East Sussex Finescale
Redhill 1938
Structures
for a layout in 4mm
Building
Redhill in 4mm takes time and room. However, ESF member Ian Sneyd
is well on the way towards completion of his P4 layout and with most of the
track built and laid attention is now turning towards the detailing work.
Redhill Shed –
Water Columns
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These are the three water columns at Redhill
shed as Ian believes they were in the late 1930s. This column was scratch built, mainly from
many different sizes of brass and styrene tube and rod. Although this looks very similar to the
column below they are in fact different in almost every detail (including the
posts); this being tapered and made out of the end of a paintbrush. |
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This column was scratch built, mainly from
many different sizes of brass and styrene tube and rod. On the prototypes the handwheels were
somewhat larger but those used were the largest Ian could find. It must have
been dangerous climbing up there and these two were replaced after the war
with standard SR designs. On each model the hose is made from
heat-shrink tube. |
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This column is a standard LSWR crane made
from a Mike's Models kit. A similar crane situated on the Dover Loop
may well have survived till the end of steam. Site constraints on the model
mean this will probably have to be an LSWR-type. |
Redhill Shed
– Coaling Stage
In
the later 1920's the Southern made a number of alterations to the busy shed at
Redhill. One was the provision of a high level coal stage whereby coal could be
transferred from the wagon into tubs and then tipped into tenders next to the
stage.
In
1938 the stage was only 10 or so years old and had not yet reached the rusting
and dilapidated state shown in photos from the 1960s.
The
photos show the model which will be installed on the layout. It looks a little
out of place without the embankment on which it's perched. Currently there is a
base joining both sides but on site this will be removed and the stage placed
over the track bed which will then be raised to the right level and the
embankment built round it.
The
track through it has two complications. The track layout has had to be
compressed to fit everything into the space available and thus the gradient has
to be much steeper than the prototype. This in itself is not a problem and
trials show that even 1 in 15 does not look stupid on a model - in the same way
that 4' radius curves do not - and the locos can cope easily with that. What
they cannot cope with is an abrupt transition from level to steep. So the exact
gradient profile will be a matter of trial and error.
The
second complication is that the approach track has an interlaced sand drag to
stop runaway wagons, which one can imagine was a very real danger - the main line
was at the bottom protected only by a short sand drag and buffers.
The
height of the structure in model form has to be compromise between the absolute
need for the coal tip rails to be above the height of the customer locos and
keeping the gradient up the stage as easy as possible. Ian believes that on the
prototype the floor of the stage was roughly as rail level; here it has to be 2
or 3 mm higher.
The
structure is based around 6 large "H" girders mounted vertically and
tied together with a number of "I" beams and "L" girders
and a floor made of styrene planking with substantial floor joists underneath..
In between are a host of smaller beams to which to attach the sheeting.
There
are effectively two separate roof structures. One, as substantial as possible,
ties the front and back wall together. On top of this fits another roof which
is removable. The embankment faces under the stage also had to be made and
painted separately as otherwise the model would have been impossible to paint.
The office, or store, on the stage floor was also made entirely separately and
added at the very end.
The
wire supplies two warm white 12v LEDS in the roof, but not in the office as
that was a complication too far.
The
roof and sides were clad in corrugated iron sheet on the real thing. On the
model the entire roof and part of the one side was clad in really thin
corrugated aluminium sheet from Ambis which looks
great but proved impractical at the ends as they are comparatively difficult to
glue. Here corrugated styrene was used. The corrugated aluminium bends easily
and holds its shape so that the curved steam vent in the roof was surprisingly
easy to make.
The retaining wall at the bottom is scribed and roughened to look like the
shuttering marks and there is another metre of it to be attached either side of
the stage. Guttering and downpipes are mainly Wills but the very pipes at the
front are 1/16 brass rod. The flanged rail for the tubs is brass strip solder together
with the ends made of brass "T" angle.
The
coal tubs have small flangeless wheels produced in a leather punch and then
drilled. The wheels are mounted towards the rear to aid tipping and the doors
at the end hinge from the top. One is modelled full, the other empty. There are
some brooms, shovels and hammers lying around on the stage and when installed
some figures will be added as well. A fair amount of spilled coal is in
evidence also.
Even
though the whole is tied together with substantial beams it proved very
difficult to keep the whole thing square and level. And will be even more a
challenge when the beams are removed and it's installed on site. So it won't be
finally finished till that is satisfactorily achieved.
Redhill
Station – Public Footbridge
These photographs shew a model of the footbridge
which for countless years has carried a public footpath over the line;
severally hundred yards north of Redhill station.
At this point it crosses both the running lines
and up and down sidings in true SER style. Clearances are very restricted on
the prototype; even more so on the model. This will be seen when it's put into
position but it would have been very much more complicated to make it longer.
The bridge deck is all brass apart from the
planking which is styrene. The lattice is from Scalelink
but unfortunately they no longer do this size, just one's bigger and smaller,
both of which would have looked wrong. By pure luck Ian picked up this fret at
a model railway exhibition in a box of old frets.
Ian used the whole width of the fret; it would
have been nice if it were 6 mm longer but the complication of splicing bits
together did not appeal, hence the present size.
Each lattice has 2 pieces of "L "
girder soldered to top and bottom edges and at the ends. A flat beam is then
soldered to the "L" beams. In between there are "T" girders
soldered vertically at intervals each side. This makes it very rigid. It's
finished by a double strip of rivets along the top of the deck and curly braces
at intervals along the sides. In real life they go underneath but Ian decided it
was beyond him to do that consistently seven times. Ian also dispensed with
individual rivets on the lattice intersections as they are effectively
invisible.
Thankfully the cage covering the whole deck was
not there until more recent times but there were two lamps (probably gas) at
the top of the stairs.
The sides (stairs) are made of SEF English bond
styrene brick sheet over 60 thou styrene. The coping is styrene strip as are
the individually made stairs. Handrail knobs are the Gibson short variety.
Ground levels are different
on each side, hence the two staircases are different lengths.
The brickwork is a markedly different colour on
trackside and non-trackside faces, though this is much exaggerated by the
lighting in the photo. Trackside is still soot encrusted in 2014 and cannot
have been any better in 1938.
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