Cuckmere Haven - a very small slice of southern electric.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve closed my “this could be the start of something small thread” now that the dimensions of small (scenic area 1800mm x 400mm), and the “something” (4mm/ft, Southern Region, 1970s) have become settled, and will try to keep this one more tightly on theme.

 

We are at the seaward end of the Cuckmere Valley in East Sussex, just south of what is now the Seven Sisters Country Park Visitor Centre at Exceat, for those who know the area.

 

The railway started life as the Cuckmere Valley Light Railway (a real scheme that was kiboshed at the public inquiry stage in 1899, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/8fcf6125-3f05-4f65-b829-909f96456d9b), palmed-off on the LBSCR, and inherited by the SR, who saw the opportunity to despoil the landscape with a seaside resort, so electrified and somewhat upgraded the line in 1936-37. The War put paid to the resort idea, as it did to several other similar SR schemes, and the line bumbled on, depending upon slowly increasing tourist/leisure traffic, and traffic from the ramshackle plant of East Sussex Transport & Trading (a very real sand and gravel extraction firm that had its own quite long 2ft gauge railway, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/5c7c5017-d884-4a9b-8e0d-4905c355e29a , the date of this agreement is a bit of a mystery, because their railway was in place long before 1950).

 

We arrive about 1970, and depart no later than about 1982, during which timethe passenger train service is provided by successive generations of two-car EMU, and sand traffic from EST&T trundles up the valley, a few wagons a week, behind a shunting loco that is out-based on the line, to be attached to freight trains at Berwick, from where it goes to the midlands somewhere to be used in the making of very coarse sandpaper.

 

The track-plan will look something like this (ignore the Terrier, imagine that the top left siding goes into the premises of EST&T, and that the passenger platform is on the right, where that hut is standing):

 

 

The greatest inspiration in terms of aesthetic is to be Southease & Rodmell on the Seaford branch, which is to say SR concrete-economical at its best.

 

I’m rather fishing for help with some of this, because I’ve not touched standard gauge in 00 or H0 since a US layout that I built c1990, and am all at sea when it comes to sources of parts, kits etc. The thing in my favour is that I knew the railways of this area in great detail in the 1970s, so know exactly what I’m aiming for in terms of atmosphere (faded glory!).

 

Edited February 29 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Have a look through the several photos here:

 

 

Similarly utilitarian approach at Norman’s Bay:

 

 

And at Aldrington:

 

 

All the former LBSCR “motor train halts” were treated in a similar (lack of) style when the lines were electrified in the 1930s, so this is the look I’m after.

 

 

Edited February 29 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

It’s so comforting to see familiar faces.

 

[Metropolitan H]

10 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It’s so comforting to see familiar faces.

 

Very good, but do you really need two (2) units to run the proposed branch line?

 

still think they look better in green - with smaller spolges of yellow.

 

Regards

Chris H

[Nearholmer]

One on; one off; and, one in the wash.
 

As they said about The Great Kings Lynn Derailment of 1887.

 

 

[Miss Prism]

Love the Southease pic - so much character.

 

[dseagull]

You'll most probably be wanting the platform 'legs' from Dart; https://www.dartcastings.co.uk/dartcastings.php#DETAILINGPARTS(OOGAUGE)

[phil_sutters]

26 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

Love the Southease pic - so much character.

 

Somewhat less in recent years.

Will someone get nostalgic about 313s?

[phil_sutters]

On 29/02/2024 at 17:04, Nearholmer said:

 

the ramshackle plant of East Sussex Transport & Trading (a very real sand and gravel extraction firm that had its own quite long 2ft gauge railway, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/5c7c5017-d884-4a9b-8e0d-4905c355e29a , the date of this agreement is a bit of a mystery, because their railway was in place long before 1950).

 

We arrive about 1970, and depart no later than about 1982, during which timethe passenger train service is provided by successive generations of two-car EMU, and sand traffic from EST&T trundles up the valley, a few wagons a week, behind a shunting loco that is out-based on the line, to be attached to freight trains at Berwick, from where it goes to the midlands somewhere to be used in the making of very coarse sandpaper.

