What were the Airfix Booking Hall and Engine Shed kits based on?

[BillB]

Hi, I know at least some of the Airfix Trackside OO/HO kits were based on real buildings, e.g. the Signal Box was based on the MR signal box at Oakham, Rutland, and the Church was based on Old St Boniface Church, Bonchurch, Ventnor, Isle of Wight.

 

I wonder, does anyone know the original buildings the Booking Hall and Engine Shed were based on?

 

Info on any other prototypes for the Trackside kits would be welcome too.

 

Not sure if I am asking in the correct forum...

 

Thanks,

Bill.

[Nearholmer]

I don’t think it was specifically based on it, but the loco shed at Mountfield Gypsum Mines in Sussex was incredibly like the Airfix one, until it was heavily altered.
 

The first time I visited Mountfield, I thought I’d become an Airfix figure on my brother’s model railway, what with the shed, and the locos looking not a million miles from Triang Dock Authority shunters!

 

Here we are (Tom Burnham’s photo on Flickr):

 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Nearholmer

[SR71]

I'd been told it was an LMS prototype but I don't know how much truth there is in that. 

 

I couldn't find anything on the Brighton Toy and Model Museum pages either.

 

https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Airfix_Trackside_Series

[Steamport Southport]

The Engine Shed is almost certainly Great Central. 

 

Looks very like Tanhouse Lane in Widnes. Even got the steam extractors, door in the shed door* and the lean-to. Don't forget the kit is made to extend in width and length, so by adding them together you could get something similar.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/tan_house_lane/index21.shtml

 

The one at Dinting was also similar.

 

 

The Booking Hall was GWR according to an article a few years back.

 

 

*Very few sheds even had doors.

 

 

 

Jason

[Nearholmer]

Blow me, the GCR even used the old trick of putting drainpipes to cover the dodgy glued joints!

[kevinlms]

11 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

The Engine Shed is almost certainly Great Central. 

 

Looks very like Tanhouse Lane in Widnes. Even got the steam extractors, door in the shed door* and the lean-to. Don't forget the kit is made to extend in width and length, so by adding them together you could get something similar.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/tan_house_lane/index21.shtml

 

The one at Dinting was also similar.

 

 

The Booking Hall was GWR according to an article a few years back.

 

 

*Very few sheds even had doors.

 

 

 

Jason

With the standard kit shed, being just too short to fit a Jinty in properly  IIRC. 

[33C]

You put the lean-to on the back wall and that gives room for the tension-lock coupler. With the doors closed it just fits! (Pannier)

[Wickham Green too]

Doesn't leave a lot of space for the crew to make a brew in there though !

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, kevinlms said:

With the standard kit shed, being just too short to fit a Jinty in properly  IIRC. 

 

Well, that's what the Tanhouse Lane photo shows!

[APOLLO]

18 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

The Engine Shed is almost certainly Great Central. 

 

Looks very like Tanhouse Lane in Widnes. Even got the steam extractors, door in the shed door* and the lean-to. Don't forget the kit is made to extend in width and length, so by adding them together you could get something similar.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/tan_house_lane/index21.shtml

 

The one at Dinting was also similar.

 

 

The Booking Hall was GWR according to an article a few years back.

 

 

*Very few sheds even had doors.

 

 

 

Jason

 

A look alike of Dinting loco shed (GC) and the rear office lean too were produced in resin by Bachmann, and fine models they are too

 

 

 

 

 

Brit15

[dibber25]

On 16/02/2022 at 15:00, Steamport Southport said:

 

The Booking Hall was GWR according to an article a few years back.

 

 

*Very few sheds even had doors.

 

 

 

Jason

I can't think of any GWR station that was like the Airfix model. I always thought it was 'nondescript' so that it could be painted in any regional colours without looking obviously wrong. From memory (its years since I built one) it has a peculiar main door arrangement to the ticket office. (CJL)

[AY Mod]

14 minutes ago, dibber25 said:

I can't think of any GWR station that was like the Airfix model.

 

There's a superficial resemblance to some of the stations on the Wombourn branch being of a later construction.

[dibber25]

3 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

There's a superficial resemblance to some of the stations on the Wombourn branch being of a later construction.

That figures - it's one line I didn't know at all! (CJL)

[melmerby]

I thought the engine shed was based on Ashburton:

 

(image lost)

Edited April 7, 2022 by melmerby

[melmerby]

With a Smidgen of Tetbury.....

[298]

21 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I thought the engine shed was based on Ashburton:

 

 

Isn't that the Ratio one?

[Steamport Southport]

23 hours ago, dibber25 said:

I can't think of any GWR station that was like the Airfix model. I always thought it was 'nondescript' so that it could be painted in any regional colours without looking obviously wrong. From memory (its years since I built one) it has a peculiar main door arrangement to the ticket office. (CJL)

 

I can't remember the source but ISTR it was in one of the magazines in the early 1980s.

 

Not one of the Big Three (RM/MRC/MRN) but one such as Scale Trains/Model Trains/Practical Model Railways/etc.

