A rural Sussex BLT

[dseagull]

3 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

I thought that the starting point for this line was the extraction of shingle and there seems to be no actual connection to the coast. Why would Litlington have grown large enough to warrant its own branch without a significant industrial undertaking? Other industries could perhaps include lime kilns or, if Friston Forest had been planted more than 50 years earlier than it was, timber. The size of freight facilities doesn't seem to indicate a large output of materials. 

I think that's the only thing we've not got so far! Until now...

 

Left it on 'play' mode to show that loco + 5 fits.

 

Much as before, though I think the asymmetric 3-way makes it flow a little better than with another point in the loop. The main siding continues over the lane, protected by a gate perhaps, off to the right, representing the shingle loading. I've compressed about 2 miles into 2 foot admittedly (so no, the rest of it can't be scenic!), but, without a total rethink, it's the only way I can think of to represent what, as Phil rightly says, would be the main traffic for any such line. A 5 wagon train would be short, but not unrealistic given the gradients involved - I believe trains on the Cuckoo Line were limited even into the 60's for the same reason.

 

 

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by dseagull

[dseagull]

29 minutes ago, puck said:

How about a bit of Rice?

 

http://i558.photobucket.com/albums/ss28/doctordalek2/GAT001_zpsmntfj1ha.jpg

Ah, Leintwardine... The amount of times I've tried to draw that with non handbuilt track!

 

It's a lovely plan and one of my main inspirations for the 'loop in the yard'.

[phil_sutters]

On 27/04/2023 at 21:22, dseagull said:

Thanks Phil; Some really nice examples there of the sort of buildings I want.

 

Now to work out how to best represent flint... - there are commercial offerings for the knapped kind, but less so for the whole stone kind, e.g.

 

This type of flint construction seems mainly to have been used for boundary walls, rather than buildings. I have only found one example of its use in a building, in my files in the Seaford/Alfriston area, and that is the very untypical Barn Theatre. If you want some for boundary walls, you could see if there are paving cobbles that could fit the bill*. They may not have the mortar ridges that you can see in your picture.

*Edit - Just seen Nick Holliday's recommendation above, so this is superfluous now!

Edited April 28, 2023 by phil_sutters

[dseagull]

I think mostly is probably fair, but not exclusively! This is a bit of the front and side of a cottage we used to live in.

 

 

Side wall was very much the 'pebbles in mortar' style, and whilst I can't find any pictures right now, I think at least part of the back was too.

 

Edit;

 

The adjoining cottage (well, it was the landlady's!) goes one better in the 'how many Sussex building cliches' race by also including hanging tiles

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by dseagull

[phil_sutters]

47 minutes ago, dseagull said:

I think that's the only thing we've not got so far! Until now...

 

Left it on 'play' mode to show that loco + 5 fits.

 

Much as before, though I think the asymmetric 3-way makes it flow a little better than with another point in the loop. The main siding continues over the lane, protected by a gate perhaps, off to the right, representing the shingle loading. I've compressed about 2 miles into 2 foot admittedly (so no, the rest of it can't be scenic!), but, without a total rethink, it's the only way I can think of to represent what, as Phil rightly says, would be the main traffic for any such line. A 5 wagon train would be short, but not unrealistic given the gradients involved - I believe trains on the Cuckoo Line were limited even into the 60's for the same reason.

 

 

 

You talk of gradients, but I would suspect that, as with the neighbouring Ouse valley line, they would have kept to the valley bottom. The road through Litlington and Lullington does go up and down quite a bit, but neither is far from the river and if you were providing a station for the well established village of Alfriston, you would need to cross the river. The villages were probably built up the hill to avoid the flooding, Alfriston's lower reaches suffer from, from time to time. Maybe the rationale for the short trains could be the size of the shingle loading area and its equipment. One of the issues with taking shingle out of Cuckmere Haven is that the shingle bank forms the main protection for the valley, so perhaps the amount taken at any one time had to be limited. Maybe they used moveable narrow gauge track, to access different parts of the beach, leading to a transhipment point which had limited capacity. Anyway you now have a route to an off-scene industry!

