Castle Aching

[Shadow]

There's a few images of the edge of the platform at Clare station in my gallery here on Rmweb.

That's one of the Standard GER 1865 design

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/gallery/album/3089-clare-station/

 

That also had a small castle in the background. Well actually the railway went through the middle!

 

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17&lat=52.0770&lon=0.5820&layers=176

Edited May 16, 2016 by Shadow

[ChrisN]

When I was looking at did my platform height need to be lower it did appear that the lower height was a foot below normal, which was 3ft, but as Don says try it and see.  The Cambrian would have had stone edging all the way along but only slabs around the buildings.  It was all to do with giving the right appearance as you entered through the station building.

[Edwardian]

I would suggest 2ft -2ft 6in for the platforms I  would probably do a check with a mock up and a coach with footboards to see what looked right. The blue brick would look nice and could have come by rail from Staffordshire. Looking at some old Cambrian platforms they had paving around the station building but further away looked like a compacted surface.

Don

 

2'6" or thereabouts sounds sensible, but  should take the measurement from the coaches. Which means I need to get on an build some coaches!

 

The type of brick seems to be associated with Staffordshire, which is not a problem, as we have railways, though I wonder if they only came from Staffordshire?

 

EDIT: PS If the bull-nose blue brick turns out to have been a fad of the mid-1860s and anachronistic for the circa 1855-58 build-date assumed for Castle Aching, might it feature as an 1860s platform extension?

 

Probably should consider what platforms were being constructed in the mid-'50s.

 

 

There's a few images of the edge of the platform at Clare station in my gallery here on Rmweb.

That's one of the Standard GER 1865 design

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/gallery/album/3089-clare-station/

 

That also had a small castle in the background. Well actually the railway went through the middle!

 

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17&lat=52.0770&lon=0.5820&layers=176

 

How could I forget Clare?  A wonderful station.  Your picture below shows them on the wall too!

 

When I was looking at did my platform height need to be lower it did appear that the lower height was a foot below normal, which was 3ft, but as Don says try it and see.  The Cambrian would have had stone edging all the way along but only slabs around the buildings.  It was all to do with giving the right appearance as you entered through the station building.

 

That seems a very common ploy; flags near the station building but then a cheaper surface. This would be macadam in the Twentieth Century at least?  What would platform surfaces have been originally?

 

There is a nice example on Trenance, a layout featured on RM Web.  It's a lovely layout, I wonder what happened to it?

Edited May 17, 2016 by Edwardian

[runs as required]

 Below is a picture of the West Norfolk Junction Railway's station at Sedgeford, opened in 1866.  This was a bucolic extension of the profitable (and Royal!) Lynn & Hunstanton Railway, though technically a separate company.  Of course, the bullnose edging might not be the original.

Platform likely to be gently curving, as per latest plan.

Architecturally Sedgeford looks to be a little gem.

I've always enjoyed the eighteenth century landscape garden summerhouse borrowed as a rural pavilion stationhouse (classicist Francis Thompson was good at it).

I especially love the pyramid roof surmounted by chimbley and the rural Norfolk portico with a central column !

 

I've found a 6" plan of the layout (with signal posts marked).

What a brilliant E-W orientation - imagine sitting on the platform seat and nodding off in the afternoon sun with an hour to wait for the train after a liquid lunch!

dh

[Edwardian]

It is a delightful station.  Nice bit of carstone from the looks of it, of the large variety. Sedgeford Hall appears to be a delightful Queen Anne-ish house.  All in the general area of the WNR.

 

An occasional solecism of provincial classicism is the use of a pilaster or column in the centre of a façade.  This, offends, I suspect, because every classical façade must be divided in accordance with the rules, horizontally and vertically, though in many or most cases, these divisions are invisible!  The rules also suppose that a façade is surmounted by a triangular pediment, though this may also be invisible, i.e. absent.  This comes from temples, Greek then Hellenistic Roman, and in domestic use, from  Augustus's house, then, via Vitruvius and Palladio, to the English Palladians.  Anyway, the rules require a bay, not a vertical division, to be in the centre of the composition under the apex of the pediment!. 

