High Wycombe Broad Gauge station 1856-1862

[Miss Prism]

Looks a bit like Ashburton!

[Tallpaul69]

Hi Dave,

Depending on the date you are putting on the model, you might want to add a siding on the left hand side in picture 1. However, I am not sure if that was a post gauge change addition?

Keep up the good work!

Cheers

Paul

[David Bigcheeseplant]

As far as I can tell there was no siding there although a bit further up there was a end loading dock, also the goods shed and small turntable. 

[David Bigcheeseplant]

This is the 1:500 1875 map of the station which I am using as the basis of my model.

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by David Bigcheeseplant

[Mikkel]

A superb map, as is your virtual model.

[David Bigcheeseplant]

This is the latest building I have been working on the Langham Hotel, I have only the map and the photos to work from, it was demolished in 1936 so I just had to work out dims by proportions. looking at the photos is seems that some parts are painted brick and flint and others plain brick, I have a feeling  the rear part was an extension and maybe the third floor too as the flint and brick stop at second floor level and the upper windows are different, but who knows! I don't really know if it looked like this in 1854.

 

What designing in 3D allows is to get an idea if things do look right and change them if needed before making the real model.

   

 

Edited February 11, 2022 by David Bigcheeseplant

[Tallpaul69]

I think the siding I referred to in my earlier comment must have been a post 1875 development, perhaps when the through goods shed in the lower right of the map was abolished?

In more modern times it was a coal wagon road , so is unlikely to be accessed through a goods shed!

 

It is interesting that even in 1875 there were two goods shed. Could it be that even then they had an inward and outward goods sheds, as in more modern times, or did the two sheds deal with different commodities?

I will do a bit of research and post here any information I come up with.

Cheers

Paul

 

 

[David Bigcheeseplant]

1 minute ago, Tallpaul69 said:

 

 

It is interesting that even in 1875 there were two goods shed. Could it be that even then they had an inward and outward goods sheds, as in more modern times, or did the two sheds deal with different commodities?

I will do a bit of research and post here any information I come up with.

Cheers

Paul

 

 

The Goods shed to the left is the original Brunel terminus passenger station one one I have modelled with trainshed and engine shed. 

[Mike_Walker]

Could it be that the goods shed on the lower right dated from the opening of the railway in 1854 to complement the passengers station?  Goods sheds were provided from the start at Bourne End (Marlow Road) and Wooburn Green.

[David Bigcheeseplant]

Yes the goods shed to the right is the original goods shed, it seems that by the 1880s it was taken down and the roof trusses and other materials were used to extend the original station at the oxford end  to make one big goods shed and the long thin building to the left of the original goods shed the trusses were grafted on to the side of the trainshed and in front of the old engine shed, see my diagrams below which are drawn 180 degrees to the map above.

[Tallpaul69]

Hi David,

Your diagrams of the stages of expansion of High Wycombe Ex station to Goods Shed, as well as clearing up a number of questions, will be very useful to me in making the structure of Bradenham Inwards Goods Shed . I had thought I would copy High Wycombe Shed, but, will have to think again, as clearly two sheds cannot have the same complicated history of additions.

I might make the Bradenham outwards shed as per the original High Wycombe goods shed, and model the inwards shed on a two road version of Slough or Maidenhead sheds, both of which I have a lot of information on.

Keep up the good work,

Cheers

Paul

[David Bigcheeseplant]

Some more renders, I have adjusted the levels. and added more details to the buildings.   

[David Bigcheeseplant]

Next building I have drawn up is the goods shed, I only have the 1875 map to go on but have used Bourne End and Wooburn Green sheds as a basis and other broad gauge sheds, although the footprint is larger. The shed was taken down in 1880s and the trusses used on an extension to the original Brunel  station to make a huge shed. 

[Mike_Walker]

Do you have any idea when the Wooburn Green goods shed was demolished?

[Tallpaul69]

Hi Dave,

A couple of points on the shed, although I am no expert on Victorian Goods Sheds! :-

1) How does the "road" side of the shed work? As it stands , the only way even a short horse drawn wagon could be loaded from the platform would be sideways on rather than the more normal end on loading through an opening in the side of the shed? Also the platform as shown is very narrow and would not hold very many items. 

2) Is the only way to access the "office" on the end appears to be from inside the shed?