Edited April 28, 2023 by phil_sutters

[phil_sutters]

Found one - a bit further afield. This cottage is early 19th century. The cobbles are described as a 'facing'.

An earlier example is much closer at hand, but hardly a typical application. The tower on St. Leonard's church Seaford has a patchwork of masonry styles. I wonder if the flint cobble patch halfway down was a repair job  - http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/51880922

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by phil_sutters

[DLT]

1 hour ago, dseagull said:

I think that's the only thing we've not got so far! Until now...

 

Left it on 'play' mode to show that loco + 5 fits.

 

Much as before, though I think the asymmetric 3-way makes it flow a little better than with another point in the loop. The main siding continues over the lane, protected by a gate perhaps, off to the right, representing the shingle loading. I've compressed about 2 miles into 2 foot admittedly (so no, the rest of it can't be scenic!), but, without a total rethink, it's the only way I can think of to represent what, as Phil rightly says, would be the main traffic for any such line. A 5 wagon train would be short, but not unrealistic given the gradients involved - I believe trains on the Cuckoo Line were limited even into the 60's for the same reason.

 

 

 

You are loosing even more of your precious scenic length with this one.

[dseagull]

6 minutes ago, DLT said:

You are loosing even more of your precious scenic length with this one.

Scenic length is exactly the same as before?

[Nearholmer]

The “two miles in an inch” thing is why all my musings on a model of a CVLR southern terminus, which have been going on with no physical result for about fifty years, focus on a site somewhere around where the EST&T yard at Exceat was. I always assume that the final connection to the beach is   narrow gauge, which seems more likely for an operation on shifting shingle; even some of the lines at Rye Harbour, and some of those n The Crumbles, used NG, despite the shingle n those laces being a bt less mobile.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Nearholmer

[phil_sutters]

On 24/04/2023 at 09:35, Nearholmer said:

I recall when the tourist buses used to be various open-toppers, proper half-cab jobs with a platform at the back and a conductor. IIRC Southdown or Eastbourne Corporation used to run one from the east, and B&H or Brighton Corporation one from the west. I’ve got a photo I took of one nosing through Alfriston somewhere.

 

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/25663283/in/album/1197782

[dseagull]

There is, of course, another solution...

 

That's Peco 009 track with a 'mainline' point (couldn't get the curve to work neatly with the small radius ones). Very simple, running onto a raised strip/bank (I think the standard gauge siding will need to be lowered due to the position of the river. I've not really got any knowledge of narrow gauge operations, so it is possibly just as unrealistic as the rest of the scheme, but it does add another dimension to it perhaps? The Water Tower shown is dimensioned for the rather attractive new Scalescenes kit.

 

The only other change, apart from a readjustment of the road and river, is that the factory has gone*. I'm sure this will cause great distress to many 😜

 

Two versions, both use an asymmetric 3-way (because I can't see how else to do it), one at the start of the loop as you enter the station, the other accessed from the platform road.

 

*I'll just have to call the shop 'Kane and Son' instead!

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

If the shingle (properly called “beach” in Sussex) arrives pre-graded from a grading plant further back towards the sea, it is as simple as building a raised wooden staging, and having the loads tip from that to SG wagons.

 

There are a couple of minor wrinkles:

 

1) I don’t think EST&T was established until the 1930s (possibly late 20s), and although I have seen one non-railway author suggest that there was a predecessor operation using NG and a steam loco, I don’t buy it, and think that the loco was misidentified to the site; and,

 

2) Pre-WW1, not all ‘bottom rung’ industrial NG operations used the archetypal steel skip. Even at 2ft gauge, many used wooden wagons of various kinds, and they were small, usually inside-framed, and are pig-difficult to model in 4mm scale. Welsh wagons don’t look the same at all, so using kits is off the agenda, I think.

