Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

I've got a very clear picture of what it would look like, too.

 

 

 

Well, if I ever get as far as Wolfringham, you must let me know what it looked like!

 

Extending the present set up all the way round the room could get me Flitchingham Junction and thence (1) the branch to Achingham, and (2) a casette yard representing Wolfringham, Bishop Lynn, the Birchoverhams and all points North. 

 

But, it would only take one small hole in the wall to take the Wolfringham and Bishop Lynn branches into a small store room next door!

[corneliuslundie]

Your wish etc

 

"Castles of the Welsh princes", Paul R Davis (Y Lolfa Cyf, Talybont, Ceredigion, third impression 2015), ISBN 978 086243 970 5, price £7.95.

But please don't get distracted and start a branch to West Wales.

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

What did Wolfingham/Wolfingham look like?

 

Well, fortunately, there is a photo in the Britain from Above collection, that allows us to obtain some idea of how things were at the "Harbour". Please click on it, because an important bit on the right seems to fall off the screen otherwise!

 

It's not the easiest picture to understand, and unfortunately it dates from after the lifting of the track, but with the aid of the marked-up map provided by Mr O'Doolight (post 1167 here

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/107713-castle-aching/page-47 ), and the sketch below, things should be reasonably clear.

 

What can't be seen in the photo, being off to the right (North) some distance, is the tiny building on a small rise, long-ago an island in the marsh, which is the shrine of Our Lady of Wolfingham.

 

The second sketch shows the layout of the railway as it is believed to have been c1900. Before the extension to Shephersport was built, the arrangement of the station was somewhat different, and the turntable was located at the end of the loop. See photo in post 1178, although I'm beginning to think that picture was printed with the negative reversed. Trees were planted as a windbreak alongside the curved siding, but they don't show in the very few photos, which were taken when they were mere whipersnappers.

 

Does that help at all?

 

Kevin

Edited April 25, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Talking of rare photos, look at what Mr O'Doolight just found tucked into one of his old notebooks!

 

He's not certain of the date, but it is an early one alright.

 

That primitive track-laying will need some careful reproduction in model form.

 

(OK, for the sake of honesty: this, like much of Wolfingham, is actually Mont St Michel, being a mega-rare, possibly the only, photo of the first railway there, which didn't cross the causeway, in fact I'm not sure if the causeway even existed then. The line was only in use from 1876-86, and was then lifted. A new line, using part of the same alignment, but extending over the causeway to the foot of the mount, operated from 1901-1938 and 1939-44.)

Edited April 26, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

What did Wolfingham/Wolfingham look like?

 

Well, fortunately, there is a photo in the Britain from Above collection, that allows us to obtain some idea of how things were at the "Harbour". Please click on it, because an important bit on the right seems to fall off the screen otherwise!

 

It's not the easiest picture to understand, and unfortunately it dates from after the lifting of the track, but with the aid of the marked-up map provided by Mr O'Doolight (post 1167 here

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/107713-castle-aching/page-47 ), and the sketch below, things should be reasonably clear.

 

What can't be seen in the photo, being off to the right (North) some distance, is the tiny building on a small rise, long-ago an island in the marsh, which is the shrine of Our Lady of Wolfingham.

 

The second sketch shows the layout of the railway as it is believed to have been c1900. Before the extension to Shephersport was built, the arrangement of the station was somewhat different, and the turntable was located at the end of the loop. See photo in post 1178, although I'm beginning to think that picture was printed with the negative reversed. Trees were planted as a windbreak alongside the curved siding, but they don't show in the very few photos, which were taken when they were mere whipersnappers.

 

Does that help at all?

 

Kevin

 

Brilliant!

 

I will study this in more detail.

 

When I first started to visit Norfolk one of our haunts was Burnham Overy Staithe. 

 

The idea came to me of a little standard gauge railway, with little old 0-4-0 saddle tanks, serving a moribund, silted up harbour reduced to small coastal sailing vessels, picking its way along the coast on top of protective dykes.  This was one of the seeds of the West Norfolk.  Though there are, at present, no plans to model the 'Northern Division' of the line, those with long memories will recall that it runs north from CA to the Birchoverhams, including the decayed port of Birchoverham Staithe and, a little further east, the burgeoning fin de siècle resort of Birchoverham Next the Sea.