[The Stationmaster]

I don't know if it was universally the case but all the bullnose blue bricks I have ever come across for platform edging (and turntable pit edging) are somewhat larger than 'standard' size bricks plus they have the 'criss-cross' pattern set into the top surface to encourage drainage and give a bit of grip.  Alas I don't know the size but I'm sure there are some present at various preservation sites so I'll keep my eyes open if I visit any.

[Nearholmer]

There's some useful algebra available if you really want to get the proportions of your station, and the positioning of columns, right.

 

In the meantime, I feel constrained, due to a severe case of pyramid-pedantry, to point out to Mr. R-as-R that the station above has a hipped, rather than pyramidic roof.

 

There MUST be a truly pyramidic station roof somewhere. all I need to do is leaf through about twenty books on station architecture to find it!

 

K

[Shadow]

Criss Cross as in this image from Clare

 

 

And this one showing the size when compared to a brick (or two!)

 

[webbcompound]

There MUST be a truly pyramidic station roof somewhere

 

Both a bit ultra-modern, but still working stations:

 

Kansas city Union Station, but this isn't the station roof.

 

Or this one in Tokyo. definitely the station roof, although more Central American pyramids than Egyptian.

Edited May 17, 2016 by webbcompound

[£1.38]

Already done in 7mm scale.

Maybe Chris Ward can do them for 4mm scale? (See link in above linked post.)

I have a feeling that Masokits do Staffordshire Paviers in 4mm scale

[Nick Holliday]

Michael Clarke of Masokits already does these edging bricks in 4mm

 

Staffordshire Nosing Paviors:

 

These etches reproduce the 18" x 6 “x 6"' platform nosing bricks widely used on country stations. They are etched in 0.005· brass and therefore retain the diamond pattern grooving well. The fret has nine 78mm straight lengths with a fold-down edge for platform face giving a total length of 700mm (2" 3""). Curves are possible by laying the edgings in short lengths.

[Nearholmer]

WebbCompound - that Tokyo station looks so like an N-gauge model that I'm not totally convinced that it really exists! K

[runs as required]

.... I feel constrained, due to a severe case of pyramid-pedantry, to point out to Mr. R-as-R that the station above has a hipped, rather than pyramidic roof.

 

1

pyramid-dysentry pedantry is easily caught.

I concede that Sedgeford is not a pure pyramid since there is a short ridge either side of the central chimney.

But how can you have "a hipped, rather than pyramidic roof"?  Each edge of a pyramid has to be a hip

 

2

There MUST be a truly pyramidic station roof somewhere. all I need to do is leaf through about twenty books on station architecture to find it!   

 Try this link

 

3

Almost an Egyptian pyramid of a station was Gorleston on Sea on the Norfolk and Suffolk Joint. The last stationmaster was the British Museum's Ace translator of Egyptian pyramid heiroglyphics, which is why he was given GoS by BR(E) - probably a Gerry Fiennes appointment - he wouldn't have too many trains distracting him from cracking his puzzles.

dh

 

[Donw]

I don't know if it was universally the case but all the bullnose blue bricks I have ever come across for platform edging (and turntable pit edging) are somewhat larger than 'standard' size bricks plus they have the 'criss-cross' pattern set into the top surface to encourage drainage and give a bit of grip.  Alas I don't know the size but I'm sure there are some present at various preservation sites so I'll keep my eyes open if I visit any.

 

I think these may have been a GWR special. Dave Wenlock has had some 3D printed in 7mm for his GHWR layout. I think there may be some detailsof sizes on his blog. The was also some discussion of them on someone's Dyffryn Ardudwy thread I will look up links if anyone knows these were used in Norfolk.

Don

[Nearholmer]

R-as-R,

 

You've found one; thank you! I don't have to stay up all night pursuing that particular pointless obsession now.