 

Of course, your fictional predecessor to EST&T may have used steel skips, in which case the best option is probably the Minitrains r-t-r one, especially since a lot of industrial NG material in SE England came from Continental suppliers via their London agents. They are small, so scale-out as half a cubic meters/yard in 4mm, but would be more realistic than either WW1 WDLR skips or 1930s Hudson Rugga skips, which are quite distinctive.

 

Loco-wise things are difficult, because I don’t think there is a r-t-r model of a loco that might plausibly have come into the picture. Maybe the Minitrains Bagnall inverted saddle tank, and maybe the Minitrains O&K, although the O&K locos imported to Britain* were their standard 20hp machines, which look a lot more basic than the one modelled by Minitrains. Don’t get tempted by a Hunslet Quarry tank, because I don’t think they got further south than Oxfordshire.
 

*The loco suggested as having been in the Cuckmere Valley pre-WW1 was an O&K 20hp, although, as I say, I have deep doubts about that.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Harlequin]

10 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

2) Pre-WW1, not all ‘bottom rung’ industrial NG operations used the archetypal steel skip. Even at 2ft gauge, many used wooden wagons of various kinds, and they were small, usually inside-framed, and are pig-difficult to model in 4mm scale. Welsh wagons don’t look the same at all, so using kits is off the agenda, I think.

 

Ding-ding-ding! 3D print alert!

This is the perfect scenario for 3D printing something: Not available RTR, difficult to make by hand, small and I guess relatively simple to model in CAD.

 

[Harlequin]

With the latest plans:

• I assume the railway followed the river to the coast so it's a bit odd that the river is perpendicular to the station in this scene. Obviously it could happen in the real world but it doesn't "read" right in the model.
• Wouldn't the narrow gauge line approach the station from the opposite direction as the main line? Coming from the beach, which the mainline can't get that close to?
• The road rising as it gets closer to the river has always bothered me because the land, and the road with it, would naturally fall until close to the river and only then might the road rise very slightly to get onto the bridge structure. You might say the road is on an embankment but then that needs a sensible back story about why a big engineering project like that was needed. It could also make the elevation of the village buildings tricky to explain.
• All the village buildings are aligned to the railway. Again, possible in real life but doesn't "read" well.

You said in the OP you wanted "a sense of a space, a river crossing, and a healthy chunk of the village beyond the railway" but those things are very difficult to do when you're trying to squeeze it all into 8ft by 2ft. Is  the possible need to remove it in future so important that you'll let it trump your main goals?

 

You say you want to make something small but the layout could be physically bigger while still being small in concept. That recipe would lead to a very quiet, pastoral railway.

 

BTW: If you made the layout U shaped then the best way to use the length would be one arm and the end section scenic and the other arm as the fiddle yard, IMHO.

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Harlequin

[Nearholmer]

Well, if the OP is into 3D printing, the classes that I would suggest for consideration are:

 

- the O&K 20hp steam loco, as per “P C Allen” preserved at Leighton Buzzard;

 

- a Bagnall stock type 0-4-0ST, maybe a 6” cylinder one;

 

- a Kerr Stuart ‘Wren’, being careful to reproduce an early one, so not quite like the preserved ones, which I think are all later;

 

- a petrol loco, which would probably be German made, or McEwan-Pratt, but again being careful not to reproduce something too modern.

 

They are all teeny little machines in 4mm scale, and probably the least difficult to motorise would be a German petrol loco. There were several firms making locos that were broadly similar in design, and it should be possible to find one with outside frames and chain coupled wheels that would fit onto a Minitrains chassis - in fact I’d be surprised if there isn’t one in shape ways or the like already.

 

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Harlequin]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Well, if the OP is into 3D printing, the classes that I would suggest for consideration are:

 

- the O&K 20hp steam loco, as per “P C Allen” preserved at Leighton Buzzard;

 

- a Bagnall stock type 0-4-0ST, maybe a 6” cylinder one;

 

- a Kerr Stuart ‘Wren’, being careful to reproduce an early one, so not quite like the preserved ones, which I think are all later;

 

- a petrol loco, which would probably be German made, or McEwan-Pratt, but again being careful not to reproduce something too modern.