 

It seems we have a variation of this on the west coast, though I see that Wolfringham is sufficiently distinct, with its shrine, coal traffic and failed resort.  I envisage one rather run-down hotel, its architectural pretensions mocked by the desolation of the scene!

Edited April 26, 2017 by Edwardian

[Edwardian]

Talking of rare photos, look at what Mr O'Doolight just found tucked into one of his old notebooks!

 

He's not certain of the date, but it is an early one alright.

 

That primitive track-laying will need some careful reproduction in model form.

 

(OK, for the sake of honesty: this, like much of Wolfingham, is actually Mont St Michel, being a mega-rare, possibly the only, photo of the first railway there, which didn't cross the causeway, in fact I'm not sure if the causeway even existed then. The line was only in use from 1876-86, and was then lifted. A new line, using part of the same alignment, but extending over the causeway to the foot of the mount, operated from 1901-1938 and 1939-44.)

 

What a marvellous locomotive!

[Donw]

Of course we go round in circles we are like a goat tethered to the central idea and can only go so far. Of course there are those who would wander onto foreign lands and the rope seems to be rather elastic at times. But we have returned to Castle Aching and its castle and our host is making progress. What an interesting journey this is and where will it go next?

Oh yes I remember posting a photo or too of Snettisham Beach just up fromWolfringham

Don

[Edwardian]

Of course we go round in circles we are like a goat tethered to the central idea and can only go so far. Of course there are those who would wander onto foreign lands and the rope seems to be rather elastic at times. But we have returned to Castle Aching and its castle and our host is making progress. What an interesting journey this is and where will it go next?

Oh yes I remember posting a photo or too of Snettisham Beach just up fromWolfringham

Don

 

That's right, and if only I'd indexed this topic, I'd be able to find them again!

[corneliuslundie]

This thread will be a wonderful elephant trap for any future railway historian lucky (foolish?) enough to come across it. Keep it up!

Seriously. I am greatly in favour of creating the character and history of the place to be modelled before any timber is cut or track laid. This thread just does that so well that it is difficult not to believe that the places exist. That I call success.

Now track laying can begin.

Jonathan

[Northroader]

Bonjour, c'est Routier du Nord ici! Mon ami Kevin 'e say ze ideal Norfolk line ees at Mont St Michel, naughty boy! But 'e has raison, oui! Go to where ze createurs des chateaux com from, n'est ce pas? Forget you obsessions wiz Wells et 'Unstanton - pouf! I geef you Andelys, Entretat, Carteret - formidable!

http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=76745

[Nearholmer]

Whoa ...... vast amounts of interesting reading in that thread Mr Northroader, I shall get nothing at all done today unless I postpone looking at it until tonight!

 

Tucked at the back of a cupboard, I have a precious relic, the railway equivalent of St Anthony's tongue: a tile from the roof of the CF Calvados depot at Bayeux. My good lady and I had a fantastic late Autumn holiday about fifteen years ago, staying cheap at otherwise deserted chateaux, and exploring the routes of abandoned railways and ancient megaliths, from Caen down to Carnac and back. The food was absolutely brilliant, and the long walks provided the appetite necessary to really enjoy it!

 

Kevin

Edited April 26, 2017 by Nearholmer

[Jim15B]

Please excuse me butting in - I came across this thread about a week ago whilst trying to find the Battersea Wharf discussion.  Since then I have been trying to catch up.  I've made page 100 so far but every time I get back to the computer another half dozen pages have sprung from nowhere.  As a result of my studies I have broadened my knowledge on a range of subjects from vernacular architecture (the recommended read is in the post) to dry cell batteries (I think) and manure transport.  I have also discovered the wonderful Stadden figures a set of which I will be ordering soon (though as they are unlikely to fit with my Corby Steelworks project I will have to come up with somewhere for them to populate).  This is now costing me as I am supposed to be working, making a set of leather drive shaft gaiters for a pre-war Austin, but instead am writing this.

