ronstrutt

A bit late, but does this help?

If your garden's big enough then we may be thinking Dunton Green as well, perhaps, with a continuous loop for the main line.

Network Rail are closing a lot of old signal boxes at the moment, Adrian. I'm sure they'd be able to let you have an old lever frame if you asked them nicely.

david51, on 30 Jun 2014 - 22:26, said: If that line had been built railway history in that part of Kent Surrey and Sussex would have been very different. The Oxted line would probably not have been constructed,meaning no Bluebell Railway. It was the same bank crash that did for the LBSCR's Ouse Valley line.the railway map of southern England would have been very different. David51 Curiously, the Oxted line - in the form of the Surrey & Sussex Junction Railway, running from Croydon to Ashurst Junction, near Groombridge, was already being built when this line went through Parliament and its course is shown on the detailed plan of the line. The Ouse Valley is shown on the main map, further south. The work on the SSJR was abandoned after the 1866 crash. Much of the part-complete trackbed was used for the later joint LBSCR/SER joint Oxted line that opened in 1884. It is unlikely that the Hurst Green to East Grinstead line would have been built, though, and certainly not the Bluebell from there to Lewes. Interestingly, the map also shows, very faintly indeed, the originally planned (1836) course of the South Eastern Railway before it was persuaded to share the London & Brighton route all the way down to Redhill. It ran up the Warlingham valley on a cross between the later Caterham and Oxted lines (today's Whyteleafe South station on the Caterham branch is actually on its course). From there it broadly followed the route of today's Oxted line to Hurst Green, after which it began to curve east, to run a bit north of today's SER line through Edenbridge, gradually merging into the route of the latter at what was then called Bow Beach, now Bough Beech, near Penshurst. To bring this back on topic, if that had that been built as planned, a much earlier branch through Westerham to Sevenoaks would have been a distinct possibility. You can just make the line out between the words 'Barrow' and 'Gr.'just above the word 'Oxtead' on the map above. It looks as though it was added to the map etching in 1836 and had to be removed in 1837, but that wasn't totally successful. Addition: Have a look at the left hand side of this map: http://maps.nls.uk/view/102347490 (surveyed in 1869) and you can see some of the part-complete but abandoned SSJR trackbed.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE! Don't forget, you read it here first. While you're taking drastic action at the eastern end of the line, you might want to give some thought to the western end. The attached map is part of the plans for a second main line to Brighton that was approved by Parliament in 1866. It was promoted jointly by the South Eastern Railway and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. (Yes, contrary to popular belief, they weren't always fighting each other - sometimes they teamed up to fight the LBSCR.) It would have run from junctions with the parent companies' lines at Beckenham (Mid-Kent line from Lewisham) and Penge (LCDR main line), through Limpsfield, East Grinstead, Horsted Keynes, and Lewes. The approach to Brighton would have been parallel to the coast through Ovingdean and Kemp Town. The terminus would have been directly across the road from the Royal Pavilion. A station matching the Pavlion might have been quite something! At is northern end, after passing between West Wickham and Hayes, it would have headed into the Downs through what is now Biggin Hill village. There was to be a 2,000 yard tunnel under the North Downs, emerging south of Tatsfield. A couple of hundred yards south of the tunnel mouth, there was to have been a triangular junction with a branch to Westerham. At Westerham it would have joined up with the branch from Dunton Green which was approved two years previously (shown as a dashed line on the map). The station at Westerham would have been shifted slightly to the north so that the line heading west would have passed through the site where the Crown Hotel was later built. The line would also have been raised onto an embankment to cross London Road on an arched bridge of 16 feet headroom. Westerham would have had trains to London in both directions and to Brighton. It was also intended to extend from Dunton Green to Otford, so that there could also have been through trains to Maidstone. This is not the oft-mentioned Oxted extension.of the Westerham branch. That came 10 years later and was never approved. So why didn't it happen? The answer is that in May 1866 there was a major financial crash which led to recession. In events that will be familiar to most of us, one major bank collapsed through making foolish investments and loans, taking others with it. One of the biggest railway contractors went bankrupt, as did the LCDR, while the SER cut back its spending, and for several years money for railway building was very hard to come by. When things got back to normal, peace had broken out between the various companies and any idea of building a new line to Brighton was forgotten. But that doesn't mesan it shouldn't appear in model form, does it?!

Oh, I don't know about that. Most railwaymen seem able to look very effective just standing around doing very little.

I have another little cameo for your consideration, arising from my latest purchase. An irate miller, dashing up the station approach, to deliver a letter complaining about being overcharged!

I have my ticket. What time's the next train, please?

Gould says the 1930s. His edition 1 includes a picture dated 5 May 1934 and the end planking looks fairly new then. It seems unlikely that the Southern would have acquired a GC, LMS or LNER van body when, presumably it had plenty of old ones of its own, so we can probably rule them out. Having flicked through four volumes of Southern Wagons, albeit quite quickly, and not having seen any with vertical planking that the SR acquired from its predecessors, I think I will prefer my original theory until someone comes up with a photo of a Southern v-p van. A van withdrawn in the 1930s would have been in pretty rough shape. Being left out in all weathers in Brasted Yard with little maintenance would have left it pretty well rotting away. A close look at the picture in Gould edition 1 shows that the vertical planking overlaps the right-hand corner strapping, a feature which I have never encountered elsewhere. The strapping always goes on top of the planking.