 

They are all teeny little machines in 4mm scale, and probably the least difficult to motorise would be a German petrol loco. There were several firms making locos that were broadly similar in design, and it should be possible to find one with outside frames and chain coupled wheels that would fit onto a Minitrains chassis - in fact I’d be surprised if there isn’t one in shape ways or the like already.

 

 

I was really thinking about the wooden wagons you mentioned, but OK, locos too if suitable chassis are available.

 

[Nearholmer]

Ah, yes, I see, although I think the Minitrains ‘steel’ skip is plenty plausible enough

 

Chassis wise, Minitrains 5010 (currently out of stock) is their simple kit for a later German i.c. Loco, the motorised chassis and external cosmetic chassis from which would be ideal. For a ‘one off’ I’d probably build the bonnet and cab in brass or plastic, because the shapes of these early machines were very simple. B2 here is a 1913 Oberursel, which typifies the breed https://www.feldbahn-ffm.de/benzin-benzol/ , 

 

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Nearholmer

[dseagull]

36 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If the shingle (properly called “beach” in Sussex) arrives pre-graded from a grading plant further back towards the sea

Yep, that's the plan!

 

38 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I don’t think EST&T was established until the 1930s (possibly late 20s),

1931, apparently. Another anomaly I'll have to live with!

9 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

I assume the railway followed the river to the coast so it's a bit odd that the river is perpendicular to the station in this scene. Obviously it could happen in the real world but it doesn't "read" right in the model.

Yes, fair point....

10 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

Wouldn't the narrow gauge line approach the station from the opposite direction as the main line? Coming from the beach, which the mainline can't get that close to?

Yes, this would make more sense. Back to the drawing board.

11 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

The road rising as it gets closer to the river has always bothered me because the land, and the road with it, would naturally fall until close to the river where it might rise very slightly to get onto the bridge structure.

Again, a fair point. It's all a little bit 'planned to fit' at the moment rather than looking natural.

 

14 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

You said in the OP you wanted "a sense of a space, a river crossing, and a healthy chunk of the village beyond the railway" but those things are very difficult to do when you're trying to squeeze it all into 8ft by 2ft. Is possible need to remove it in future so important that you'll let it trump your main goals?

I don't think I will need to be able to remove it, at least not at short notice. I wanted a cameo-style box, because that is fairly straightforward to build and apart from the fiddle yard(s?), would be pretty self contained - I am conscious that other things (the mower, paint, gardening tools etc) currently cluttering the utility room will need to be found a space in there too! There won't be space in the house until at least two of the kids have moved out (at least another 8-10 years!), so it's a case of, as is so often the way, compromise or nothing.

[Nearholmer]

I’m not sure how much real geography is supposed to intrude, or is permitted to intrude here, but the real Litlington is ideally situated from a model railway viewpoint in some ways, less so in others.

 

Viewed from the far side of the valley, it sits nicely on a sort of shelf above the river and water meadows - all good. The bit that always challenged me when trying to squeeze a half-imagined railway through is that at one point the road occupies pretty much the only viable space between the watery bits and a steep hillside. I came to imagine it as pretty much a roadside tramway along this stretch. It might actually work better as 2ft gauge.

 

 

I’ve been clearing a large walk-in store cupboard today, and came upon the 1960 and 1969 1” maps, marked up with both our cycling route from home (Crowborough) to Cuckmere Haven, where my brother liked to pester mullet, and an early version of my imagined route for the railway, which must date from about 1974, probably pencilled-in as a relief from the tedium of fishing.

 

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Nearholmer

[dseagull]

@Nearholmer Yep, same kind of thoughts as I had. In real life, the station would be behind the Plough & Harrow, but to add interest and save having to model the backs of buildings and nothing else, liberties have been taken with the road.

 

A quick screen grab;

 

Red circle is where I've always seen the station in my minds eye.