 

Regarding hips (a pleasant activity, if undertaken on the beach at St Tropez, so I've been told): pyramidic roofs are a subset of hipped roofs, I would agree, but that doesn't make all hipped roofs pyramids. The very point of a pyramid is the very point of a pyramid.

 

Anyway, I'm going to get in trouble with Edwardian for going wildly off-topic again, so best stick to paving bricks for a bit.

 

The LNWR was very fond of those dark ones with the criss-crosses, but it is easier to create and maintain a good nosing on a platform with flagstones, so I think most railways used flags.

 

Kevin

[Shadow]

Taking some measurements from the photo's the edge pavers seem to be (roughly!) 15x6x6 (although the length could be longer as can't see edge under the leaves fully) so could be 18x6x6 as stated earlier

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

I had hitherto associated these blue edging paviours with Gods Wonderful Railway, but, for this project, they are a nice, subtle way, of tying the fictitious West Norfolk Railway with the real Lynn & Hunstanton Railway and its offspring, the West Norfolk Junction Railway.

 

Both these GE constituent companies (effectively a single organisation) used edging bricks.  I did say in a previous post that I did not want to ape the distinctive architecture of the L&H, but referencing the edging bricks is a nice west Norfolk railway touch, me thinks.

 

Hover over the pictures for the name of the stations and see, for example, brick edging on the L&H at: Deresingham; Hunstanton (if you can tear yourself away from the locomotive), and Snettisham. 

 

On the WNJ, see examples at Burnham Market, Docking,  Sedgeford, and Stanhoe.  Note the close up of Sedgeford, which shows the same criss-cross pattern found on the contemporary GE Suffolk station at Clare, as well as on the GW and LNWR.  

 

If you want a chance of a pyramid roof station, why not adopt the Lodge at Kew Gardens.  This is in the "Queen Anne" revival style that was the architecture of choice for the aspiring leisured and moneyed upper middle classes of the 1860s and trendy arty types, but which by the 1890s had become popularised as the architecture of the Gin Palace.  Perhaps the best known station in the style is Market Harborough.  I am rather partial to Queen Anne as it reminds me of my undergraduate days, wooing various Newnham Girls. The Lodge at Kew has an almost pyramidal roof, and dates from 1866.   

[Nearholmer]

Nice platforms; shame about the lodge.

 

Without wishing to be unkind, after you've found it: it is very badly proportioned. The visual mass of the chimney and roof make it look as if the building is being squashed ....... like a potato-masher in action. And, the dormers look too big for the faces of the pyramid.

 

I hope you aren't offended.

 

Kevin

[Shadow]

There MUST be a truly pyramidic station roof somewhere. all I need to do is leaf through about twenty books on station architecture to find it!

K

Ilford station. It's even the Great Eastern Mainline!

 

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~owend/I/R/stnpages/ilford.html

[ChrisN]

The platform surface away from the flagstones would have been gravel; well that is what I have tried to depict on Traeth Mawr, if actually not very well.

[runs as required]

Fingers still stinging from rapping by K, here are some fascinating brick links for you's al:

1

An indexed brick history

2

More particularly Staffordshire patterned paviors

Interesting that this is the Ketley brick company of Brierley Hill (formerly in Worcestershire but not Staffordshire).

 

This, K will note, is a semi legit excuse to go OT:

2a

So obviously Staffs blues come from the Black country (not as I'd always vaguely assumed the Potteries). That's why they feature everywhere on Black country canals and get ordered in bulk by the GWR as well as LNW and Midland.

2b

Ketley is the famous Shropshire Ironworks (now under Telford's housing) that, under William Reynolds, built the Coabrookdale locomotive of 1802/3.

When I worked in Salop CC, Tom Rolt conducted us around the pioneering sites of Ketley, finishing up with the sectional cast iron viaduct built for Telford at Longdon on Tern. This led to Telford's great cast iron Pont Cysyllte aqueduct on the Shropshire Union.

