Edwardian

Yes, you are! And that's good to see. Shaping up nicely. Contrary to that Idiot Song, happiness is very definitely not a platform shelter without a roof!

Excellent, David, thanks. Here it is as a compete texture sheet

He of the rockets!

I suspect ChrisN is an inspiration to a number of us, and the interest in, and support of, other people's projects is both generous and provides much needed encouragement. (bet I've made him blush, now). The great thing about the earlier period is that your layout will look less like everyone else's, but, of course, you should run anything and everything you have on it just as you like!

Yes, thank you, great for the coursed variety. Here is what I had to use for my texture sheet:

On an A4 sheet, repeating patterns are obvious. I find this true of a number of proprietary brick papers, which are obviously made from a repeated image of real brick-work, in the same way as my sheet. Areas between doors, windows and other interruptions are relatively small, so I have not yet found repeating patterns to be a problem. But the proof of this particular pudding .... In any case, this is a photograph of the pdf on screen, so not the best picture. I have not been able to print it out. The sheet may need redoing with the images lightened, or, it may not. I am pretty happy with the colour enhancement and the scaling, but this will be trial and error and I won't know until it's printed. It could be a complete failure, of course! I had only one, small, area of carstone wall, photographed in fairly indifferent light, to work from, but I do not despair of it proving adequate. I am open to Simon's suggestion of trying to add relief to the texture sheet, but my view is firmly that I should stick to the printed medium and if flint did not need relief, I am not convinced that the carstone does. Kevin, carstone is used in a number of different ways. There is, I gather, Small Carr, which tends to be darker and browner, which is, I suspect, what I am dealing with, and Big Carr, which tends to be a more yellow-ironstone shade. Big Carr is used in small blocks and was employed either un-coursed, what I think Americans might know as "fieldstone", or coursed. Coursed carstone might have galleting (small dark flints or pebbles set in the morar courses). I have seen Small Carr in small stone courses, but in Victorian buildings in the Hilington-Flitcham-Sandringham area, it seems to take the form of thin slivers in a coarse horizontal pattern and used as an infill between masonry quoins, much in the way of flint. From what I can tell from photographs, this style of carstone is found in a number of buildings in Downham Market, notably the station.

Thank you, Simon. Part of the object of this first layout was to see what could be achieved with card and paper, and this should, in theory, aid consistency of appearance. Embossed plastic card and scribing are things for the future, I feel. With this in mind I thought to create my own printed texture sheet for carstone. It remains to be seen how it will look once printed and applied.

Very much enjoyed catching up with this topic. A smashing and very suitable prototype, particularly interesting in the earlier period. It certainly shows the advantage of proper layout planning (ahem!). Look forward to developments.

Thanks to Caley Jim for the very helpful PM. We are assuming c.1900 for the wagon, so fine for my purposes. I owe everyone here a lot, and not just for the supportive comments, advice and information. I have also received practical assistance with rolling stock information and plans, building plans, photoshop work and excellent and usable photographs to help with the buildings. I am grateful to you all. In many cases, apart from shortage of time, a shortage of materials prevents me from acting on this assistance at present, but I will do what I can. I have produced a carstone texture sheet pdf, for example, which I hope when printed out will prove suitable for the station building.

An online search for the company shows proposals for sidings at its factory dating from 1905. It would be nice to think that the wagon is at least as old as this planned facility.

Well, I enjoy New Augustan literature, with its p1ss-pots and scatological humour, as much as the next man, but I fear that Castle Aching must by now be in danger of being mired, perhaps subsumed entirely, in the flow of pungent substances of one kind or another! I think that the gentle, essentially whimsical, nature of Castle Aching might be satisfied by a mild visual joke along the lines of a Norfolk Fish Oil & Guano Co. Ld. rectangular tank wagon. I do not have the Touret volume on PO wagons in which the prototype appears, and I will apply to Caley Jim for details. Provided, however, the wagon is old enough and I can obtain some basic dimensions, in particular wheelbase, I am minded to have a stab at producing an approximation of this vehicle (or at least get rather closer to it than Dapol!).

No market in chicken sh1t, presumably. I really like that Scottish Fish Oil & Guano Co. tank wagon. What vintage is it, I wonder? What exactly was involved in this business, and might there not have been a Norfolk Fish Oil & Guano Co. with similar wagons?!?

Yay!

A pity you let it go, Jonathan, not least because I suspect that shedding a fatter volume would have been more to the purpose. Perhaps you could try Yellow Pages for a replacement; "Have you by any chance a copy of The Fossilised Sh1t Railways of Cambridgeshire by J R Hartley? Oh you have, splendid ..." Yes, the poor promoters of the West Norfolk. Whenever one was at a social gathering, where people politely enquired as to his business interests, he was bound to reply "I'm in guano". The Memsahib was, for some years, head of European marketing for a commodity trader in petro-chemical derivatives. This meant I could introduce her with the words "my wife is in PVC". Sadly, I was never allowed to.

Kevin, That looks like a fascinating article. I love the locomotive on the Cambridgeshire line! I could never make anything like that work, but what fun. I notice from the chart that output nationally had all but ceased by 1902. It is clear from the (much better) map in the article that deposits were within reach of the WNR, so grass-grown and largely OOU it would be. On the subject of scatological investments, it was rather poor luck on the part of the promoters of the West Norfolk that they invested heavily, but late and after the boom years, not only in the Castle Aching Coprolite Company, but in Peruvian Guano. I feel for them.