 

Edwardian, I wanted to ask you about your buildings.  I may have missed something in the rush of information, and I will return to the early posts to check, but I believe you said that you produce your buildings from photos edited in Word.  Do you only use word or do you manipulate the images first in another programme to straighten the edges and correct the proportions?  If this has already been explained just point me back to the start and I'll read it all again!  I'm hoping to use the same technique but want to cut out the hours of faffing about trying to work out how to do it (just being lazy really).

 

Thank you all for the entertaining read.  36 pages to go and I'll be up to date.

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

Please excuse me butting in - I came across this thread about a week ago whilst trying to find the Battersea Wharf discussion.  Since then I have been trying to catch up.  I've made page 100 so far but every time I get back to the computer another half dozen pages have sprung from nowhere.  As a result of my studies I have broadened my knowledge on a range of subjects from vernacular architecture (the recommended read is in the post) to dry cell batteries (I think) and manure transport.  I have also discovered the wonderful Stadden figures a set of which I will be ordering soon (though as they are unlikely to fit with my Corby Steelworks project I will have to come up with somewhere for them to populate).  This is now costing me as I am supposed to be working, making a set of leather drive shaft gaiters for a pre-war Austin, but instead am writing this.

 

Edwardian, I wanted to ask you about your buildings.  I may have missed something in the rush of information, and I will return to the early posts to check, but I believe you said that you produce your buildings from photos edited in Word.  Do you only use word or do you manipulate the images first in another programme to straighten the edges and correct the proportions?  If this has already been explained just point me back to the start and I'll read it all again!  I'm hoping to use the same technique but want to cut out the hours of faffing about trying to work out how to do it (just being lazy really).

 

Thank you all for the entertaining read.  36 pages to go and I'll be up to date.

 

Jim

 

Jim,

 

Welcome and thank you for reading, and rating, and for posting.  Your perseverance is nothing short of admirable.

 

To attempt to answer your query, I have, thus far, just used Photo and Word.  I need to master Photoshop, or planned structures such as the school, station and parish church will be impossible. Thus far I have been able to use photographs taken square on with minimum distortion, and, of course, I freely adapt and combine photographs with downloaded textures.

 

That said, three or four buildings were derived from photographs kindly supplied by fellow parishioners, a couple of which were manipulated for me in Photoshop. 

 

So far I have used a combination of crude techniques:

 

- The Photo program allows me play with the light and colour.  If a picture is taken on a dull day, or is of the shady side of the street, I lighten it.  I can increase or reduce saturation and enhance chosen colours if lightening alone does not work.

 

- I copy the picture and paste in Word.  I size it on screen (dragging on the corners of the image) by the high-tech method of ensuring that the page view is 100% and holding a ruler up to the screen!

 

- In Word I can crop the picture.  Sometimes I make copies of details - e.g. brickwork for window reveals or to replace areas of masonry obscured by modern accretions - signs, burglar alarms, tree shadow or a parked car. My problem is that I then have physically to cut and paste these elements in paper and card.  If I knew Photoshop, I could probably stitch them into the image itself.

 

- You can also flip an image to a mirror of itself in Word and paste images next to each other without any gaps to create a larger area.  That way, for instance, I have created an entire A4 sheet of brickwork taken from one small area of Castle Acre's Post Office.  Again, it would doubtless be better to do something like this in something like Photoshop, but it is possible in Word.

 

- I paste the copies of the windows on a separate page of the document, as this will get printed out on a self-adhesive label sheet, so that the windows can be stuck on acetate (well, any bit of clear plastic packaging, really) in due course.  I then cut out the label representing the glass panes and peel them off. 

 

- I save the Word document as a pdf, because, that way, I can print it off at any percentage of the original size.  This is important for me, because most of what I have made so far is smaller than 4mm scale, in a desperate attempt to provide a sense of perspective.

 

- Finally, I can manipulate the balance and intensity of the colours on my printer to a limited extent.  The difference between pantiles (background) printed on "Natural" and pantiles (foreground) printed on "Vivid" is very noticeable.   

 

- I have not used any fancy paper for printing, but use some redundant office letter-head paper, which is nice and thick, seems to take the ink well and is free!

