robkitchuk

On 26/05/2019 at 16:03, webbcompound said:

hmm. I havn't been around there for a while. Last time I was it was "riding" chaldrons (bad) and a reconstruction of the early S&D coach (good). I'm glad I never saw the coaches you rode in. Far too many diversions from the originals they clearly are originally based on. They look like the sort of thing a Hollywood film of the 30s might have produced for a British based costume drama. With the right colours even these pastiches would have looked a bit better. Blue/green for the second, red and black for the first? Of course it is easy to play the "when I was running things" card, and I think the current  team is probably a vast improvement on some of the people in charge when I was there. That aside, running the tramway, the railway, and the site interpretation team was good fun when I was allowed to get on with it 

The coach livery was based on a Stockton and darlington drawing which has been coloured. The paints were matched from this. 

On 26/05/2019 at 12:02, Edwardian said:

Well, on Saturday I was wafted up to Heaven on a North-Eastern Early Railway shaped balloon.

 

For those, including me until yesterday, unfamiliar with Beamish, one corner of the plot is devoted to an 1820s landscape with the Pockerley Waggonway. 

 

It's been a fun exercise this morning trying to match the infrastructure to prototype examples.

 

"The Great Shed", opened in 2001, is a wonderful structure, and is said to be based upon Timothy Hackworth's Shildon erecting shop. 

 

 

I entertain doubts upon the subject - even allowing for modifications over time, it is not easy to see how the Erecting Shop at Soho Works could have resembled the Beamish structure, save in the most gerneral sense.

 

copyright - The Durham Record 

 

 

I suspect that we are in the realms of Magnificent Invention, but magnificent it is, and the structure is crying out to be modelled as part of a freelance 1830s-1840s layout.  

 

In fact, I would not be surprised if the two central elliptical arches, and the twin smoke vents, were not inspired by the Stockton & Darlington's engine shed on the bleak moors at Waskerley ....

 

 

Along the line from Waskerley at Parkhead was a stone water column, which is surely the model for that at Beamish.

 

 

 

The Great Shed contains many treasures, including the Forcet Coach (an 1860s Darlington Cttee market day coach, IIRC, latterly used for workmen on the Forcet goods branch, which ran south from the Darlington-Barnard Castle Railway at Gainford; all very familiar territory for Yours Truly) and a fire engine from Streatlam Castle, a lost great house local to me (blown up by the army in 1959).  

 

 

At the passenger platform is a rather steampunky domed iron kiosk.  I'd love to know where that came from.

 

 

 

Further along the line is a signal cabin that could have come straight out of the Forest of Boland LR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great shed, was intended to be a mix of both structures, with the double archways and vents from waskerley and the general layout of the building based on timothy hackworths erecting shop. This compromise was to increase the capacity of the building. So by creating a four road building rather than one. 

Yes that's the one. Nice to see it again. Nice to see layouts based locally to myself and they are an inspiration to my current (well part built) micro project.

Looking good Andrew, like all of your layouts. Was trying to remember a layout you had built based on the end of Sunderland station, I think it was one of yours anyway?