How, I wonder has the Ketley brick company migrated down the road to Brierley Hill?  It looks to be a big automated plant on the Pensnett industrial estate, serviced by road.

 

dh

Edited May 17, 2016 by runs as required

[Donw]

I found that link to Ketley but before I could post RMweb went belly up and wouldn't talk to me. It is the Clay and the firing that makes the difference the blue clay pavoirs  etc. are made from a red clay and fired at high temperature and low oxygen turns blue and becomes a very hard material. They were known as Staffordshire Blue because they were first made there. Broseley in Shropshire was also known for Bricks and tiles. We had to match some local bricks in Broseley which could run from an Orange colour through red and blue to black in one brick. I presume they could have been made in areas around Staffordshire whether clays in other areas like Peterborough could also be used I don't know.

Don

[runs as required]

You might like to compare the Kew cottage with this lodge gate cottage on the main road near Corbridge rented by a colleague some years ago

It seems to be in the Edwardian manner of Blomfield or Lutyens (now rather clumsily extended to the right and with a distracting velux window and burglar alarm)

 

dh

[Edwardian]

Taking some measurements from the photo's the edge pavers seem to be (roughly!) 15x6x6 (although the length could be longer as can't see edge under the leaves fully) so could be 18x6x6 as stated earlier

 

Paver 1.jpg

 

Paver 2.jpg

 

Thank you, Dave, for the measurements; that is especially helpful.

 

 

Without wishing to be unkind, after you've found it: it is very badly proportioned. The visual mass of the chimney and roof make it look as if the building is being squashed ....... like a potato-masher in action. And, the dormers look too big for the faces of the pyramid.

 

 

 

All of which, Kevin, is what makes it fun and witty, IMHO. Still, that's professional architects for you .... 

 

 

The platform surface away from the flagstones would have been gravel; well that is what I have tried to depict on Traeth Mawr, if actually not very well.

 

Helpful confirmation, thanks.  Use very fine sandpaper?

 

 

Fingers still stinging from rapping by K, here are some fascinating brick links for you's al:

1

An indexed brick history

2

More particularly Staffordshire patterned paviors

Interesting that this is the Ketley brick company of Brierley Hill (formerly in Worcestershire but not Staffordshire).

 

This, K will note, is a semi legit excuse to go OT:

2a

So obviously Staffs blues come from the Black country (not as I'd always vaguely assumed the Potteries). That's why they feature everywhere on Black country canals and get ordered in bulk by the GWR as well as LNW and Midland.

2b

Ketley is the famous Shropshire Ironworks (now under Telford's housing) that, under William Reynolds, built the Coabrookdale locomotive of 1802/3.

When I worked in Salop CC, Tom Rolt conducted us around the pioneering sites of Ketley, finishing up with the sectional cast iron viaduct built for Telford at Longdon on Tern. This led to Telford's great cast iron Pont Cysyllte aqueduct on the Shropshire Union.

How, I wonder has the Ketley brick company migrated down the road to Brierley Hill?  It looks to be a big automated plant on the Pensnett industrial estate, serviced by road.

 

dh

 

Fascinating.  Looking forward to exploring that brick history website, though not whilst under the satirical gaze of the Memsahib. 

 

 

You might like to compare the Kew cottage with this lodge gate cottage on the main road near Corbridge rented by a colleague some years ago

corbridge.jpg

It seems to be in the Edwardian manner of Blomfield or Lutyens (now rather clumsily extended to the right and with a distracting velux window and burglar alarm)

 

dh

 

Kevin will be all over you for this one (it's not a pyramid)! 

[Shadow]

......

 

Helpful confirmation, thanks.  Use very fine sandpaper?

 

 

........

 

Have just tried this stuff from Hobbycraft for roads. Could be used for gravel as well.

Put some down last night, so will see what it's like tonight. Posts some photos later.

 

http://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/decoart-media-texture-sand-paste/604946-1000

 

The sand is very fine.

 

Dave