 

Below is an example of how a single group of buildings was cobbled together using printed texture of varying provenance:  

Edited April 26, 2017 by Edwardian

[Edwardian]

Bonjour, c'est Routier du Nord ici! Mon ami Kevin 'e say ze ideal Norfolk line ees at Mont St Michel, naughty boy! But 'e has raison, oui! Go to where ze createurs des chateaux com from, n'est ce pas? Forget you obsessions wiz Wells et 'Unstanton - pouf! I geef you Andelys, Entretat, Carteret - formidable!

http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=76745IMG_0976.JPG

 

A thing of beauty (notwithstanding she has two more things than are decent atop the boiler), and beautifully modelled.  I can just see her mildly Anglicized cousin chuffering up to Wolfringham; Anglo-Catholics on the way there, coal on the way back!

 

Of course Hunstanton was promoted by the Great Eastern, and I believe that the company was responsible for the Sandringham Hotel in the 1870s (see below). 

 

I wonder if the Wolfringham line was later (1880s?), branching, as it seemed to, from the GE-WNR Joint Tramway to Bishop's Lynn, which I would think was a venture of the early 1880s.  Alas, Hunstanton was too well established, and the lack of a direct route such as the GE's Lynn to Hunstanton line, running holiday-makers direct from London, meant that Wofringham failed to make any impression.  

[Edwardian]

What did Wolfingham/Wolfingham look like?

 

Well, fortunately, there is a photo in the Britain from Above collection, that allows us to obtain some idea of how things were at the "Harbour". Please click on it, because an important bit on the right seems to fall off the screen otherwise!

 

It's not the easiest picture to understand, and unfortunately it dates from after the lifting of the track, but with the aid of the marked-up map provided by Mr O'Doolight (post 1167 here

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/107713-castle-aching/page-47 ), and the sketch below, things should be reasonably clear.

 

What can't be seen in the photo, being off to the right (North) some distance, is the tiny building on a small rise, long-ago an island in the marsh, which is the shrine of Our Lady of Wolfingham.

 

The second sketch shows the layout of the railway as it is believed to have been c1900. Before the extension to Shephersport was built, the arrangement of the station was somewhat different, and the turntable was located at the end of the loop. See photo in post 1178, although I'm beginning to think that picture was printed with the negative reversed. Trees were planted as a windbreak alongside the curved siding, but they don't show in the very few photos, which were taken when they were mere whipersnappers.

 

Does that help at all?

 

Kevin

 

Though we are straying from the modelled scene, we are still in the West Norfolk's territory at Wolfringham.

 

This strange meeting of Wolferton (where the WNR crosses the GE Lynn to Hunstanton line, and makes a junction with it) and Snettisham, is a desolate coastal spot.  It has some seaborne traffic - coal to Coalyard Creek - though perhaps it is too much to suppose that paddle steamers take day-trippers around the Wash and call there!  Still, this modicum of goods traffic is supplemented by passenger receipts in the form of desultory tourist traffic to the decaying resort hotel. 

 

Our Mr Nearholmer, apparently influenced by Gallic Pilgrim Railways, suggests transplanting Our Lady from the north Norfolk coast to the west.  Once a year at least, then, we can expect a sharp increase in passenger receipts for the Wolfringham branch, and no doubt the usual trio of second-hand 4-wheelers will be supplanted, at least for the duration of Holy Week, by strings of the West Norfolk's finest 4 and 6-wheeled stock marshalled into numerous specials.

 

So, if we are gratefully to adopt Kevin's 'discovery' of pilgrim traffic for the line, I thought I should delve into Walsingham's story:

 

In 1061, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, the widow of the lord of the manor of Walsingham Parva, called Richeldis, had a vision of the Virgin Mary. Mary took Richeldis in spirit to Nazareth to show the place where the Angel Gabriel had appeared to her. Richeldis was told to take note of the measurements of the Holy House and build a copy of it in Walsingham. Richeldis saw the vision three times.

 

Carpenters were instructed to build the house but where? During the night there was a heavy fall of dew but in one meadow two spaces of equal size remained dry. Richeldis took this as a sign and chose the plot close behind a pair of twin wells.

 

The workmen tried to build there but found themselves unable to do so. They gave up in despair and consulted Richeldis. She spent all night in prayer. The next morning a miracle was discovered. The chapel was found fully completed and standing on the other dry spot. It was concluded that Our Lady had removed the Holy House to the place she herself had chosen.

