Blackwall pre-1848

[Dunalastair]

Following a useful discussion on a prototype thread, and the receipt of the book 'Stepney's Own Railway', I have started on 3D design for the London & Blackwall Railway's Blackwall station in the days when the gauge was 5' and the traction was by rope. This render shows progress to date with the elaborate Tite building - proportions are not 100% correct, but it is beginning to look like the early 1840s on the Thames.

 

 

The plan is for a static diorama at a scale of 1:300 using mainly 3D printed components, in the style of some of my other early-era dioramas.

 

Edited May 26 by Dunalastair

[Orion]

Nice to see something in 3D and good luck with the project.

 

Obviously its early days as you say, but do check where the curtain walls beyond the building are located as its pretty fundamental to the roof design. Looking at maps and the published plan I think they run from about the middle of the men's toilet block, not the inner edge. Same alignment on the other side too, which shows more clearly on the published drawing. It's critical, as it influences the width of the roof spans. 

[Dunalastair]

1 hour ago, Orion said:

 

...  do check where the curtain walls beyond the building are located as its pretty fundamental to the roof design. Looking at maps and the published plan I think they run from about the middle of the men's toilet block, not the inner edge. Same alignment on the other side too, which shows more clearly on the published drawing. It's critical, as it influences the width of the roof spans. 

 

 

That has already changed, thankyou, though I have been scratching my head about some aspects of the design. The drawings do not always seem to reflect what appears in prints and photographs. To what extent that reflects changes over the years or changes at the time of building is not altogether clear. The drawings seem less symmetrical on the whole, but perhaps that is my interpretation.

 

This is a render of the latest version:

 

 

 

Edited May 26 by Dunalastair

[Orion]

I suspect the main building and the wing walls/roof were designed by separate people. 

 

When it comes to the roof and other details, an extract from The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland, Francis Whishaw 1840

 

Gauge of Way, &c.-

The gauge adopted on this line is the same as that of the Eastern Counties Railway, viz. 5 feet ; the intermediate space is 5 feet 5 inches, and each side-space 4 feet 10 inches, making the clear width between the railings 25 feet 1 inch. 

 

This gives you an idea of how wide the overall trackbed has to be, amongst other things.

 

...These two lines under the north shed terminate on two turn-tables, each of 13 feet diameter.

 

suggests from my simple maths that the turntables had to be staggered - not enough room for them directly side by side and needing recesses in the north wall for the carriages to turn around. 

 

...CARRIAGES.

The carriages in use on this line consist of first-class, mixed, and third-class. The first-class carriage consists of four compartments, each of which will hold ten persons, or forty in all ; its length is 20 feet, and width 7 feet 6 inches; it is mounted on six wrought-iron wheels of 3 feet diameter, and is furnished with improved springs, each 3 feet 9 inches from point to point. The mixed carriages consist of two central first-class and two end Stanhope compartments. The first-class compartments will each hold ten passengers ; and the Stanhope compartments each twenty, or sixty in all. A third-class, or Stanhope, is 18 feet in length and 7 feet 6 inches wide, and will hold about seventy persons.

 

The early maps show a recess in the north wall at the west end of the station too. It must have been necessary to get carriages from the carriage siding onto the south track, so I guess there was a facility for this at the west end of the station, though it is not mentioned in the station descriptions. The north wall must have been rebuilt at some point in concrete (as per all the photos) so this recess disappeared.

 

A quick, back of the envelope calculation suggests to me that the 2 spans of the station roof were probably of the same span, hence my earlier concern that you got the wing walls in the right place.

 

Edited May 26 by Orion

[Dunalastair]

14 hours ago, Orion said:

 

A quick, back of the envelope calculation suggests to me that the 2 spans of the station roof were probably of the same span, hence my earlier concern that you got the wing walls in the right place.

 

 

Thankyou once again. 'Back of envelope' about describes my approach. The arcade wall has been moved forward once again for this development, with three 5' gauge tracks, the 'south' platform, and two equal span roofs. Available images seem to suggest that the roofs were solid (slate? tile?) rather than glazed - presumably the lighting was by the semi-circular windows in the arcade? From a model perspective, especially at 1:300, this means that little will be visible inside the train sheds. The same issue arises when I have been looking at the original Haymarket train sheds, though there the sides seem to have been open.

 

I have shown sleepered track, but that begs the question as to whether stone blocks might have been used instead. It is possibly academic for a model, given that the ballast usually buried either sleepers or stone blocks at this time, and early illustrations do not clearly show either, whether before or after re-gauging and locomotivisation.

 

It is also perhaps worth mentioning that there is no need to represent the rope, as this ended to the West of the station. Trains coasted into and gravitated out of either terminal on the original L&BR. 

Edited May 27 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

Back from what turned out to be a longer run than first planned along the line of the tracked hovercraft at Earith (and back), here is a render of some indicative L&BR carriages, based on the four-compartment first class design. 

