ronstrutt

Fantastic developments in my absence, Adrian.

I hope that you, Mrs W.S, and all other posters had a good Christmas and are all set up for the New Year.

However, I am sad to have to tell you that you will no doubt be spending your New Year availing yourself of the services of Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Run for breach of patent, I refer to page 58 of the January issue of M.... R... which contains an article on the use of coffee stirrers for railway modelling! At the very least, I suggest that a stiff letter to the editor is called for, especially as the perpetrator admitted to stealing them from his staff canteen.

Just received Hornby's latest email, referring to this:

http://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/news/the-engine-shed/2017-announcement-the-wainwright-h-class/

Whoopee!

I'm sad that you plan to finish at Waterloo East. I had hoped that you might reopen the link from there to Waterloo:

Once across Waterloo concourse, the world's your oyster. of course. Otherwise, you'll only have the Thames to cross and Charing Cross as an option.

A quick visit to Brasted Station today from the Signalling and Telegraph Dept.

( I think they just stopped by for a cuppa, as there are only 4 telegraph poles and no signals).

Maybe the Annetts Lock on the ground frame was playing up.

Hi Ron, best of luck with the book, I will be looking forward to it. Hope you enjoy your trip along the route of the line, a picture of how it was today at Chevening Halt with the sun out. all the best Adrian

Sadly I had to postpone the photographic trip. The M25 was in a particularly bad state yesterday afternoon and I didn't want to risk it getting worse. Unfortunately I'm finding driving tiring enough at the moment without coping with traffic jams.

Don't try and drive down the south part of Combe Bank Drive if you only have a car, it really is bad, you will probably bottom out and it is not easy to turn around. Enter from the Pilgrims way.

 

Thank you for the warning. Noted! It looks as bad as Combe Bank Cutting used to be.

I'm about to drive back from Reigate to Norfolk, with a diversion to Westerham for an all stations trip to Dunton Green taking photographs of the line as it is today. I'm also going to try to walk along the surviving stretch between Westerham and the motorway with the permission of the landowner.

The good news is that a contract for my book about the line is about to be signed. The sad news is that it will only cover the closure and preservation periods. I'd been happily writing away and discovered that I was heading towards a 200,000 word epic. That would, unfortunately, have pushed the book into a price bracket that would have severely limited its sales, to the point of being uneconomic. Having said that, though, the 1950-65 period is probably the most interesting in the line's history though it probably won't appeal much to those who want to know which engine worked the 2.43 on Easter Sunday 1945. But for those who want to know how and why lines such as Westerham were closed and why the preservation scheme failed, it will be an eye-opener. It will come with a CD-ROM which will include reproductions of the important BR and Ministry of Transport documents of the period.

My work on the earlier period won't be wasted though - there's at least a couple of magazine articles to be had from it and I am also thinking of producing a strictly-limited edition of the complete thing for Kent Libraries and the National Railway Museum so that future researchers will have access to it.

Another batch of newspapers has been added to the British Newspaper Archive, including the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser.

From them, this gem dated 5th August 1892:

A capital idea has been carried out in reference to the coming Primrose League fete to be held at
Chevening. Of course the Westerham railway line carries one either way to Brasted or Dunton Green,
both stations being a few miles from the place of fete. A temporary platform however will be erected at
Chipstead bridge, and for the convenience of Westerham and Brasted members of the Chevening habitation,

the trains will stop at this platform, enabling them to be placed close by the field.

This temporary platform was, of course, on the site of Chevening Halt. I wonder if it was ever removed before being formally opened in 1906.

...On a trip last year exploring the Far North Lines I noted that part of the platforms at Forsinard had been recently renewed once again in this fashion as one end of the station is across a burn, thereby saving weight and money...

Ah, Forsinard - a delightful spot! There is almost no habitation in sight from its platforms but always a fair degree of custom.

When I was responsible for testing a new generation of railway ticketing systems, Forsinard was my station of choice for making sure that they could deal with almost anything a ticket clerk could throw at them.

Hi Ron,David, and Bigherb, thanks for replying, it does look like it could be made from timber and asbestos sheet rather like the old style garage buildings which would have been cheap to put up. I looked on the disused station site at Grain Halt, and on the web and that shows pictures of a timber halt and platform with a basic timber shelter. Later pictures show that it was replaced with a concrete shelter.