 

King Henry III made his first of many pilgrimages to Walsingham around 1226.   He was a great supporter of The Virgin Mary and the Holy House at Walsingham became one of the centres of his devotion. He generously gave the Canons his royal patronage.

 

By the 14th and 15th centuries Walsingham and Canterbury were the two premier places of pilgrimage in England, with Walsingham slightly the more important of the two ...

 

... pilgrims could come to Walsingham by train, via a branch line opened in 1857 with a special halt at the Slipper Chapel in Houghton St. Giles and a busy station at Walsingham.

 

Extracts from http://www.walsinghamvillage.org/about/history-of-pilgrimage/

 

I confess, this is all a bit more Bells, Smells and Spells than I am used to, but Castle Aching is an ecumenical layout.

 

A handful of hymns I know the tunes to, psalms and the bits from the Book of Common Prayer I know how to mutter, plus a fairly short and none too taxing sermon, was more what I was used to growing up. Though at University the Anglo-Catholics were keen to embrace me, that was not in a particularly spiritual way, so I avoided a good deal of tingling bells, wafts of incense and genuflection as a result.   

 

Anyway, the original wooden 'Holy House' at Walsingham was later encased in stone to protect it from the elements.   In 1153, the Augustinian Canons founded a Priory to care for the spiritual needs of the pilgrims. Their magnificent Priory Church was added in the fifteenth century. Only the ruin of the Priory arch (see below) remains and archaeology has placed the site of the 'Holy House' in its shadow.

 

The modern basilica is not really suitable for our purposes, but what about purloining the Slipper Chapel? This was built in 1340 at Houghton St Giles, a mile outside Walsingham. This was the final 'station' chapel on the way to Walsingham. It was here that pilgrims would remove their shoes to walk the final 'Holy Mile' to the Shrine barefoot.

 

See http://www.rcsouthwark.co.uk/walsingham_history.html

 

Might this little chapel 'do' for the lonely little shrine at desolate Wolfringham?

Edited April 26, 2017 by Edwardian

[Jim15B]

Thank you so much for your quick and comprehensive response to my query rather late in the thread.  Very much appreciated and I will put it to use once I get the chance.  I will be happy if my structures turn out half as good as yours.  In the mean time I wait to see where things are headed next.

[corneliuslundie]

I am glad you didn't sully your story with the kind of goings on recorded in one of the Brother Cadfael novels regarding the movement of the relics of a saint to Shrewsbury Abbey.

It all sounds very plausible - at least as plausible as most actual history.

On your techniques for creating buildings. I use a free image manipulation software called Gimp. It does most things Photoshop will do except empty the owner's wallet. One very useful feature is the ability to distort photos to get the verticals vertical and the horizontals horizontal. I have used this will good effect to create sides of Private Owner wagons from three-quarter views, for use in train simulation. In your case, it can be used to deal with the effects of perspective or the camera not being vertical.

However, I think it best if you do not publiciase your activities too close to Walsingham or you may finad a battle of the saints.

Regarding Brittany, a wonderful place, even if the youth hostel I stayed at fell down the year after and had toilets which would have been an improvement on Djakova bus station. Cidre doux was cheap and wonderful, also well matured judging by the cobwebs on the bottles. The closure of the Reseau Breton was a disaster. Were it still open it would be a major tourist attraction.

Jonathan

[Anotheran]

I'm very much at the point of having lost sight of the boundary between the two worlds. I assumed at the start of your quote from the history of Walsingham that I was reading something that was extant in the world of CA only to discover when following the link that it was real world, or at least official history of the real world. I would say that your creation of the CA world is Tolkienesque, but that's not quite true... What you've done is more in line with someone like Edward Rutherford, seamlessly blending real world history and CA local and character history so that the joins aren't visible. That, together with the bits thrown in by others, I'm beginning to doubt that I know in what world I really live. A very pleasurable, if somewhat disconcerting, read!

 

The fact that the landscape is also starting to appear in physical form just makes me want to keep going all the more!