 

According to Paul O'Callaghan in his book 'East Sussex Coastal Railways - Volume 2', the original promoter of the 2ft line, A.F.Smith Ltd. negotiated a lease to construct the line with permission to extract 4000 cubic yards of shingle a week from 1933. The line ran just over a mile from a wharf at the beach up a far as the their goods yard beside the A259, where the southern visitors'car park now sits. World War 2  stopped this traffic. The area was a training ground for, among others, troops from Canada. The area that is now Friston Forest was used for tank crew training. So the 1950 agreement was for the post-war phase, which finished in 1964.

Edited March 2 by phil_sutters

[Nearholmer]

8 hours ago, dseagull said:

You'll most probably be wanting the platform 'legs' from Dart;

Huge thanks for that pointer. I was looking at “legs” in Southern Nouveau yesterday, and thinking that I might have to devise a mass-production method for them.

[Nearholmer]

7 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

So the 1950 agreement was for the post-war phase, which finished in 1964.

Not in this model railway alternative universe it didn’t …….. otherwise I’d have no goods trains.

[phil_sutters]

56 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Huge thanks for that pointer. I was looking at “legs” in Southern Nouveau yesterday, and thinking that I might have to devise a mass-production method for them.

Would the Airfix/Dapol platforms be an alternative? There are ads on line from £4.50 a pack. (up to £19.99 - cos they're vintage and collectable!!) They have concrete legs* on one side and a brick wall on the other.

*That is assuming they are actually good representations of the Southern style.

Edited March 3 by phil_sutters

[Nearholmer]

I’d forgotten that, so will have to check. The Dart ones are exactly right, but they will work out expensive.

[Geep7]

As a cheaper alternative for the legs, if you're up to a lot of cutting, you could use some Plastruct I beam section.

[Nearholmer]

I think that if I have to make, rather than buy, legs, I would probably make a master set, maybe four entire assemblies, and attempt to cast them using resin, or sweet-talk somebody into laser-cutting them in ply. I think I-beams would look too like the more modern, all-steel, designs, rather than concrete.

 

The easiest option, of course, would be to use the PECO concrete platform fronts, which represent exactly the same thing in its “enclosed and back-filled” form, but the open trestles are so much a feature of these low-grade places that were rebuilt for electrification that I think I really have to do it the hard way.

 

This is “down the road” anyway, because there is a lot to do before we get to scenic embellishments.

 

Actually, can I ask a couple of other “down the road” questions?

 

- have Bachman every produced the BR 2-HAP in plain blue livery?

 

- is there a kit for the “SR” 2-HAP available these days?

 

 

Edited March 3 by Nearholmer

[GRASinBothell]

If Cuckmere Haven is the terminus of the line, presumably it would have something a little more prepossessing in the way of station facilities than the huts at Southease or Normanton. Perhaps something in Art Nouveau style, like the Southern Railway built at Seaton when they decided that was going to be a resort...

Gordon

[Geep7]

13 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Actually, can I ask a couple of other “down the road” questions?

 

- have Bachman every produced the BR 2-HAP in plain blue livery?

 

- is there a kit for the “SR” 2-HAP available these days?

 

 

Sadly Bachmann haven't done the BR Hap in plain blue yet. I suspect that they will announce a run of them the minute I paint my DC Kits BR Hap in blue....

 

For the SR Hap, I don't think there are any current kits, but I know No Nonsense Kits (now owned by Precision Paints) do the ends (ex-MTK I believe), and etched window frames, but i'm not sure if they do any sides.

[Nearholmer]

10 hours ago, GRASinBothell said:

If Cuckmere Haven is the terminus of the line, presumably it would have something a little more prepossessing in the way of station facilities than the huts

It would certainly have been in the character of The Southern to provide a decent station as a spearhead for bungalowfication of the place when upgrading the line, so quite why they didn’t here, when they did at, say, Bishopstone, and Allhallows, neither of which ‘took off’, I’m not sure, but they didn’t.
 

Maybe things were at a critical stage  when they realised that war was inevitable, just as the New London Airport development at Lullingstone was. There the new station was three-quarters finished, when:

 

“The Southern Railway announces that the opening of Lullingstone Station (between Swanley and Eynsford) to serve the Lullingstone Airport, announced for April 30, is “unavoidably postponed.” [Daily News, London, Wednesday, 26th April 1939]”

 

It never did open, although bits of it were still in situ when I used to have business at the adjacent substation in the 1980s.