It would, I think, be odd for any van to be built with vertical end planking. The strapping would always need to be at right angles to the planking to provide structural strength. I suspect that Adrian has, perhaps unwittingly, recreated in miniature what happened to the original van, in that replacement vertical end planking was added on top of the original after withdrawal when the original began to perish. If you look closely at the photograph the vertical planking seems to stand proud and overlap the headstock. It would, of course, have been far easier to apply the replacement planking vertically than horizontally. The side, too, will have been significantly altered - presumably the original van had outward-opening doors which were replaced by a sliding door. Unless there is a photograph of the other side of the van, we will never know.

According to the closure documents in 1960 the line's coal merchants were: Westerham - South Suburban Co-operative Society Brasted - Mr Bowser - though he may have traded under a different name

It was the use of paper clips and or the shape of your coffee stirrers that gave me the thought, though both are almost certainly over-scale. Now with my lack of practical skills I'm probably the last person to talk but a jig and the use of thin wire or suitable paper clips seems to offer possibilities. I hate to put you to even more effort but it's just that fencing is such a characteristic of company origin. You can still tell which stations on the Brighton Main Line were SER-owned, except where Network Rail has tried to turn then into HMP Slade. The LSWR and the Midland had very recognisable fencing too.

Brilliant! With such skills, it still surprises me that you didn't tackle proper SER fencing.

I don't remember a proper coal office being there and I'm 99% certain there wasn't one. With the station being so far from the village I don't suppose they got many people just popping in to order coal. I wonder if they had an office or an agent in the village. People must have had a way to order coal in the days before universal ownership of phones - my family didn't get one until about 1957 and even then it was a party line - remember them? Somewhere in all the BR documentation there are details of the coal merchants at both Brasted and Westerham. Next time I come across the relevant bit of paper I will post here. As far as I can recall, by 1960 there was only one at each though I always got the impression at Brasted that there were two operating from there, though without any sound evidence to support that idea.

Interesting that, on the last day, there's still a wagon in the yard. I'm not aware of a goods train running on the last day so I wonder when it was picked up. Or did they abandon the wagon there to be used for coal storage?

A picture from Ebay of the throat of the yard on the final day: Brasted Yard

Nice bit of ballasting but you seem to have demolished the station in the process.

Should have looked at the Middleton book. Now you come to mention it, I seem to remember the staithes being built of corrugated iron - yes, an interesting choice. Do you have a supply of worn-out, semi-rotten OO gauge sleepers.

I've been thinking more about this loading dock question. The plan in post number 490 (reproduced below for convenience) must be quite old as it doesn't show the van body that was there from the 1930s (do you know what date the plan is?). The markings against the end of the northern siding (nearest the platform) appear to represent coal staithes. Picture 2 from my DVD appears to show a large spread of coal just there. This probably explains why there is a section of timber fencing between the station building and the yard entrance railings. There is quite a slope down into the goods yard entrance (the yard surface was at track level, much lower than the station entrance which was almost at platform level) and both the forecourt and the yard itself slope to the south. The very early map in Gould edition 2 shows that the southernmost sidings started out as a loop, so only one track would have been usable as a siding. The points at the yard entrance end were removed later and the two tracks became separate sidings. The marking against the southernmost siding suggests a possible loading bank there and in the bottom picture from my DVD a wagon does seem to be parked against some low raised bank. The loading dock at Westerham is in a similar position at the end of the loop headshunt and appears to have been built of nothing more than sleeper-built walls filled with ash and earth. The one at Brasted would presumably have been the same, so this may have been it. I hope this makes sense.

Thanks, Adrian, but I found that a chisel and mallet worked fine. Mind you, I think that hammering the VHS cartridge in has distorted the picture a bit.

The van is picture 3g on this page: http://www.bullfinchclose.co.uk/WesterhamFlyer/Gallery3/westerham_train_thumbnails3.html No sign of a loading dock. However a van or truck could be offloaded into the old van body - a sort of mini goods shed - and accessed by road the other side. It's position can be located by the position of the corrugated hut at the end of the platform behind.

No - not on the DVD. These were the only screen grabs of the yard area that I could get from that. Sadly, film to DVD to screen grab means the quality is pretty awful.

There was an ancient van body there too, I believe of LBSCR origin, that was used as a store by the coal merchant. I thought that was just on the left inside the yard. It survived until at least 1964-5. Unfortunately, Nick Catford's Disused Station site http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/b/brasted/index.shtml doesn't help too much with pictures of the yard. The annoying thing is that I have recently seen a picture taken from the yard points looking into the yard taken, I think, on the last day, because there are enthusiasts wandering about all over the place. Now where was it? It might have been on that TV programme referred to earlier. If not, it was on one of the DVDs/videos about the line which the programme encouraged me to dig out and have a look at. If it's on DVD I might even be able to take a screen grab but my laptop hasn't got a slot big enough for a VHS video.

Absolute perfection. It makes me wish that when I repaired the sign in the mid-1960s I'd put a border on it but I don't think there were enough stones left at that time. They're presumably scattered in the foundations of the M25 now. Brasted is coming on in leaps and bounds now. Are thoughts beginning to turn to Chevening Halt now? Quite short, hardly a challenge at all really.

Back in the days when I used to smoke, I collected jars full of the contents of ashtrays. It looked about right when sprinkled onto a glued surface to represent a engine shed yard or the like. Stank to high heaven, though! Of course, the problem is that ash is gritty looking but very fine grit. My worry is that fine enough sandpaper may look too even. I used to use wet and dry paper for gritted platform surfaces. I can't wait to see what innovative solution you will come up with.