 

I have also included a couple of representative turntables to move carriages from the siding to the down platform to make up a longer train to Minories. Between starting trains down the incline to the rope engine and moving carriages between lines, company employees must have needed strong arms and legs.

[Dunalastair]

Those carriages looked rather clumpy with cylinders as wheelsets, so a few changes make them look a little less clumsy and perhaps more printable at 1:300 on a filament machine.

 

There are also now more carriages, more bays, more track and more chimneys. Copy and paste is a wonderful thing - a shame that it does not work for real objects in quite the same way.

[Orion]

That's starting to look really good.

 

References do say there was quite a long glazed section in the roof, though it doesn't specify where.

 

The roofs are of light appearance, being constructed of iron rafters, braces, and ties. The sheds are well lighted by large sky-lights in the roofs; and in one part the covering consists entirely of glass.

 

As for track, chaired rails with cross sleepers were used, ballasted with Thames gravel. 

 

Photos and drawings suggest the roof was slightly recessed below the top of the screen wall - see the drawing in a previous post above.

[Dunalastair]

15 hours ago, Orion said:

That's starting to look really good.

 

References do say there was quite a long glazed section in the roof, though it doesn't specify where.

 

Thankyou for the kind words, and the useful confirmation of glazing.

 

How to represent a glazed roof at 1:300 will need some thought. I have previously printed a roof (apertures, no glazing) at 1:148 for my Fort William layout. A little crude, but better than the inkjet printed version I used before. Shrinking that approach to 1:300 might be a challenge. A simple recess for the glazing then painted silver might be a simpler approach, but would not show the interior.

 

 

Back down south at Blackwall, progress is still limited to the 3D design tool. One of the carriages is now a shorter 'Stanhope Standup'. The roof supports are rather chunkier than they should be, but with the small size at 1:300, assembly might otherwise be tricky. I have also revised the arcades, opening up the semicircular windows, panelling the doors and recessing the roof landing. At some point I will need to decide how many units of arcade to include - probably fewer than the original's eleven at each end.

[Orion]

The Euston roof (1837) was contemporary with Blackwall and broadly similar in construction,  so might be used for inspiration.

 

Euston Roof

 

Notice, for example, the rooflights in the span nearest the station building.

 

[Dunalastair]

Yes, thankyou, as it happens I was looking at an image of Euston in London Railway History before I went shopping in the rain.

[Dunalastair]

Euston 1837 does look very much like the original Haymarket, as per my earlier comment. Two spans, over two platforms and four tracks, with open arches on the side away from the building - that platform might have been a little damp on a day like today. 

 

 

Blackwall might only have had two tracks and a siding, and the platforms might have been staggered (presumably because of the constraints of the site between the Thames and the dock) but the family resemblance is clear - and both were rope worked in the earliest days so did not need to consider the effect of steam and smoke.

 

While Euston prospered, Blackwall faded away, but both were to suffer postwar demolition in the name of progress. Indeed Euston might have been redeveloped in the 1930s, a proposal which would also have flattened St Pancras.

 

 

The power station which replaced Blackwall has itself now gone, with the site developed for housing. The 1960s Euston is still with us, but for how long? With £300m reportedly spent on HS2-related fees alone (just for Euston, and still counting) one dreads to think what the build cost might be. The estimate for building the whole of the London & Blackwall was £600,000, or about £60m today. I wonder what Tite's fees were for Blackwall station?

Edited May 28 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

1:300 is an unforgiving scale when it comes to filament printing - resin printing has advantages for finer detail but comes with downsides as well. The trusses in the render below are therefore very coarse, more like a timber structure than iron. But this might serve for my simple diorama.

 

 

I think that the next stage might be a trial print for one of these roof sections - there is little point in fine-tuning if the basic shape will not resolve sensibly. 

[Dunalastair]

The first print iteration came out a little distorted, but beefing up the bottom 'beams' and reprinting the result seems adequate, considering the small scale. A trial print of one of the blue carriages is now in progress. If that looks acceptable, then I will photograph that as well as the roof trial, probably tomorrow now.  

 

Given the print time on the roof, I am a little concerned about how long the main station building might take ...

Edited May 28 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

The carriage is now in the paint shop, hopefully to be completed soon.

 

Meanwhile - pots! Or to be more specific, chimney pots. The drawings and early prints show Tite's Blackwall without chimney pots to disturb the classical lines, but later photographs do show pots. Was it a convention in prints not to show pots, or were they a later addition? A similar situation applies in other Tite railway buildings, e.g. his 1838 Nine Elms terminus for the L&SR. Some prints show no pots (sometimes indeed no chimney stacks) while later photographs (before the Luftwaffe and 1960s iconoclasts did their worst) show pots. The image below seems to show an intermediate, with some kind of cowl / vent rather than a tall pot.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_Southampton_Railway

 

I am inclined to omit pots on my Blackwall model and simply open some apertures - but have we any architectural historians who can advise on chimney pots in the early 1840s? The Tudors made a point of elaborate pots, but did classical architects prefer to omit them, only for building managers subsequently to install them to better carry smoke away and help coal fires to draw?  

