Cattle dock tiles - what colour?

[Brinkly]

Greetings,

 

I’m about to start painting a cattle dock for Andy’s new layout. I really don’t know what colour to paint the tiles. What was ‘typical’ on the GWR in the South West? Grey or terracotta?

 

All the best,

 

Nick

[ianLMS]

Not sure if this pic helps

 

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5636865

 

I would say whatever is a common material found in the local area, covered with sawdust/hay and a lot of cow pats!!!

[Captain Kernow]

The Welshpool one seems to have a weathered concrete surface, so perhaps that's a later modification?

 

[Compound2632]

Tiles? Surely stone setts or brick?

[wagonbasher]

At first I should say, I don’t know.

 

As Stephen says bricks or stone sets are more likely.  
 

So logically this needs to be a robust, hard wearing surface. Not slippery either I would have thought, don’t want tonnes of cattle sliding around.

 

The South West geology is very complicated and colours of aggregate vary dramatically but I lean to Grey.  Cornwall has granite and basalt that vary from light Grey to Black, granite is a go to material for setts, they used to make slate setts in Cornwall as well and again that would be dark grey.  If Brick it will be very hard engineering bricks which I think are more likely to be dark grey. If you are thinking of Bristol  / Devon the rocks are not very hard (There were granite quarries on Dartmoor, also Grey) and so imported Cornish or South Wales stone is likely, South Wales would also be dark Grey.

 

hope that helps

 

Andy

[MikeJT]

The cattle dock at Gwinear Road (former junction for the Helston branch) on the Cornwall mainline uses red brick. Although now within a private garden this can still be seen clearly from passing trains.

 

Mike 

[Rivercider]

The cattle dock at Christow station still exists, there are some photos on Flickr,

 

cheers

[Brinkly]

I went with red/terracotta in the end. I’ll take some proper photos later as it is now completely finished.

 

 

Thanks for your advice, everyone.

 

All the best,

 

Nick

[cypherman]

Hi all,

Not wishing to sound crude. But a light wash of light brown over the surface and on the lower parts of the fencing would be appropriate. Cows being cows they are not bothered where the go.

[Il Grifone]

They were probably well cleaned (smell!) and I understand that cattle were not kept in the pens for long.