 

Apart from the above, this latest item looks very good! 

Cheers

Paul 

[David Bigcheeseplant]

1 hour ago, Mike_Walker said:

Do you have any idea when the Wooburn Green goods shed was demolished?

I don't know it here in this 1930s photo but had gone in the 1950s

[Mike_Walker]

Bourne End and Wooburn Green both had goods sheds of a similar design from the opening of the Wycombe Railway in 1854 although the one at Bourne End was originally on the Down side and had to be moved to the Up side to make way for the Great Marlow Railway which opened in 1873.  Both structures appear to be the same although only the roof of the original has appeared in photos seen to date so it might be the original moved or a replica.

 

In answer to Tallpaul69's question, yes there were doors in each end both for the railway and cart access with a central loading platform.  The office was accessed from this internal platform.

 

 

This 1947 view taken from the old South 'box shows the goods shed.  The opening on the right is the cart road whilst the rail entrance is hidden by the Up platform waiting room.  The building survives and is now the Bourne End Auction Rooms.  It has had the entrances blocked off  and other changes but the original arrangement can still be made out.

 

Wooburn Green appears to have had a similar goods shed.  It appears on the GWR estates department plan from the early 20th century which shows the access arrangements.  Interestingly, the 1897 25" OS map shows the rail and road access through the shed reversed with a different siding arrangement whilst the 1923 version shows the same as the GWR plan.   Again only the roof appears in this 1921 picture as it does frustratingly in David's post, but again I haven't seen any other pictures of the shed nor have I been able to determine when it was demolished - as David says, it had certainly gone post war.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Mike_Walker

[David Bigcheeseplant]

28 minutes ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Hi Dave,

A couple of points on the shed, although I am no expert on Victorian Goods Sheds! :-

1) How does the "road" side of the shed work? As it stands , the only way even a short horse drawn wagon could be loaded from the platform would be sideways on rather than the more normal end on loading through an opening in the side of the shed? Also the platform as shown is very narrow and would not hold very many items. 

2) Is the only way to access the "office" on the end appears to be from inside the shed?

 

Apart from the above, this latest item looks very good! 

Cheers

Paul 

Most early broad gauge sheds the road wagons were through the end walls rather than the side, as I have drawn. I think the entrance to the office was from the inside, although some had a door and steps on the side. I really need to study more photos, unless a photo or drawing crops up for Wycombe then it is educated guess work.

[David Bigcheeseplant]

My second attempt at laser cut flintwork for my real model this I am quite pleased with, just need to know how to paint it now.

[genixia]

Oh, another great shed model, one that I'm intending to build at some point!

Do you have a copy of The Marlow Branch? (Karau and Turner, Wild Swan).  There are several photos containing the Bourne End shed.  In particular, p79 shows the side quite well.  There were only 4 abutments, not 6, so the spans (and windows) would have been wider. The middle span did not appear to contain a window, there were only 2.  Looking at the track plans in that book the goods shed is almost square - 90% wide as it is long.

The shed at Bourne End originally had an arched entry over the track (1890s, pg 35, also reference RHW:07725 at https://swop.org.uk/swop/swop.htm ) but was sometime later squared off (pg 79).   Both road entrances were arched. 

Marlow had a shed too (also in the book). Of note, it would have been built about the same time that Bourne End moved their shed, but was of a different design - side entrances for the carts.  Track entrances were arched, although the wood panelling there ran vertically. Otherwise, similar style - vertical barred windows, office on one end.

Another detail - the central brickwork columns have easements cut out at platform height.  You can see that clearly in the Marlow photos (pg130), but none of the Bourne End photos show the track entrances that low.    It seems a bit of a kerfuffle - they could have simply built the shed slightly wider and pushed the platform out a little, so I wonder if that was an alteration to allow something specific to some particular rolling stock to pass. Folding ladder or ramp perhaps?  One photo in the book does show the Bourne End cart entrance, which also appears might have that detail (pg85), so that's a little confusing. That could also be a shadowy illusion in that particular photo. I can't be sure.

[PJBambrick]

I do have some flint infill to do on Bourne End, and I'm going to stipple it from a palette with thick acrylics.

 

Best if the brick surrounds are slightly proud, so maybe do one with all the infill area recessed ?

 

Make a mask for the bricks, stipple, then do the red brick edges with a rule, and some ref from Bourne End.

 

Worth a try.

[David Bigcheeseplant]

The wall now laminated and with windows, there is a chamfer around the doors and windows which I plan to use 1mm triangular section.

[David Bigcheeseplant]

8 hours ago, genixia said:

Oh, another great shed model, one that I'm intending to build at some point!

Do you have a copy of The Marlow Branch? (Karau and Turner, Wild Swan).  The are several photos containing the Bourne End shed.  In particular, p79 shows the side quite well.  There were only 4 abutments, not 6, so the spans (and windows) would have been wider. The middle span did not appear to contain a window, there were only 2.  Looking at the track plans in that book the goods shed is almost square - 90% wide as it is long.

The shed at Bourne End originally had an arched entry over the track (1890s, pg 35, also reference RHW:07725 at https://swop.org.uk/swop/swop.htm ) but was sometime later squared off (pg 79).   Both road entrances were arched. 

Marlow had a shed too (also in the book). Of note, it would have been built about the same time that Bourne End moved their shed, but was of a different design - side entrances for the carts.  Track entrances were arched, although the wood panelling there ran vertically. Otherwise, similar style - vertical barred windows, office on one end.

Another detail - the central brickwork columns have easements cut out at platform height.  You can see that clearly in the Marlow photos (pg130), but none of the Bourne End photos show the track entrances that low.    It seems a bit of a kerfuffle - they could have simply built the shed slightly wider and pushed the platform out a little, so I wonder if that was an alteration to allow something specific to some particular rolling stock to pass. Folding ladder or ramp perhaps?  One photo in the book does show the Bourne End cart entrance, which also appears might have that detail (pg85), so that's a little confusing. That could also be a shadowy illusion in that particular photo. I can't be sure.

I have the Marlow Branch it does have some interesting photos, Bourne End goods shed has five panels and and three windows, this seems to be quite standard on GWR goods sheds and this is what I was going to do create model of Wycombe, but looking at the 1875 1:500 map there is defiantly seven panels although the shed is wider as can be seen in the the trusses that were grafted on to the old station sometime in the 1880s. I presume that if the span was increased the distance between them was reduced due to extra load, so that is why I drew the shed as I did. I think Marlow Goods shed needs to be taken out of any comparison as it was built as a standard gauge shed while Wycombe, Bourne End and Wooburn Green were built as broad gauge.

 

I think Wycombe was built bigger than the others being the biggest town on the line, you can see also on the 1875 map there is an extension to the cart side of the building and also another covered building to the oxford end of the goods shed presumably to increase capacity. 

 

You can see the truss design on at Thame is similar but only has one iron bar on on the truss while at Wycombe there is two due to the larger span.

Edited February 26, 2022 by David Bigcheeseplant

[genixia]

Wycombe was originally built as a combined passenger station/carriage house/engine shed.  The latter two because it was a terminus when built - it was GWR practice to station the train at the end of a branch overnight.  Maybe in its earliest days it handled goods too. I would be surprised if its architectural style was the same as dedicated Goods sheds though.  Do you think that two broad gauge lines ran through the main shed originally?  I know that all the maps that I've seen have two lines, but I don't think that I've seen one from broad gauge days (pre-1870).  If so, one of the lines would have been poorly accessible to passengers because it wouldn't have had a platform and would have had the engine shed line on its other side.  That might not be a problem - I suspect that in the earliest days people were much more laissez-faire about crossing the tracks.  I note that in the earlier maps that there appears to be a ramp exiting the platform at the western end.

So I wonder if the goods sheds were built when the line opened or a little later.  Despite being built to IKB designs and specifications, and being operated from the beginning by GWR, the Wycombe Railway Company was initially an independent privately funded concern.  I suspect that they built enough to prove the service was useful and then rapidly expanded as passengers and goods started taking advantage.  We know that Loudwater didn't initially have a goods loop.  The earliest photo of Marlow Road that I can find (1875) shows wheel-barrows on the platform with no suggestion of anything built behind the station.  The station building itself looks similar to Loudwater too.  I think that the goods sheds might have appeared after the conversion from broad gauge.

(Incidentally, Iron Dukes could never have been at Wycombe.  They didn't appear until 1871, a year after the Wycombe branch had been converted to standard gauge).

[genixia]

Incidentally, your Wycombe model is spectacular!