 

 

 

Jason

[john new]

On 17/02/2022 at 02:51, kevinlms said:

With the standard kit shed, being just too short to fit a Jinty in properly  IIRC. 

So you needed to buy two! Clever sales ploy.

[john new]

There was a photo of Marlow the other day in the RCH wagons thread that had a superficial likeness to the ex-Airfix engine shed, (but not anything like an exact match), and I posted a comment there to that effect. 

[Steamport Southport]

19 hours ago, melmerby said:

I thought the engine shed was based on Ashburton:

 

 

Nothing like the Airfix kit though. 

 

Built from different materials, totally different windows, has a huge front curved door opening.

 

Nothing like Tetbury either as that had a tank on the roof, no smoke extractor and no air duct/clerestory thing.

 

Nor Marlow either.

 

 

 

 

With having anything remotely like "Great Central Engine Sheds" which had photos of small GCR sheds  I would still reckon it's based on Tanhouse Lane. 

 

 

 

Jason

[melmerby]

37 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Nothing like the Airfix kit though. 

 

Built from different materials, totally different windows, has a huge front curved door opening.

 

Nothing like Tetbury either as that had a tank on the roof, no smoke extractor and no air duct/clerestory thing.

 

Nor Marlow either.

 

 

 

 

With having anything remotely like "Great Central Engine Sheds" which had photos of small GCR sheds  I would still reckon it's based on Tanhouse Lane. 

 

 

 

Jason

I actually thought it was supposed to be an amalgam of the two I mentioned (something from the deepest corners of my memory.)

I can remember it originally coming out in around 1960* and a similar discussion ensued. (but obvious not on't web that far back.)

 

The roof is almost exactly as Ashburton and the panelled brick walls and front doors are as Tetbury, the windows are a mix of the two prototypes

 

IMHO Airfix aren't going to include a water tank on something that is about half the length of an actual shed.

 

*I've still got what I bought then "bashed" into a two lane x three deep shed (6 kits) with the addition of some cheap second hand built ones and some new Dapol made ones.

[33C]

Where is the Airfix footbridge prototype? Anyone?

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

 

IMHO Airfix aren't going to include a water tank on something that is about half the length of an actual shed.

 

Especially when they do a kit for a water tank that they want you to buy as well as the loco shed.  The Airfix loco shed is a pretty good model, can be used as a single building or extended by modular construction, and looks like a generic engine shed.  It is useful and adaptable, perhaps slightly restricted by it's brick construction, though perhaps a trick was missed in it being too short for a JInty.  I have one doing duty as a colliery boiler house on Cwmdimbath, formerly my NCB loco shed which now needs replacing and I am considering using another Airfix/Dapol/Kitmaster shed as a replacement loco shed, but something will have to be done to make it different from the boiler house.  It needs  widening as well in order to provide space to function as a locomotive workshop as well, so while the kit will be the basis for the building, it will be considerably worked up and 're-skinned', maybe in corrugated asbestos with squared off door and windows.

 

It is a very adaptable and versatile kit, perhaps the most so of the various RTP and kit offerings of single track loco sheds. It would be interesting to find that it had a prototype, but would in fact in some ways reduce it's innate adaptability from my pov....

 

The station booking hall is, IMHO, not quite as versatile.  Here, the brick construction and general appearance give it, to my mind, a home counties suburban look, and not one that I'd associate with any particular railway, a station perhaps built during the late Victorian or Edwardian era as a town or city expanded on to new greenfield areas.  In GW terms, parts of the West Midlands fit this scenario as well, but any further north or west and such new suburban stations tended to cater to a more working class clientele, and corrugated or wooden buildings are probably more likely.  There were exceptions of course, but the general impression created, at least in my mind, follows the above principles. 

 

Before the availabiliy of corrugated manufactured buidling materials, building materials were sourced locally because transportation of them was expensive (even after the railway network was largely complete, and except for prestige buildings).  South and east (very, very roughly) of a line drawn from the Humber estuary to the Solent, the line of the various 'wold' hill ranges, brick was used more than stone, as the chalks and clays mostly available were not suitable for load-bearing construction;  the clays are ideal for brickmaking.  North and west of it are limestones, sandstones, granites, slates, and others eminently suitable for building and locally available.  Older buildings everywhere might be wooden framed with lath and plaster infilling, but little of this sort of construction tooke place after the beginning of the 18th century, so is not applicable to railway buildings.

[Phatbob]

This might be a bit  but folk might like to know that the airfix Booking Office is actually H0 and not 00 IIRC.

 

[Derekl]

Following on he point about a Jinty not fitting in the Airfix shed, were these sheds used for storing "off duty" locomotives or were they provided so that there was a covered area in which to work on them? I suppose steam raising and preparation are probably done more comfortably under cover (although I suspect "comfort" here is relative) and I suppose also that any serious work was done elsewhere, but were these sheds (that is, on the end of a branch line) actually used as an overnight parking spot?