Miamigo259
Registered
As part of a complete rebuild of my railway during the past year, I decided that I needed a new main station building.
I had previously built a small building with a fully detailed interior (shown below), but as I have moved to much larger outline stock, it is rather dwarfed by my bogie passenger coaches so something lager was required - the original station being dispatched to the end of a branch line (initially), but as the branch has now been lifted as part of the changes, it now will reside elsewhere on the line.
I spent some time contemplating various prototype structures which I could model, ideally something "Colonial British" style from Australia/NZ or even an Argentine station off one of the British owned lines out there.
Given where I live, I then decided to see what stations existed elsewhere in the world in towns called "Ipswich" and whether there were any photos available online of them on which to base a model. I`ve visited some of them on my travels and know that the Queensland one is basically under a shopping centre with no original buildings remaining - it`s also too large for what I wanted anyway.
The one in Massachusetts had lost its building by the time I first went there in 1987, and the one in Wisconsin lost its rail service and all buildings many years ago.
The other two ones in North America (which I have not been to) - South Dakota and Manitoba - do not appear to have any extant buildings left, judging by internet searches, but there is one place that does have a (derelict) Ipswich station, and that is in....Jamaica!
The Jamaican one is located on the now disused line from Kingston up to Montego Bay and I was aware that it still existed after it featured on a BBC 2 travel programme about 20 years ago which was presented by Marianne Faithful of all people. The trains had stopped running in 1992, but for some reason she decided to feature the abandoned building in part of the show. I remembered videotaping the programme at the time and taking a slide of a "screen shot" featuring the station nameboard. The slide was then filed away somewhere and forgotten about - I`ll come back to it again later....
I decided to have a search on the internet to see if I could come up with any detailed pictures of the structure, as the only shots I could initially find were some "holiday snap" type shots on the "Planet Ipswich" website, which didn`t show much detail though were useful for the general layout of things.
http://www.planetipswich.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=12174915
The only other photo I could find of the station was on the Jamaican "
aily Gleaner" website which shows the platform elevation in rather good detail and was the key to me deciding to proceed with a model of this structure.
Some time was spent trying to work out suitable dimensions from this picture (and the other 3 on the PI website) after deciding that the wooden planks for cladding were 5" deep and known sizes such as average door dimensions and 4` 8.5" between the rail tracks, and eventually I came up with some general arrangement drawings that "looked right" at a scale of 13mm:1 ft.
Some guesswork was neded for the parts I can`t see clearly (like to back of the building), but the platform elevation and the two ends should be a good representation of the prototype. The main picture above was taken about 15 years after the place shut, but holes where the windows were seemed to be rather obvious (or so I thought....) so these were all spaced out on the plans accordingly.
As regards the construction, I decided on a solid wooden "box" for the building with no interior. Blank windows and doors would be stuck to this "box" which would then be clad with coffee stirrers to create the planking effect. I then cut suitable parts of the "box" out of hardboard as shown below
In the end I did cut out a hole for the goods shed door, as this needed to be recessed into the building, but kept with the original concept for all of the other openings.
Size wise, the building measures L 26" x H 12" x W 8", which goes rather better with my 24" long bogie coaches!
It will take a while to complete, but further updates will be posted as work progresses...........
I had previously built a small building with a fully detailed interior (shown below), but as I have moved to much larger outline stock, it is rather dwarfed by my bogie passenger coaches so something lager was required - the original station being dispatched to the end of a branch line (initially), but as the branch has now been lifted as part of the changes, it now will reside elsewhere on the line.
I spent some time contemplating various prototype structures which I could model, ideally something "Colonial British" style from Australia/NZ or even an Argentine station off one of the British owned lines out there.
Given where I live, I then decided to see what stations existed elsewhere in the world in towns called "Ipswich" and whether there were any photos available online of them on which to base a model. I`ve visited some of them on my travels and know that the Queensland one is basically under a shopping centre with no original buildings remaining - it`s also too large for what I wanted anyway.
The one in Massachusetts had lost its building by the time I first went there in 1987, and the one in Wisconsin lost its rail service and all buildings many years ago.
The other two ones in North America (which I have not been to) - South Dakota and Manitoba - do not appear to have any extant buildings left, judging by internet searches, but there is one place that does have a (derelict) Ipswich station, and that is in....Jamaica!
The Jamaican one is located on the now disused line from Kingston up to Montego Bay and I was aware that it still existed after it featured on a BBC 2 travel programme about 20 years ago which was presented by Marianne Faithful of all people. The trains had stopped running in 1992, but for some reason she decided to feature the abandoned building in part of the show. I remembered videotaping the programme at the time and taking a slide of a "screen shot" featuring the station nameboard. The slide was then filed away somewhere and forgotten about - I`ll come back to it again later....
I decided to have a search on the internet to see if I could come up with any detailed pictures of the structure, as the only shots I could initially find were some "holiday snap" type shots on the "Planet Ipswich" website, which didn`t show much detail though were useful for the general layout of things.
http://www.planetipswich.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=12174915
The only other photo I could find of the station was on the Jamaican "
aily Gleaner" website which shows the platform elevation in rather good detail and was the key to me deciding to proceed with a model of this structure.
Some time was spent trying to work out suitable dimensions from this picture (and the other 3 on the PI website) after deciding that the wooden planks for cladding were 5" deep and known sizes such as average door dimensions and 4` 8.5" between the rail tracks, and eventually I came up with some general arrangement drawings that "looked right" at a scale of 13mm:1 ft.
Some guesswork was neded for the parts I can`t see clearly (like to back of the building), but the platform elevation and the two ends should be a good representation of the prototype. The main picture above was taken about 15 years after the place shut, but holes where the windows were seemed to be rather obvious (or so I thought....) so these were all spaced out on the plans accordingly.
As regards the construction, I decided on a solid wooden "box" for the building with no interior. Blank windows and doors would be stuck to this "box" which would then be clad with coffee stirrers to create the planking effect. I then cut suitable parts of the "box" out of hardboard as shown below
In the end I did cut out a hole for the goods shed door, as this needed to be recessed into the building, but kept with the original concept for all of the other openings.
Size wise, the building measures L 26" x H 12" x W 8", which goes rather better with my 24" long bogie coaches!
It will take a while to complete, but further updates will be posted as work progresses...........