What I am thinking is that I will build it as it is shown in the pictures, as that will cover the time frame 1946 -1961 and when it is painted, it will at  normal viewing distance will be indiscernible from concrete or asbestos sheet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_Crossing_Halt_railway_station

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/g/grain_crossing_halt/

                                                                         All the best Adrian

The first Grain Crossing Halt looks exactly as I would have imagined the original Chevening Halt to have been. And they were built in the same year when railmotor services were introduced.

I cannot find a date for when Grain Crossing Halt was rebuilt in concrete but the picture clearly shows that the design of its hut was different to that at Chevening.

  Before I can continue with the construction of the platform shelter I have a question? Does any one know if the walls of the shelter in it's original form pre 1950's would have been constructed from clapboard, sheet material eg plywood or precast concrete. The  pictures that I can find seem to show the same shelter unaltered after the platform reconstruction which was rebuilt in concrete. So did they just replace the platform and leave the original shelter.The last 2 pictures illustrate what i am asking. Any help will be welcome.

 

You are quite right that the two shelters do seem to be identical, suggesting that it was not replaced when the halt was rebuilt. Sadly pictures of the original halt are few and far between.

There is, of course a third possibility. I cannot believe that Chevening would have had a concrete shelter when it was built in 1906. Concrete was in its infancy then and, in any case, the emphasis on the halts was cheapness, not permanence. The railway wanted to find out it it would be used before spending too much money. Sandhurst Halt, built around the same time, had wooden buildings and I would have expected Chevening to be the same.

However, judging by my garden sheds, cheaply erected wooden buildings don't have an infinite life and I wonder if Chevening's original hut had to be replaced in the 1930s or 40s. By that stage concrete was in vogue. If my theory is right, when the halt was rebuilt, the hut would still have been perfectly serviceable and it would probably have been put up on a concrete raft.

Just a thought.

Are they built up spurs or could they be cuttings into a bank?

Given that the land falls away there - the station approach rises quite steeply - and from the rounded shape of their outer ends, I would say that they are spurs. They are shown. though not so distinctly, on the 1895 Six-inch map, so they would seem to date from the building of the line. I wonder whether they were formed from the spoil produced when some of the cutting slopes had to be eased during the final stages of building the line to help prevent slips - or material from the slips themselves.

Just to let all and sundry know that the National Library of Scotland has begun digitising a new series of very large scale OS maps. At the moment only the Edinburgh and London areas are covered but 'London' stretches out as far as Westerham. They were all surveyed around 1960-63.

http://maps.nls.uk/view/103196986- Westerham

http://maps.nls.uk/view/103197289- Brasted

http://maps.nls.uk/view/103197592- Chevening

http://maps.nls.uk/view/103197895- Dunton Green

Incidentally, does anyone know what the three 'spurs' of raised ground running south-west away from Brasted goods yard are? Were they intended for extensions to the sidings or were they simply a handy way of disposing of surplus soil from cutting excavations? I assume they're still there.

Ron,

 

That's interesting to me, even though my field is a long way from the South East! The programme definitely intimated that he was a vocal supporter, rather than a financial backer. But I am sure that your statement is the one that is actually correct. It was looking at it from the business side, which, incidentally, it stated from the company's books went on to get over £1,000 (worth about £1 million today) of business the following year with William Tipping alone... a very good reason for Richard Durtnell to be a supporter of the railway!

 

Kind regards, Neil

He was definitely a vocal supporter. As far as financial backer is concerned, the modern sense of the word 'backer' would suggest that he put up a very large percentage of the money, which he didn't. He contributed, yes (the equivalent of £100,000 from him and the same from his son-in-law wasn't exactly chickenfeed), but no more than a number of other people. As you say, as a local businessman he had no real alternative. That whole episode is fascinating because there was clearly a strong feeling in Westerham against the idea of a railway. Its supporters were largely those who'd bought or had come into large estates which they realised would increase massively in value if a railway made it possible to develop them. Other people didn't want Westerham turned into another Croydon. There are probably many people in Westerham today who would agree with them!

Just watched a programme on BBC4 called "Hidden Histories: Britain's Oldest Family Businesses". This episode was about R Durtnell and Sons a building firm from Brasted. One of a line of Richard Durtnell's was a significant sponsor, though apparently not a financial backer, of the Westerham and Brasted line. The program is available for a month on iPlayer. There's a five minute, or so, section about 35 minutes in that looks at the line including some discussion on its backers and showing some archive footage. You've probably seen the footage elsewhere before, but I thought I should point it out just in case.

 

Kind regards, Neil

Richard Durtnell bought 10 of the £10 shares, to which he later added his son-in-law's 10 shares. This compares to William Tipping and Charles Warde, who each took 50, and Charles Thompson, the town's doctor, who took 20. In total, the company only ever sold 419 shares, raising around £4,000 out of the total £70,000 that the line cost to build (roughly equivalent to £50 million today). In terms of wealth, £10 is worth about £10,000 today.

Much the same happened when they tried to buy the line off BR for preservation.

Don't forget the London Country 410 Reigate to Bromley double deck bus went past Westerham Station, original operated by RLH and then after they lowered the roadway under the bridge at Oxted RT's, until replaced with RMC's (I liked them very comfy and warm in the winter).

 

That was one of the problems for the railway, the 705 Green Line and 410 London Country hourly buses where staggered so you only had to wait half an hour for a bus stopping at Bromley South or North stations with better connections or just shopping in Bromley.

Indeed. When I visited Westerham from the Bromley area I always caught the 410 (fares on the Green Lines were higher than the buses and the RLHs had a special appeal).  In planning the closure of the line, BR naturally promoted the replacement buses via Sevenoaks and train thence to London because that retained the greatest amount of revenue for BR, but it was a roundabout route. Getting a bus or driving to Bromley was shorter and presumably cheaper though not necessarily quicker. BR didn't even push the Oxted option because that meant revenue going to the Central Division rather than the South Eastern. Many of the ex-branch passengers switched either to Oxted, Bromley, Orpington, or other suburban stations - driving to any of these places, assuming you had a car, was straightforward as yellow lines were only introduced by the Road Traffic Act 1960 and took a long while to become widespread.

Well done on the fly-past. It reminded me a bit of the time when I went up (and came down very rapidly) in a helicopter that was practising crash landings.

I particularly liked how you managed to align before and after views. What is amazing is how much of the station site (and today's industrial estate) is accounted for by the allotments behind (north of) the platform. This is the bit of land that was intended to be the start of the Oxted extension, the junction between the Dunton Green and Oxted lines being at the far end of the platform. The Oxted line was to cross London Road by an overbridge and would have continued through the site of the Crown, so a steep gradient up from the junction would have been needed (about 1 in 50 I calculate) - a bit like the climb up into Portsmouth & Southsea High Level (1 in 61). I'm not sure where the platform(s) on an extended line would have been - not on the gradient, so presumably on the western side of London Road. The existing station would presumably have become solely goods yard.

Fascinating snippet no 834: It was Dr Beeching himself who agreed to sell the line to the Westerham Valley Railway Association for £30,000 when the Southern Region had been demanding up to £70,000 for it. The Southern Region weren't half miffed!

Hi Cromptonnut, you are talking about the fabled 'Prescott's Patent Railmobile' pictured here, taking a heavily disguised Ernest Marples (seen here in the middle with his back to us) away from Westerham Station. All the best Adrian.

Yes, I never saw it in action but it survived in the locked goods shed at Westerham until at least 1964.

Incidentally, I asked Pathe if I could use a couple of stills from their films, including one of the Railmobile, for my book. The greedy b******s wanted £50 per picture! Perhaps the preservation society should have charged them £10,000 for filming rights if they'd known how valuable the films were going to become. That would have solved their funding problems.

This picture has appeared on Ebay recently. It shows Sandhurst Halt on the Guildford-Reading line, which was built in 1909, roughly the same time as Chevening Halt. Its construction appears to be considerably simpler than that of Dorking Deepdene which was the subject of an earlier picture.

Hi Peter, I found this picture which shows it on the right hand side, and on the Hornby model that's were the location hole is.There seems to be lots of pipes on some photos, and just one or two on others, Hornby don't give you any info as to what goes where or what colour the ends of the pipes might be.

Baffled of Brasted. All the best Adrian.

Some good while ago questions were being asked about pull-push fittings on the Southern. On the basis that all SR locomotives must have been similarly fitted, here is a close-up of H Class 31324 at Dunton Green in 1961, including the air pipes and an electrical connector. The air reservoir for the system can be seen under the front of the engine.

Note, to the left of the locomotive, sundry equipments lying around in preparation for the electrification of the branch.

Wishing you all a happy Christmas and may Santa bring you all the model railway equipment your hearts could desire, and a plentiful supply of coffee stirrers.

Hi Tony, your question about nearby army camps. Close by to Westerham, is one of the great fighter stations of WW2 RAF Biggin Hill situated at the top of the North Downs.