That is a great picture, Kevin. Certainly lower greensand extends far enough north to be near the WNR. Essentially, I don't understand the geology sufficiently! In any case, I gather that the industry collapsed rapidly from 1890 due to cheap imported fertilisers, so might not be the best source of traffic for a layout set in the Edwardian years. Mullie, you are very kind, especially as Pott Row is a proper grown up layout, well planned and executed, and featuring very fine work on both the scenic side and the stock.

Your layout has track; looks like progress to me!

Don B, welcome to this, somewhat eccentric, corner of the site and thank you for posting. As I found, there are more standard gauge verandah coaches out there than you might suppose, and, when you go to lie down, take a glass of single malt and R W Kidner's Carriage Sock of Minor Standard Gauge Railways (Oakwood Press) with you. I recently acquired this slim but fascinating volume for a keen second-hand price, following the recommendation of Nearholmer of this parish. A geological interlude may be enjoyed at http://www.hunstantonfossils.co.uk/Hunstanton-Fossils-Geology/geology-guide.htm, from which site I reproduce the image below:

Beautiful station building with very subtle effects. I'm with Armin, those are lovely buildings and as 'wings' for an exit they provide an elegant Ricean solution. I don't know what your viewing height or angles are, however, as I suspect these devices work best when viewing angles and heights are restricted. If similar to the photograph, I would say they are working fine.

My thought exactly, and if I could Photoshop, I'd have included one! It needs a lot of greenery; gardens, cracks in the path and along the edges of the buildings in particular. I think there ought to be some sprouting on the gatehouse too. I have not yet tried modelling vegetation yet, so I will need to steel myself to attempt something new soon! Where will the railway run? I see that I will have to come up with an answer to that soon.

John, thank you, you are far too kind. I really, really, like that dairy. Among its merits is the skilful way that you have harmoniously combined different media, including plastic card and printed roofing texture. I also like the figures. Just right.

Alright, then. I can finally visualise the complete station, which I could not before. The Aylesford/Wateringbury design in carstone works for me. That was the key. Thank you T&A; I await the plans with eager anticipation. We know these stations to date from the 1850s, and R-A-R David has helpfully confirmed the date of the stylistically similar Hillington school. Seeing the idea realised at Downham Market clinches it. Shadow, you raise the intriguing and incongruous possibility of Royal, as well as aristocratic passengers. It seems entirely feasible that a railway company in west Norfolk might have produced such a structure. All I have to do is start the story of the railway 20 years earlier, either as a railway running since the late '50s or by Jonathan's cunning method, which has its charm; a narrative twist that may add a note of verisimilitude to the history of the line. In the meantime, while history has been evolving in others' hands, my hands have been sticky with glue, paint and DIY filler in order to finish the medieval gateway at the entrance to Bailey Street. I think the impetus to getting on with this bit, finally, came, if I'm honest, from Kevin's fish tank ornament post. I really like the folly castle and can see that working as a piece of model railway scenery without too much work. What I have done, then, is essentially to create a fish tank ornament, though, perhaps unwisely, in cardboard.

However, I think Simon and Northroader are correct to choose carstone. You can see from Northroader's example, actually in carstone from the looks of it, that it is the same style as Aylesford and Wateringbury. The obvious difference is the use of the Dutch-style gables. Windows and chimneys are all of a piece. A nice example to validate the theory of adapting Aylesford to carstone. Carstone seems the most appropriate material. It seems to have been the preferred material for the Victorians. Thinking of the Aylesford design immediately put me in mind of the beautiful old school hard by the former M&GN station in Hillington. I had intended to model this school, but never managed to get decent photographs of it. I rely below on a scrappy Google Earth image. You can see the material used all over that area, but some splendid 1830s neo-Jacobean is the gateway to Hillington Hall. The Hall itself was demolished in 1946. I note that the school uses red brick quoins, Northroader's station yellow brick and Hillington Hall gateway, stone. I think brick would have been generally most suitable for a station, but the proximity of the stone castle and the nearby stately home and aristocratic patronage that we are weaving into the story, perhaps argues for the dressed stone of Aylesford with carstone as the infill, taking the place of Kentish ragstone?

I was about to agree, when Northroader illustrated that very fact. I like the pale irregular stone of the Kentish example, and it could be reproduced in what Wagonman has identified as Norfolk clunch (hard chalk). Below are examples from Burnham Overy Town (Shadow's picture of the Caryatid house) cottages at Burnham Overy Lower Mill, and a substantial farmhouse in Hillington, which seems to feature flint, brick and carstone as well, all in the course of a single façade! A charming alternative is the distinctive style of the Lynn and Hunstanton Railway. Another GER constituent and from the early 1860s, so a little later than the 1840s Suffolk or the 1850s Kentish neo-Jacobean. Ultimately, however, I rejected this as I did not want to confuse the WNR with the L&HR. The picture is of Dersingham.

I think we have a winner. I am charmed entirely by SER stations at Aylesford and Wateringbury. I take note of the fact that Neo-Jacobean stations were also found on GER constituents, notably at Stowmarket, a station I know well. The dates (1840s-1850s) are a little earlier than anticipated for the WNR, but history is there to be rewritten. I will PM you.