 

Kind regards, Neil

[Edwardian]

I'm very much at the point of having lost sight of the boundary between the two worlds. I assumed at the start of your quote from the history of Walsingham that I was reading something that was extant in the world of CA only to discover when following the link that it was real world, or at least official history of the real world. I would say that your creation of the CA world is Tolkienesque, but that's not quite true... What you've done is more in line with someone like Edward Rutherford, seamlessly blending real world history and CA local and character history so that the joins aren't visible. That, together with the bits thrown in by others, I'm beginning to doubt that I know in what world I really live. A very pleasurable, if somewhat disconcerting, read!

 

The fact that the landscape is also starting to appear in physical form just makes me want to keep going all the more!

 

Kind regards, Neil

 

It is tricky, isn't it?

 

In this case I quoted the story of the Walsingham shrine, because if Kevin is to put a shrine at Wolfringham, some fictionalised version of the story might be concocted.

 

Hitherto I had been quite ignorant of the story behind Our Lady of Walsingham, beyond the obvious point that it was a manifestation of the Virgin Mary.

 

I was fascinated to learn of the Holy House, transplanted to Walsingham, because it reminded me of the Flying House of Loreto.  This is the story of Mary's house being transported by Angels' Air-Cargo from the Holy Land to Loreto in Italy.

 

I suggest that something a little less spectacular might better suit Wolfringham, which can surely only ever have been a minor pilgrimage site.

 

But, who am I to pronounce against flying houses ... ?

Edited April 26, 2017 by Edwardian

[Edwardian]

Bonjour, c'est Routier du Nord ici! Mon ami Kevin 'e say ze ideal Norfolk line ees at Mont St Michel, naughty boy! But 'e has raison, oui! Go to where ze createurs des chateaux com from, n'est ce pas? Forget you obsessions wiz Wells et 'Unstanton - pouf! I geef you Andelys, Entretat, Carteret - formidable!

http://forum.e-train.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=76745IMG_0976.JPG

 

One sensible thing about this railway is that it not only uses a table to run round, but appears to turn its tank engines.  Am I mistaken or are there not shots of the tank engine(s) running smoke-box first in both directions?

Edited April 26, 2017 by Edwardian

[Nearholmer]

Running round via a turntable was common in Britain, France, and Spain, and probably elsewhere that I don't know about, until engines started to outgrow the turntables, at which time many were replaced by points. A long-surviving turntable run round is a strong indicator of a railway that disappointed its shareholders, by failing to attract enough traffic to need bigger engines.

 

But, some railways do seem to have been quite obsessive about running their tank engines forward wherever practicable. Was that just a fashion, or did the locos ride better, or did drivers find it more comfortable to work the regulator with their right hand (left on the GWR?), or ......

[Northroader]

Correct. You get the impression that if they can turn a tank engine, they do.

[Anotheran]

One sensible thing about this railway is that it not only uses a table to run round, but appears to turn its tank engines.  Am I mistaken or are there not shots of the tank engine(s) running smoke-box first in both directions?

 

You are correct; there are... Your post has one heading towards the island, and this one...

 

Sadly, in a way, the causeway has now gone so it's harder to imagine the train steaming up to the rock. The bridge doesn't give the same vision to my mind.

Edited April 26, 2017 by Anotheran

[Poggy1165]

I think there were various reasons. One was concern about water levels being too low to cover the crown plate on an adverse gradient.

 

For example, on the Leek and Manifold there was only one decent gradient 1 in 41 near Waterhouses. Engines were always turned a certain way (I forget which) to accommodate this. Until one day Crewe sent a engine back wrong way. When the locals complained, they were told they had shearlegs and jacks, so what was the problem?

 

To which the locals said, effectively, "****** it". The engine ran "wrong way" until its next shopping, and nothing adverse happened.

 

I think in other cases it was because the driver preferred to run chimney first, and that was it.

Edited April 26, 2017 by Poggy1165

[Edwardian]

But, some railways do seem to have been quite obsessive about running their tank engines forward wherever practicable. Was that just a fashion, or did the locos ride better, or did drivers find it more comfortable to work the regulator with their right hand (left on the GWR?), or ......

 

Correct. You get the impression that if they can turn a tank engine, they do.

 

 

I think there were various reasons.

 

 

As you may recall, the reason on the WNR was that one of the directors' wives considered that running bunker first lacked propriety.