Also at Knockholt there was a Y station working in conjuction with Bletchley Park. At the top of the North Downs overlooking Sevenoaks and the branch line was Fort Halstead

I have included a Wikipedia link to this site because right at the end of the page about notable people who worked at the establishment was a one Dr Beeching!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Halstead

So thank you for your question, It has provided me with a bit of interesting research. All the best Adrian

Sadly these sites do not seem to have generated a lot of traffic for the branch. Both Knockholt and Fort Halstead were as close to Knockholt station on the main line as to any of the branch stations and while Biggin Hill was fairly close to Westerham, there was the inconvenience called Westerham Hill in between, so, AFAIK, all freight went there via Bromley as did most of the passenger traffic. Westerham was Biggin Hill's favoured watering hole, though.

Somewhere I have a few old pictures of Dorking Deepdene aka Deepdene, aka Box Hill and Deepdene, aka that station near the big houses just outside Dorking. This was a SER/SECR structure built of wood (because it was perched on top of a tall embankment so a solid structure was out of order). I imagine that Chevening would have been of similar construction. I'll try to find them.

Found one - and probably the best one - in the first box I looked in. (One day I will get around to cataloguing what I have.)

Hope it helps. (Methinks you may need to get a few coffee stirrers.)

Hi Ron, thank you for that information, it may be a question of modellers licence, and modellers finance as to what will be run. From my point of view I just prefer the look of the old bridge

rather than the replacement, and also with the timber platform will be more interesting to build. Hopefully I will make a start some time in the New Year. All the best Adrian.

You could always build the halt at Combe Bank/Sundridge that was planned and approved but never built.

 

Whilst idling my time away in the warm,and on the internet trying to find out how sleeper built platforms were constructed (for Chevening Halt). I found this site with some proper draughtsmans drawings on it, not a cad drawing insight, that shows detailed construction drawings of some lineside structures that could be adapted for many regions. primarily they are for

MS&LRy.'s/Great Central. I have posted this link elsewhere on RMweb. The drawings enlarge just by clicking on them. Long live pen and ink drawings and draughtsmens skills of old.

http://www.swithland-signal-works.co.uk/plans/plans.htm

 

 

 

Somewhere I have a few old pictures of Dorking Deepdene aka Deepdene, aka Box Hill and Deepdene, aka that station near the big houses just outside Dorking. This was a SER/SECR structure built of wood (because it was perched on top of a tall embankment so a solid structure was out of order). I imagine that Chevening would have been of similar construction. I'll try to find them.

Hi Bigherb, that's true and thanks for pointing it out, but I wanted to model the one prior to the horrible rebuilt, when they changed the road bridge after the war and the platform. I am not sure if the platform shelter was the same one though, or did they redo that as well. All the best Adrian.

Gould's book is not too helpful on when or why Chevening was rebuilt and whether they were both done at the same time, though he does mention that a bomb fell on the line 150 yards on the Dunton Green side of the halt so maybe that did some structural damage to the bridge. The other thought is that there were problems with the drainage in the cutting - the old gault clay again. In your first picture you can see signs of problems with drainage channels in the far cutting side and in the second the substantial drains that were put in, presumably as part of the reconstruction. It may be that the old platform had to be removed to allow new drains to be put into the southern cutting side. Incidentally, in the second picture there's a leaning post in the cutting side which may indicate slipping problems.*

Gould reckons the 1950s for the reconstruction but by 1952 at the latest. I would put that back a tad. In 1951, when the line was being considered as a possible candidate for closure, the chief civil engineer was asked to defer track renewals and other items of heavy expenditure on the line. I wonder whether the cost of the Chevening work was the reason for the issue of this edict so I would guess 1950-51. Given the post-war shortages of materials I can't see it being done unless it was really vital work.I need to look that up in the early BR records at the National Archives.

So, that means you're plumping for a 1940s era for your model, Adrian. You're going to need to fettle up your skills at building locomotives and rolling stock then. That'll be an R1 and the ex-SECR railmotor set, neither of which are, TTBOMK, available as kits, let alone RTR. A wartime scene would require you to paint white stripes on the platform canopy supports to stop people walking into them in the blackout and, of course, all the model people would have to be carrying gas masks, there would have to be lots of service vehicles and service people around (especially RAF) and the advertising hoardings would have to carry government posters rather than exhorting the locals to buy things.

*By 1956 there was another serious slip in the Chevening area