Help with quayside surfacing

[westerner]

The topic title says it all. Those of you who may or may not have been following my layout thread, Wencombe/Kingsbridge Regis may have noticed that I have created a small harbour, The harbour walls are rough stone. I have been pondering what I should cover the harbour/quay side with particularly next the. harbour wall. Cobbles, concrete, flagstones or tarmac? Perhaps those of you who might live near such a harbour or who have holiday photos may be of help. All ideas gratefully received. 

[Only-Me]

If you look on shapeways (free shipping until midnight tonight too!) there is a tool someones made that you roll across thinly rolled das clay and it makes a great cobbled effect!

[BRealistic]

Hi Alan (nice name!).  Harbours are actually a bit like station platforms when it comes to their construction, so the top of harbour wall will be ‘capped off’ in the same way… not with paving slabs, though, but with heavy stone slabs that will also form the edge to the harbour surfacing.  You might find a mooring bollard or two planted into them for the boats to tie up.

 

Behind this stone edging (which doesn’t have to be as regular as a platform) you might find cobbles, and by cobbles  I mean smallish, irregular stones, mainly oval in shape, that might have come from a beach.  Pebbles, in fact!  The quay at Bayards Cove in Dartmouth is a well-known example, but be aware, it is ancient, being originally laid in the 17th century.  

 

In later times, lets say Victorian, you’d more likely find more substantial stones in use… which I would call setts.  The same shape as bricks, but of stone (most often granite) and slightly bigger. You find ‘em all over, not just on quaysides.  At Torquay harbour the slipway is finished with them.  They’re often described as cobbles… but really they’re setts! 

 

I don’t reckon you’d find paving slabs (flagstones?) on a working quayside, or even tarmac…. too easily eroded. More likely an old quayside would be ‘repaired’ using concrete…. Much of which might be covered with crab pots, buoys and the like!  

 

What’s the history of your harbour… and what kinds of buildings surround it? Maybe there’ll be opportunity to use a mix of surface treatments to suit?

 

Anyway, Alan, I hope what I’ve written helps rather than hinders you in making up your mind!!!

 

Best wishes 

[westerner]

Many thanks Alan (yes it is a good name). Your reply has been really helpful. I was thinking of using mixed surfaces and I agree that concrete might have been used. My slip way is made of Cobbles/setts. To see it look at my layout thread. It should be underneath this reply. The harbour is meant to be in S. Devon.

[BRealistic]

Hi Alan,  and thanks for the thanks!!!

 

I'll certainly take a look at your layout thread... but the 'tiny' link doesn't get me there. I know, I'll do a search on 'Wencombe!'

 

Cheers for now  

[westerner]

Many thanks for your info on my layout link. I've now changed it.

[Andy Y]

There's a good mixture of surfaces in this set of photos down in Bristol - http://www.bristol-rail.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8953

[westerner]

Thanks Andy, they look useful particularly for disused areas.

[rue_d_etropal]

When building harbours always best to look at period photos. Concrete would have started to take over through the 20th century, depending on how busy the harbour was, especially during the 1940s. Remember South Devon had a lot of American and British troops rehearsing for D Day, so roads and quaysides got a lot of hard use.

As my main interest is France, I checked out some quayside scenes in old books, as well as films made in 1950s before Provence became trendy. In 'God Created Woman' there is some excellent film(really!) of small coastal villages before the tourists arrived. The quaysides look like concrete, or certainly hardened flat surfaces.  Ironically it was this film and others made at the same time that actually made the area popular and changed its look and feel of the area.

It is more likely to be nice quaint looking cobbles in a more modern scene, as sometimes misguided councils believe these are more authentic looking. Possibly one time when using Google map actually is not a good idea.

 

 

Just had a look at that Bristol website, and I think it proves how misguided some of these highly paid official are. Sadly concrete used in buildings can deteriorate badly(concrete cancer?)  so when it needs fixing, some bright spark suggests some new(old?) trendy material rather than concrete. We lost an award winning covered market locally, because the council wanted to build some new shops. The irony is that concrete surfaces are more disabled friendly than trendy cobbles.

Just reminded me of a slightly different story, well the end was different. When I lived in Todmorden, there were many streets which had been patched over the years, but essentially still had the cobbles under the tarmac. The council knew about this and decided to take up some of the cobbles(stone setts?) and sell them to a developer down in Peak district, A local shop keeper spotted this and pointed out the street was still used by delivery lorries for another shop. The proposed replacement fake stones would not have been strong enough, so council backed down, and instead used what original stones to re-do part of the street. It was therefore genuine restoration, and the street has subsequently been used for various films. Ironically the shop which required the heavy lorries, closed down, was knocked down and has been replaced with trendy canalside houses!