Blue is an alternative that , if I pull the station inland a little, would potentially allow the shingle branch to go off the same way the standard gauge comes in, with a sharp curve

Yellow is a more inland route that perhaps flows better from the previous station at Alfriston (see below)

 

 

Another screen grab

 

The three colours are as previously. The two black dots are locations where I'd planned the Alfriston station;

 

The first is just before the present day 'The Willows' car park. It is currently, and probably always has been, low lying fields between North Street and the river.

The other is on the other side of the river, more or less opposite the church. The track plan for this would be pure Rice, his plan for 'Clun' from 'Finescale in Small Spaces'. I'd love to build it one day as it offers pretty much everything I'd like from this kind of layout. There is not the space at present to do it justice, however!

 

[dseagull]

Somewhere into the teens now!

 

I've kept the 'goods yard' to a single siding, although the curve into it can be changed to another set of points, giving a second siding that ends by the cattle pens, but I've been down that road before and it quickly begins to look overcrowded.

 

I don't know if the shingle line needs an engine shed, but if it did it would probably make more sense for it to be this end of the line than the other.

 

[phil_sutters]

15 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

The “two miles in an inch” thing is why all my musings on a model of a CVLR southern terminus, which have been going on with no physical result for about fifty years, focus on a site somewhere around where the EST&T yard at Exceat was. I always assume that the final connection to the beach is   narrow gauge, which seems more likely for an operation on shifting shingle; even some of the lines at Rye Harbour, and some of those n The Crumbles, used NG, despite the shingle n those laces being a bt less mobile.

For those wanting more details of the various industrial lines along the East Sussex coast there is Paul O'Callaghan's 'East Sussex Coastal Railways - Volume 2: Branch Lines and Other Railways.' The path of the 1930s Cuckmere railway seems to have followed the route taken by the current concrete pathway, which hugs the eastern side of the valley, with the yard where the Seven Sister's Country Park's car park is, on the south side of the A259 coast road. That is several hundred yards east of Exceat Bridge, unless you count the causeway as part of the bridge. This is about a mile and a half south of Litlington. Would the narrow gauge line have stopped there or crossed the A259 (potentially over a level crossing on an 'S' bend at the bottom of a steep hill) and reached Litlington? Your post crossed mine and you obviously like the idea that it does.

Paul O'Callaghan's book has photos of the line's tin shack engine shed and a rather indistinct view of the loading hopper - thrown together collection of wood and metal from what one can make out. The engine shed appears in front of what looks like a large corrugated iron building, but this is not identified.

Edited April 29, 2023 by phil_sutters
Additional info

[DLT]

21 hours ago, dseagull said:

Scenic length is exactly the same as before?

Aha, sorry, I thought you had chopped the end off.

[DLT]

Adding narrow gauge I see.  Its a slippery slope, ng can take you over!!!

[phil_sutters]

1 hour ago, dseagull said:

@Nearholmer Yep, same kind of thoughts as I had. In real life, the station would be behind the Plough & Harrow, but to add interest and save having to model the backs of buildings and nothing else, liberties have been taken with the road.

 

A quick screen grab;

 

Red circle is where I've always seen the station in my minds eye.

Blue is an alternative that , if I pull the station inland a little, would potentially allow the shingle branch to go off the same way the standard gauge comes in, with a sharp curve

Yellow is a more inland route that perhaps flows better from the previous station at Alfriston (see below)

 

 

Another screen grab

 

The three colours are as previously. The two black dots are locations where I'd planned the Alfriston station;

 

The first is just before the present day 'The Willows' car park. It is currently, and probably always has been, low lying fields between North Street and the river.

The other is on the other side of the river, more or less opposite the church. The track plan for this would be pure Rice, his plan for 'Clun' from 'Finescale in Small Spaces'. I'd love to build it one day as it offers pretty much everything I'd like from this kind of layout. There is not the space at present to do it justice, however!

 

If your look on a map with contours you will see that where Litlington Road swings east, just below your blue circle, it is starting a very steep climb that carries on until your yellow circle. It rises about 30 feet in less than 1/8th of a mile. I think that the red wins. It is almost due south of Alfriston.