Edited May 30 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

While pondering the question of chimney pots, I scoped the print time for the station building. Cura suggests about five hours, which is long but not out of the question, provided the filament does not tangle during the print, which the current reel sometimes does. 

 

I have also added the 'end pavilions' to the arcade, settling for five intermediate arches rather than the nine of the original.

 

I will need to decide whether the intermediate columns are individual, or part of a colonnade, like Euston or Haymarket. From an assembly perspective, a colonnade might work better.

[Orion]

Looking great. I reckon it was probably a colonnade, apart from a short section next to the west end of the station building which was masonry. If you look at the station drawings...

there is clearly a metal pillar and cross section of a metal girder shown on the drawing of the east end of the main building. (bottom left)

[Dunalastair]

Thankyou. Yes, that could well be an end-on girder - I had not seen it that way.

 

3D drawings tend to be nice and crisp, prints sometimes less so, especially at diorama scales like 1:300. The 10p coin hopefully provides a sense of scale in this photograph of the trial prints for the painted and assembled (in that order) first class carriage and the (unpainted) monolithic print double-span roof with thicker trusses. Both of these prints are near the resolution limit of the printer, but at least take us off the computer screen and into the real model world.

 

 

The printer is also going through one of its 'wispy' phases, usually caused when the filament has been open to the air and on the printer for a while and it is starting to change composition, presumably by changing the water content.  

Edited May 30 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

I have bitten the bullet and the printer has just started a very long print of a version of the Blackwall main station block with apertures in the stacks rather than chimney pots. I could always retrofit pots if I change my mind.

 

The 10p coin is back in my pocket. When I started as a student at Edinburgh in the late 1970s, I seem to remember that beer cost 20p a pint in Teviot Row Union, so 10p might then have bought a half of heavy (not that I drank halves in those days). Some hope now ... even the coin has shrunk compared to the original florin.

Edited May 30 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

The main station block completed successfully without any filament tangles, and I am pleased with how it has come out - the 'rustication' on the ground floor and the elaborate window surrounds on the first floor both look good, reminding me of buildings in Edinburgh's New Town. I have this morning tweaked the design for the arcade, and a print for the front left arcade is currently in progress.

 

I was also brave enough to try 'dewisping' the roof trusses by flashing them through a flame on the gas cooker. That seems to have worked without any disasters or domestic recriminations, so I will have a go at painting the print, hopefully later today. Burnt PLA tends to smell like burnt milk.

Edited May 31 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

The 123D design program and printer have been working overtime today, carving up the design for printing and printing.

 

As well as the main station block, there are now prints for

• First carriage
• Front arcade on left with narrow platform
• Front arcade on right with wider platform
• Colonnade on left
• Mirror colonnade on right
• Back colonnade on left

In progress are :

• Back colonnade on right
• Double roofs for front and right
• Middle arcade
• Middle single roof

Requiring further design time :

• Track and turntables
• Further carriages

I will have to decide how much of the quay / wharf to include, and whether to have a paddle-steamer of the period - the latter could be adapted from previous designs. 

 

 

Edited May 31 by Dunalastair

[Dunalastair]

After what seems like a lot of printing, sorting some printer glitches on the way, I now have a kit of parts. That sentence originally read 'an o-r-g-y of printing' (without the hyphens), but the forum software edited out the rude word.

 

Firstly the central block for Blackwall station :

 

 

Then a wider shot showing the arcades, colonnades, track (with turntables), roofs and initial rolling stock (or rather not so rolling stock) :

 

 

The track rather overhangs the A4 size board, even with the shorter arcades, so may need to be cut down a little if I want to build on an A4 base. Alternatively, the station axis could perhaps be angled as I have done with previous dioramas.

 

This is all a little daunting now. Do I start on the painting? But it is encouraging that this is probably the first time that a model has been built in quite this form, bringing back a scene last seen nearly 180 years ago.

Edited June 2 by Dunalastair

[Orion]

Can't wait to see the finished model!

[Dunalastair]

On 02/06/2024 at 10:30, Orion said:

Can't wait to see the finished model!

 

Thankyou for the kind words once again. I am getting there, though painting is the stage where a monolithic print or assembly should come to life, but often looks untidy, especially at 1:300, which can be a test of eyesight and manual dexterity which I do not always pass. Talking about passing, available time will soon be devoted to GCSE exam marking to help pay for the year's hobby activity, so progress will slow. Before that, I have been using Tamiya 'flesh' as an approximation to stock brick and 'white' for the Portland stone. Detailed scrutiny of available images makes me realise features which I should have included, such as the arches around the windows on the arcades, but I will make the best of where I am. Much of the detail really is very small!

[Dunalastair]

Now in the midst of exam marking, but I managed to snatch a few minutes to take the photo below. Just roughly assembled, and still needs tidying up but it gives an idea of where this might be going. I now need to paint the track prints together with more of the (non)rolling stock.