[BRealistic]

Talking of trendy canal side houses reminds me of the luxury apartments 'proposed' for the site of Kingswear Station... yes, by the Steam Railway owners... or at least some of its directors.  A whistle-blower volunteer told me about the idea, which was fairly well advanced, so, with the backing of my Council Members (the South Hams lot) I slapped a Building Preservation Notice on them.  It's what Conservation Officers do!  It's listing followed... and the idea was scrapped.  Some time in the 1980s I think... a long time ago!

 

The listing covered the canopy as well as the buildings... which the architect said was held together by woodworm and about to collapse!  The idea was to put a new 'bus stop' style station shelter a little further up the line. Unbelievable, really.  A heritage railway proposing to get rid of one of its major attractions/assets. 

 

Happy times... but happier now I've retired!

[brylonscamel]

I took some photos of the harbourside in Bristol, where the rails pass through sections of concrete, cobble and tarmac to help with our own harbourside on the "Braeside" layout.

 

Here are some of the photos I took ...

[westerner]

The harbour/quay side on Kingsbridge Regis is a small harbour/quay up the estuary, roughly where Kingsbridge in reality is. I'll be down in Kent this w/e so will have a look at Sandwich quay. This week I've been working on the boats, giving them mooring posts etc and the larger dark brown one will have a new wheelhouse and become a fishing boat converted into a house boat.

[runs as required]

The topic title says it all. ....The harbour walls are rough stone. I have been pondering what I should cover the harbour/quay side with particularly next the. harbour wall. Cobbles, concrete, flagstones or tarmac? Perhaps those of you who might live near such a harbour or who have holiday photos may be of help. All ideas gratefully received. 

 

Very sorry for lateness; I've only just clicked to this interesting question (and looked across through the Kingsbridge Regis thread - and your great buildings).

I think you have a difficulty in finding examples in the SW that portray the era just before the heavy pressures that mass car ownership put on access to small harbours and quays for sailing and water sports.

 

Remembering the places on the South Devon and Cornwall 'sunken ria' rivers from the 1950s early 1960s era, I recall very interesting multiple textured surfaces to quaysides rather than the ubiquitous tarmac with yellow lines and parking markings of today.

They typically had evidence of original geology (stone chippings, occasional very large quarried stone/granite blocks.) and of original functions (fishing, export trade via coastal vessels) and some interesting derelict relics from those activities. There would be quite a bit grass too in the un-trafficked areas as well as the minimally tarmaced ragged edged trafficked carriageways laid over the original stone surfaces.

 

I've just enjoyed trawling-up some of the least popular (though personal favourite) coastal places using close-up Google maps satellite imaging, then clicking the place name and images.

Below are Garlieston and Silloth either side of the Solway Firth

 

Garlieston in Galloway is at the far end of the old Wigtownshire Railway that ran south over the Isle of Whithorn from the ‘Port Road’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portpatrick_and_Wigtownshire_Joint_Railway

a 19C shoe-string operation that the Wheatleys (of CME fame) contracted to run as family business. It might have been inspirational for Colonel Stephens later ‘empire’ of marginal light railways.

 

The other is Silloth, Cumbria (a formal rectangular dock), again a North British Railway port and resort though in England.

 

I hope you can glean something of the character from these to be of general use to you.

Incidentally a  'half tide' modelling of the harbour I suggest will be more visually interesting.

 

With best wishes

 

dh

 

Edit for typos

[westerner]

Thank You Very useful "runs"

[runs as required]

There's a good mixture of surfaces in this set of photos down in Bristol - http://www.bristol-rail.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8953

I forgot to say I thought these were excellent pics of the sort of set of overlaying surfaces that one might find.

 

Remembering my 'conservation' background - that BRealistic also has (post#10) - the jargon word for this is a PALIMPSEST (apparently the word for an an old parchment that has been been used several times to write on with the earlier manuscripts just quickly scratched off) so that it is possible to look at the surface , or elevation of a building and 'read' its history through the layers.

It is something that William Morris argued strongly for retaining back in the Victorian days of the Gothic Revival when benefactors would over-restore, totally renewing an old church, obliterating its 'weathering' as we RMweb folks might call it.

 

dh