 

Or, maybe this layout is more like an overgrown diorama, so doesn’t have room for a big building. Or, maybe there was something rather special about places like Southease, where you bought your ticket from the signalman (there were others like that, on the West Croydon - Wimbledon Branch, for instance), and then had utter peace to listen to curlews and gulls while waiting for the train.

 

 

 

Edited March 4 by Nearholmer

[Oldddudders]

13 hours ago, GRASinBothell said:

If Cuckmere Haven is the terminus of the line, presumably it would have something a little more prepossessing in the way of station facilities than the huts at Southease or Normanton. Perhaps something in Art Nouveau style, like the Southern Railway built at Seaton when they decided that was going to be a resort...

Gordon

More locally, Cooden Beach comes to mind. 

[number6]

Anything nice and 30s Southern in the Cuckmere Valley would have been flattened by the Army during the War. They even used Belle Tout lighthouse as target practice!

 

I have this fascinating book about the valley. Including how it had a decoy lighting setup to pretend to be Newhaven and distract bombers. The whole of the Downs and all the coastal area here was airfields and tank roads and crawling with training and exercises and high risk for invasion. Like at Tidemills between Newhaven and Bishopstone all buildings of note were flattened to reduce cover for invading forces. 

 

 

Think the tiny wooden office on concrete platform is just right for this location. Beautiful as it can be it is one of those landscapes that is actually quite scarred and even the straight channel cut for the Cuckmere makes in barely a natural landscape anymore and very 'manmade' even if its pretty much the only section of the coast that is not built up.

[Mol_PMB]

I do like this concept of a 'branch to nowhere' being electrified, out of principle that the maximum efficiency is gained when the whole network is electric.

Something often seen in Switzerland where there are plenty of electrified single-track branches with just an hourly railcar service.

It wasn't entirely unknown in the UK, other examples are the Braintree and Holcombe Brook branches.

Add to that the 1930s Southern style and I'm really looking forward to seeing this develop!

[Nearholmer]

Yes, one of the many reasons why it’s such an interesting spot is the military remnants. Even in the tiny space I’ve got, I’ll need to include a bit of abandoned military concrete, probably dragon’s teeth are all that I can fit though. The locale has gradually been ‘gentrified’ since it became Seven Sisters Country Park; it had more of an air of abandonment about it, even as recently as the 1980s. 

 

“Wet String” electrification of branch lines is a lot simpler at 25kV, because the currents, and therefore voltage drops, especially with a single train driven gently, are very low. I haven’t dug out old reference material and done the calculations, but six miles of single track from Berwick on the third-rail system would have been right on the limit, even with the low starting currents of two car sets. My instinct is that it could possibly have been done by using “negative reinforcement” (scrap running rail laid in the four-foot and bonded to the running rails), and a track-paralleling hut part way (to give a circuit breaker that could be set very low; I don’t think that Track-Current or Track-Impedance relays were used in the 1930s), but it might have been necessary to run 33kV to a rectifier at a mini-substation part-way, which would have pushed costs up markedly. Certainly if the thought was to grow the traffic significantly, then the latter.

Edited March 4 by Nearholmer

[The Lurker]

Thinking of military hardware, would you be able to fit a pillbox in? There are several at Cuckmere Haven still, and pillboxes were certainly sited along the SER mainline - there was in the woods we used to play in just by Paddock Wood station.

[Flying Pig]

On 29/02/2024 at 17:04, Nearholmer said:

The track-plan will look something like this (ignore the Terrier, imagine that the top left siding goes into the premises of EST&T, and that the passenger platform is on the right, where that hut is standing):

 

 

Is there going to be more at the far end?  As it is, the sand siding (in which I guess much of the play value resides) is disappointingly short and the long kickback has so litle headshunt it doesn't seem usable.

[Nearholmer]

The first point to note that the far end goes into a fiddle-yard representing the line to Berwick, which I probably ought to have mentioned before, because it is quite important! The second point is that the photo exaggerates the near, and compresses the distant quite severely.

 

As it happens, I was fiddling about with the track layout again yesterday evening, and what eventuates will probably not be exactly like this anyway. You’re right that the sand traffic is key to play value, and I’m even toying with the idea of providing EST&T with their own SG shunting loco, possibly an RH 48DS that can only manage one or two loaded wagons at a time, to maximise play.