pre-grouping Suburban terminus (1870s/1880s) - not quite a Victorian Minories

[jamespetts]

My book on the East London Line has arrived, and, looking at samples of the timetables, the service was not frequent enough to have warranted three platforms, so here is a (probably more realistic) two platform version.

[Nearholmer]

Which prompts me to pose a question that has long teased me: why was Central Croydon station laid out as it was?

 

I've often thought that the track layout looks like two small termini put face-to-face, and I do wonder whether it was deliberately designed for use by two railway companies (GER & LNWR possibly; or, LBSCR & A N Other), with one in charge of each platform. Otherwise, the provision of two loco-release roads, rather than one shared between two, seems excessive. Either that, or they simply need a big fiddle yard in which to store trains at night.

 

Why don't you just go the whole hog, and make it model of Central Croydon ...... so little is known about the place that you wouldn't be overly constrained.

[jamespetts]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Which prompts me to pose a question that has long teased me: why was Central Croydon station laid out as it was?

 

I've often thought that the track layout looks like two small termini put face-to-face, and I do wonder whether it was deliberately designed for use by two railway companies (GER & LNWR possibly; or, LBSCR & A N Other), with one in charge of each platform. Otherwise, the provision of two loco-release roads, rather than one shared between two, seems excessive. Either that, or they simply need a big fiddle yard in which to store trains at night.

 

Why don't you just go the whole hog, and make it model of Central Croydon ...... so little is known about the place that you wouldn't be overly constrained.

 

I did consider that, but I recall reading that it only had, at most, about 7 trains a day (and for much of its life about 2 trains a day).

[Nearholmer]

Then it closed.

 

But, you could increase the service!

 

Incidentally, looking at 'disused stations' for Central Croydon, there is an intriguing photo, taken from the top of the newly built Town Hall, looking along the defunct branch line.

 

It shows a train in Fairfield Yard, and I'm 99% certain that it is an LNWR train, presumably using the stub of the branch to reverse. The coaches are "dark and white", and I think the date is too early for that to be LBSCR livery.

[jamespetts]

That is one way of doing it; one might have to imagine a world in which there was some economic reason for Central Croydon to be busier than it was. I think that you are right about the train to which you refer on the Disused Stations website being an LNWR train: they clearly have the deep waisted design of the LNWR panelling. It is interesting to imagine where these trains went - Broad Street, perhaps? Watford? Mansion House? Kensington (Addison Road)? Willesden Junction? And the locomotive - I imagine that that is probably a 4'6" radial tank, although it is not entirely clear from the picture.

 

One could in principle have a layout that could be set in either location and switch between them by switching over the nameboards. I have to say, there is much that is interesting about the East London Railway, however, and trains from the LB&SCR as well as the Metropolitan District Railway are likely to be interesting to model.

 

In any event, it is good to have multiple possibilities.

[Lacathedrale]

@jamespetts these trains were via Kensington (Addison Rd) and Crystal Palace (Low Level) apparently - though of the origin I'm not sure.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/central_croydon/index7.shtml

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/central_croydon/index6.shtml

 

Presumably the signal boxes are the same in both photographs?  The workshops are evident in the 1896 OS map  and the 1932 aerial photograph, but I can't make them out in the 1896 photograph.

[Nearholmer]

Willesden Low Level, which was where mainline trains stopped, so convenient for Brum, Manchester etc.