this topic, one within the last year which also highlighted instances from the pre-grouping era, but that it became widespread during the second world war.

[Ray Von]

3 hours ago, pH said:

There are a few threads on here about this topic.

There's nothing wrong with stirring the pot! 

[GDR]

Thanks for info all.

 

Spent lockdown wading through the whole forum and STILL missed the other threads on the subject. D'oh!

[Il Grifone]

My take on this is that it started during WWI and became universal in WWII.

 

For what it's worth, here's a pre-war Hornby Dublo station with white platform edges:

 

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4848846

[pH]

On 09/03/2021 at 08:39, GDR said:

Spent lockdown wading through the whole forum and STILL missed the other threads on the subject. D'oh!

Did you try using the ‘Search’ feature? (Not being sarcastic, it’s a genuine question.)   It can be very useful when looking for a specific subject, with a careful choice of search term(s).

[Ray Von]

I don't rate the search function, I just searched "White Lines" filtered by Topic and Modelling Questions Help etc and got one hundred and twenty plus results. I then added the filter  "title" and got zero results.  Sometimes it's just quicker to ask the question and suffer the barbed comments(!) 

[GDR]

1 hour ago, Ray Von said:

I don't rate the search function, I just searched "White Lines" filtered by Topic and Modelling Questions Help etc and got one hundred and twenty plus results. I then added the filter  "title" and got zero results.  Sometimes it's just quicker to ask the question and suffer the barbed comments(!) 

 

[GDR]

Thanks pH, I did try!  But I agree with Ray Von (and how long has it taken me to twig that forum name!) but  my "white lines" search only gave me some (very good) ideas on road lining, sadly not relevant to my era. 

 

Anyway I've got my answer(s), thanks all. And I've had barbed comments throughout my life, some from being "that prat with the train set".  But they all wanted to look at it sooner or later!!

[bécasse]

8 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

My take on this is that it started during WWI and became universal in WWII.

 

 

The earliest white-lined platforms that I have been able to definitively identify and date from photographs were GWR rail-motor halts opened in the first decade of the 20th century, not all of them had white lines and it may be that those that did were (at least when first opened) unlit. I have also identified that a number of major stations on the LNWR, GNR, GER and possibly other railways had white lines on at least some of their platforms prior to the Great War, but I have been unable to fathom any logic as to why it was done at some places and not others. (A search through the LNWR postcard series will identify a number of their locations.)

 

White-lining was certainly not applied generally during the Great War and it doesn't seem to have been done in response to aerial attacks by zeppelins and (more rarely) aircraft, even though some semblance of blackout was. However, I do strongly suspect that white-lining was applied in at least some areas where a naval blackout was imposed; certainly most, if not all, stations on the Isle of Wight had white lines applied during the Great War and retained them afterwards. White-lining was rare during the inter-war years, except where it had been applied earlier as noted above. One specific new example, though, was that the Southern Railway applied white lines to those platforms of its London terminal stations that had third-rail electrification (so at Waterloo, for example, some platforms had them, some didn't, and doubtless more gained them with the Pompey line electrification). This principle may have been extended to a few other major SR stations but it certainly wasn't applied generally. Quite a lot of Underground stations in London had white-lined platforms but insufficient photographs exist to be certain as to whether this was a general or limited policy (and whether it applied only to the Underground Group prior to the formation of the LPTB).

 

Come the Second World War and its generally-applied ARP regulations and one finds white-lining (and white bands or marks on vertical obstructions) applied much more generally, but even then there were probably more stations without (admittedly with light traffic loads) than with. In some cases, intermittent, rather than continuous, white lines were applied. After the war, white-lining (but not the other ARP white bands/marks) continued to applied, both before and after nationalisation in 1948, and the practice may have become more universal over time (although never totally so).

[pH]

2 hours ago, Ray Von said:

I don't rate the search function, I just searched "White Lines" filtered by Topic and Modelling Questions Help etc and got one hundred and twenty plus results. I then added the filter  "title" and got zero results. 

 

57 minutes ago, GDR said:

 ... my "white lines" search only gave me some (very good) ideas on road lining, sadly not relevant to my era. 

The search does depend on the terms used, but search for “white lines platform” in “All content” and “Content titles only”  and you should get only 3 hits, all quite relevant.

[Ray Von]

1 hour ago, pH said:

 

The search does depend on the terms used, but search for “white lines platform” in “All content” and “Content titles only”  and you should get only 3 hits, all quite relevant.

Exactly, it's not very instinctive as search engines go is it? - "all content" / "content titles only"? 

Unless you're conversive with the perculiarities of IT "logic", you may as well rage against the machine and make it work for you, and not vice versa - it's quicker in the long run.  

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Ray Von

[PaulG]

This poster from The Great Eastern Railway is dated 12th September 1913 and found at Ingatestone Station, Essex.

 

Paul

[bécasse]

1 hour ago, PaulG said:

This poster from The Great Eastern Railway is dated 12th September 1913 and found at Ingatestone Station, Essex.

 

Paul

Ah, that is interesting as the GER was certainly one of the railways  where I had identified some stations with white-lined platform edges prior to the Great War. It can be very difficult to precisely date century-old photographs but I had the impression that at least one GER example predated 1913. Given that this poster seems to imply that this is a new practice to be implemented from September 1913 it may be that there had been earlier trials or even local initiatives.

 

One forgets just how bad fog could get in the past, although I can only remember one occasion when it was so dense that I couldn't see the ground I was walking on (and had just got off a bus being guided by its conductor carrying a flaming torch). In the suburban area of the Southern Region, at least, it was the practice when a reduced "Fog Service" was in operation to place a lighted white oil lamp at the far end of every platform so that drivers could see where to stop their trains.

[Nile]

When it comes to search you are better off using google with "rmweb" added into the search box.

[nelly]

I agree totally with those who find the search facility for the forum near useless.

 

I’m trying to research what width of white line I should use for my platform edge-

OO scale

LMS mixed steam/diesel era

 

Can anyone assist?

 

[PaulG]

33 minutes ago, nelly said:

I agree totally with those who find the search facility for the forum near useless.

 

I’m trying to research what width of white line I should use for my platform edge-

OO scale

LMS mixed steam/diesel era

 

Can anyone assist?

 

Watching the station staff do the work at Ingatestone, they used a normal yard broom and a bucket of whitewash.

 

To make sure they got a straight line, and to put a bit of paint on the vertical edge of the paving, the bristols had been cut, so only at one end of the brush, and for only an inch or so, were the bristols the original length, the others were cut very short.

 

Paul

[Oldddudders]

7 minutes ago, PaulG said:

 the bristols had been cut

A horrid prospect!

[PaulG]

12 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

A horrid prospect!

I was hoping someone would comment,  but nelly did ask ! (Can't add a laughing emoji )

[Ray Von]

[Nile]

But how wide is the brush?

[johnb]

5 hours ago, PaulG said:

Watching the station staff do the work at Ingatestone, they used a normal yard broom and a bucket of whitewash.

 

To make sure they got a straight line, and to put a bit of paint on the vertical edge of the paving, the bristols had been cut, so only at one end of the brush, and for only an inch or so, were the bristols the original length, the others were cut very short.

 

Paul

 

 

Same method was used at LT's Pinner station in the '50s as kid often watched the staff enthuiastically slopping whitewash around.