Focalplane
Western Thunderer
I am starting this thread for a number of reasons, but first an explanation of its title. In 1993 a geologist at the Natural History Museum published a book titled "The Hidden Landscape". Its author, Richard Fortey, wrote this on the inside book cover:
Twenty years ago I travelled to Haverfordwest to get to the past. From Paddington Station a Great Western locomotive took me westward from London, further and further back into geological time, from the age of the mammals to the age of trilobites. The train soon left the flat Thames Valley beyond Reading, and with it the soft sands and hard cobbles of the Reading Beds, laid down when there were mammals and birds on land and crabs in the sea. Then I was speeding over the chalk and back in time to the company of dinosaurs. The train travelled on toward Bath, where Jurassic limestones and shales take turns across the countryside, the former proud with ancient corals, the latter dark and low, with ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs that grasped Jurassic fish and ammonites. Under the River Severn and into Wales, and I was back before the time of the dinosaurs, to a time when Wales steamed and sweated, not with the fires of smelting, but with the humid heat of moss-laden and boggy forests in coal swamps, where dragonflies the size of hawks flitted in the mist. And then on, back further in time, so far back that life had not yet slithered or crawled upon the land from its aqueous nursery.
It seems appropriate that the description was viewed from a train. For those of us who enjoy the scenery and in my case see the view as a geological laboratory to be studied and explained, the land can give up its secrets quite easily. This being the case, our models should always try to reflect the hidden landscape.
My own model of Moor Street Station may not seem to have much to draw upon in revealing the reasons for the lie of the land or the use of building materials, but in fact there are good reasons for why the station is where it is and what it was built of, or more precisely, what it was not built of!
It is easy to take ready to plonk structures and mix them up to fit a space (which we know is always limited!) but should we have different bricks used for different buildings, or should our village scene have a stone church but red brick cottages? Generally there is almost always a case for anything, otherwise known as Rulke 1, but, sad to say a flint faced cottage from Cambridgeshire really cannot be expected to have been built in mid-Wales!
Well, enough of a preamble. I'll kick things off in a few minutes with a discussion of why a relatively young railway, the North Warwickshire Line from Tyseley to Stratford upon Avon, has one accommodation bridge that is not built of of the ubiquitous Staffordshire Blue Bricks!
And an open invitation - please contribute freely, always with the aim of adding to our WT knowledge base!
Paul
Twenty years ago I travelled to Haverfordwest to get to the past. From Paddington Station a Great Western locomotive took me westward from London, further and further back into geological time, from the age of the mammals to the age of trilobites. The train soon left the flat Thames Valley beyond Reading, and with it the soft sands and hard cobbles of the Reading Beds, laid down when there were mammals and birds on land and crabs in the sea. Then I was speeding over the chalk and back in time to the company of dinosaurs. The train travelled on toward Bath, where Jurassic limestones and shales take turns across the countryside, the former proud with ancient corals, the latter dark and low, with ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs that grasped Jurassic fish and ammonites. Under the River Severn and into Wales, and I was back before the time of the dinosaurs, to a time when Wales steamed and sweated, not with the fires of smelting, but with the humid heat of moss-laden and boggy forests in coal swamps, where dragonflies the size of hawks flitted in the mist. And then on, back further in time, so far back that life had not yet slithered or crawled upon the land from its aqueous nursery.
It seems appropriate that the description was viewed from a train. For those of us who enjoy the scenery and in my case see the view as a geological laboratory to be studied and explained, the land can give up its secrets quite easily. This being the case, our models should always try to reflect the hidden landscape.
My own model of Moor Street Station may not seem to have much to draw upon in revealing the reasons for the lie of the land or the use of building materials, but in fact there are good reasons for why the station is where it is and what it was built of, or more precisely, what it was not built of!
It is easy to take ready to plonk structures and mix them up to fit a space (which we know is always limited!) but should we have different bricks used for different buildings, or should our village scene have a stone church but red brick cottages? Generally there is almost always a case for anything, otherwise known as Rulke 1, but, sad to say a flint faced cottage from Cambridgeshire really cannot be expected to have been built in mid-Wales!
Well, enough of a preamble. I'll kick things off in a few minutes with a discussion of why a relatively young railway, the North Warwickshire Line from Tyseley to Stratford upon Avon, has one accommodation bridge that is not built of of the ubiquitous Staffordshire Blue Bricks!
And an open invitation - please contribute freely, always with the aim of adding to our WT knowledge base!
Paul
Last edited: