Trainshed roofs - do the access ladders move? If so, how?

[billy_anorak59]

Not sure if anyone will have the answer to this one, but on the basis of “the only dumb question is the one that you don’t ask”, here it is anyway…

 

I’m making a model terminus which is ‘based-on’ (or more realistically ‘inspired by’), Birkenhead Woodside and will end up as a ‘sort-of’ Minories affair. Where that station had a two-span trainshed, mine will have just one (space constraints), and will be half as long.

 

The walls are built, and I have turned my attention to the trainshed roof. Woodside seems to have had curved access ladders on each end of each roof, arcing up towards each apex, but they didn’t meet, stopping at the line of the clerestory. They did, however, seem to be able to move laterally along the roofs themselves (some photos show the same ladders in different positions) – the thing is, I can’t see any mechanism to enable this movement (rails/runners, etc), so can anyone tell me how they were attached, or how they slid? Anything welcomed.

 

Incidentally, the magnificent Merseyside MRS model of Woodside on display in Birkenhead Town Hall seems to have omitted these features completely.

 

It's all a bit difficult to explain in words, so a few snipped and zoomed shots may be prudent - sorry, some of them are a bit fuzzy, but the best I've got. Can anyone see something that I’ve missed? I wouldn’t have thought Woodside was unique in it’s roof access after all, but I can’t work it out – I’ll probably end up making it up like I usually do!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BluenGreyAnorak]

As they're fully supported, i.e. they just lay in the roof, I'd hazard a guess that they're moved just by pulling them into the required position.

[Nearholmer]

Some access ladders in that sort of situation run on rails top and bottom, and aren’t in contact with the roof. That sort can be moved along.

 

But, the ones in the photo don’t look like that to me, and the roof doesn’t look suitable to accommodate moving ones, so I reckon they are static. You’d often see a notice at the foot of such fixed ladders saying “use duck or crawling boards”, which were portable boards, laid out on the roof to spread weight and (hopefully) prevent workers falling through. IIRC, the opening shot in the film ‘Terminus’, which shows the roof of Waterloo from the air, may show some guys strolling about.

 

Pre-H&S@W Act, indeed for a fair time after that too, some very much “wing and a prayer” access arrangements were looked upon as quite normal/acceptable - we used to walk along crane runway beams about a foot wide and studded with round-headed rivets, forty feet up in the air, no harness, no handrail, nothing!

[96701]

St Pancras Station had 3 moving powered platforms inside the trainshed. They could be moved individually or all together. I encountered them when BR handed the station over to London Continental Railway. They (the platforms) were covered in pigeon droppings, but still worked. They seem to have been removed, although the girders that they ran on are still there.

[melmerby]

Girders obvious in this photo: