End of the Line

It's really hard to make the big stuff fit in, so pragmatism has to intervene with much of the infrastructure supporting the running and maintenance (from carriage sheds to large workshops) of preserved lines, but you're right, the Sheffield Park shop is a bit of an anachronism, both inside and out (bluntly, it's got all the architectural appeal of an 80s retirement home).

Simon

 

I agree there. The new carriage shed building at HK may not be authentic, but how many working railway stations pre-1968 had sidings chock full of coaches stored under tarpaulins? The attached photo, from a visit in 2006, shows just how visible they are. To my mind the new carriage shed, tucked out of the way behind the station, will be much less obtrusive than the current storage arrangement. So I think this is one case where a new building could actually help a station regain some of its former atmosphere - from some angles at least!

Another point about the Bluebell is that, although SP, HK and EG will never again be exactly as they were in steam days, Kingscote station is still largely unaltered. By making compromises at three stations to ensure the railway's commercial viability, the railway has been able to preserve one station "as it was" - which makes the whole exercise worthwhile.

 

The irony on the Bluebell of course is that at different points in its pre-preservation history, Horsted Keynes was used as a dumping ground for both out-of-service locos (in the late nineteenth /early twentieth centuries) and carriages (in the early 1960s), and Kingscote (late 1950s) was a dumping ground for wagons waiting to be scrapped!

Tom

 

Photos aren't especially easy to find online, but here's one. Would need a reversion of the bunker to the original design (come on Gary / Islander / Cav ...)



via http://1920slocomotives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/226-230-curious-lswr-bunch.html

Tom

 

NNR is backdating the J15 to a Y14 (minus certain tricky, expensive and not very obvious anchronisms) so there is a recent precendent

 

London Underground have already done it!

http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=4488
http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=4481
http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=4479
http://www.cs.vintagecarriagestrust.org/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=4478

 

I know that a number are running on inauthentic underframes, but at the end of the day, most are close enough to be considered acceptable. I only did it out of interest as I was ill, wasn't meant to be definitive.

 

No criticism intended. Just an observation

 

I dont disagree that I have simplified the arguments, this thread was supposed to be on rolling stock. Do we need a thread specifically discussing the effect of EH and Other conservation bodies on heritage railways expansion and buildings

 

Which just goes to show why it shouldn't be done...

(In my, almost, humble opinion!)

Steve B

 

We have got to move away from this ridiculous notion that people from one railway cant comment on the aesthetics of another. The partisanship that comes out on this forum all too often gives rise to other insularities (such as rolling stock exchange or even volunteer interoperability) that are to the detriment of all of us. I don't think my comments were especially adverse either. No doubt the SVR have made the best compromise they could.

I don't think I said that the shed at Ropley wasn't an intrusion. Very clearly it is an intrusion to the country station that once upon a time existed there. But then, the signal box, the crossing keeper's hut, the signals and the footbridges, the water tower and the water tank, the miniature railway, the T-junction and the childrens playground, and not least the new upside building are just as much intrusions. My personal view - and I accept that this is a personal view - is that overall the fact that all of the above buildings are of a railway architecture (various periods admittedly - and excluding things like the playground and miniature railway) is to my eye a more blended scene with no one building sticking out like a sore thumb. The two buildings on the SVR I cited are not of an architecturally similar style to the railway buildings around or near them and so distract from the whole picture. By contrast the station at Kidderminster is sublime and entirely fitting, yet is only 20 years old or so. The carriage shed is TOO obviously modern and a different effect could have been achieved just with a different colour palette for the cladding and details. I could have picked on other examples, both good and bad from other railways. the SVR was handy only because most people would have seen the buildings in question.

The MHR has very deliberately chosen to seek to minimise the impact of the essential buildings (both of which incidentally were lottery funded) given that we are landlocked and had no where else to put those buildings. Furthermore I am not blind to our numerous shortcomings. We have still a long way to go.

I am reminded very much of the philosophy of the Rev Peter Denny toward railway modelling. He held that consistency of the standard of execution was the most important thing. It was detrimental to have one truly fantastic element, be it buildings or rolling stock or trackwork, rather it all needed to be of a consistent standard, so that the eye was not attracted to one element. to the detriment of the "scene". It is just my feeling that we all could learn something from that approach.

 

Where has any one said people from one railway can't comment on another?

I have no link to either railway although I have been a member of the SVR in the past, I am a much more frequent visitor to the MHR, although I tend not to linger at Ropely as in my view it is the least attractive station on the line.

You say you think your weren't adversely harsh yet your words about Highley were that it is 'utterly spoilt'

 

I was reacting to your words "I was merely commenting on someone from the Mid Hants talking adversely about the SVR when to me the necessary MHR sheds are more intrusive than the SVR ones." The implication of this statement is that I cant comment on other railways unless my own is above criticism, and this is a theme which crops up fairly frequently. Personally I want to see all our preserved lines prosper, I wish them all well, and I don't feel that my fellow volunteers or supporters of other lines cant comment on the MHR. In fact I hope they will. Likewise I will comment.

I agree that Ropley is less attractive than the other stations, but it is less unattractive than it could have been had we decided to erect buildings that were blatantly new, rather than attempt to mute their effect with choice of colour for example. If there were the land and the money I (personally) would have removed all the buildings to another site away from all the stations and created and "off-stage" area. Not off limits to visitors, but not part of the scene forming the main part of the railway. A sort of real-life fiddle yard if you like.

I said my comments weren't especially adverse, and I don't think they were. "utterly spoilt" isn't harsh, merely direct. I knew Highley well when I lived in the area, and so I have clear memories of a quiet backwater station that was if not unchanged, then certainly untouched by modernity. That atmosphere is almost completely removed and I regret that because it was arguably the nicest station on the railway for capturing the branchline atmosphere. Could this building have been somewhere else? Probably not otherwise no doubt it would have been, but it has certainly changed Highley forever, and I think the design and landscaping is a stark contrast. Perhaps I will visit again in a few years and it will have softened a bit with time. I hope so.

I don't dislike the SVR or indeed the interior of the Engine House and I applaud what it is doing. I don't like the aesthetics though, and I think we all need to pay more attention to those. The comparison with Ropley was made to show that we are trying to address this. We have a long way to go, and Ropley will never be a country station again, and in that sense is ruined, but to judge from many visitors comments what is beginning to emerge is a more attractive compromise than has been there during preservation days hitherto. That emergence is the result of trying (within the constraints of space and budget) to create consistency, something to be found in most of the popular sites we love, with the IOWR being a great example.

 

Isn't the point, we've all inherited, and preserved a branch line, but to continue you need to provide facilities that were never there and never planned to be there, but for the line to survive - they are necessary, given the fact that the line is now carrying many times more than it ever did, and it how and whereabouts you go about installing the much needed infrastructure?.......... given the constraints of the local planners and/ or EH?......

Lets face it, what were once a sleepy branch lines, are now tourist destinations, never designed to carry the traffic they now do, hence the need for all the extra facilities, they have to go somewhere - be it in the public eye or as far away as possible, and if you're constrained by the land you have, you don't have much choice where you put it...... its how you go about it - be sympathetic to surroundings, if you can... or if the planners say otherwise or EH get involved, and the allowed developement jar's with its surroundings, what do you do? Build it & be damned, or lose a much needed facility?.... and the way EH seems to be going is modernist against existing.......... so maybe the Engine House was a victim of that?.........

 

You're not wrong. The realities you describe impose compromises and choices on us all the time. I think that we must in fact resist the EH/Planning agenda (if that's what it is, but it is as good a "handle" for now as any to describe a fashionable philosophical approach to buildings) as the SVR seem to have done at Bridgnorth to their credit. We have to have the additional facilities. They have to blend in as best they can, or the essence of what we are trying to do, and more importantly what the public expect from us, will be lost, and ultimately that will harm us more than not having that building. I don't think that the choice is as binary as you describe fortunately, it is just that sometimes the fight to do the sympathetic thing is harder and requiring of more imagination.

 

Quite agree - given a previously used country station which now sees use well beyond that envisaged when built the starting point has to be ..." How would the ( insert old railway company to suit) have developed the facilities to cope with the current/envisaged number of visitors/passengers?
By looking at other examples of the specified railway's corporate architectural styles & modifying the catering & toilet facilities to suit current expectations the answers become apparent - and keep the heritage atmosphere.

 

An interesting debate thus far..
All I can add to it is that those of us who have no under cover storage look on enviously at everyone regardless of if your shed is modern or historical