Southwold V.2

[pitleyfalley]

We begin the revist to Southwold with an overview of the yard and the newly improved town behind. Note the two different liveries of coaches. No.1 Southwold shunts some wagons back onto the coaches in the shed, ready to make up the first train of the day.


Click the image to zoom in



Click the image to zoom in



Click the image to zoom in



Click the image to zoom in


Note the black livery of No.1 Southwold, the latest version of the model, as created by Jur Snijder… to whom a large part of the credit for Southwold should go.


Click the image to zoom in



Click the image to zoom in


Further along the line, we see a new deeper Southwold cutting, resembling the original more closely, and also the addition of a footbridge across the cutting. Eventually trees and shrubs will adorn the cutting sides, and the top will possibly resemble a golf course as it is supposed to.


Click the image to zoom in



Click the image to zoom in


Further changes are evident also at the harbour branch junction, a bit of research has shown there was originally a headshunt siding at the mainline end of the branch, and so this has been included in v.2.

Thats it for now folks, more to follow soon...

Chris

[dforrest]

Looking good. Will this be available as a "patch" to V1 or as a new route?

[mccormackpj]

Chris -

It's great to see more work being done on Southwold - one of my favourite routes (after the W&L, but I am biased!) However two areas shown in your screengrabs caused me to raise my eyebrows:

Firstly, and not all that serious: it appears that you can see Scunthorpe steel works off to the NE of Southwold, somewhere on the marshes t'other side of Buss Creek towards Easton Bavents. Or has the Southwold Hosiery Co. expanded to fulfil export orders?

More seriously, your new version of the Southwold Common cutting looks odd. The cutting was c.20ft deep, but yours now looks nearer 60ft! The 9ft high Sharpie is completely dwarfed. (See The Southwold Railway, Taylor & Jenks, p11 for details.) Also the footbridge of 1904 was wholly of old rail, including the supporting pillars. The SR liked reusing old rails - the carriage shed appears to be another example. As a youth I remember inspecting the concrete footings of the f'bridge (no more than 3ft high) and seeing the remaining sections of rail where they had been cut off - I think they were FB like the railway itself. There are good illustrations of the cutting and footbridge in Branchline to Southwold, Mitchell & Smith, plates 74 & 75; the pair of young Jenkins' give scale. I assume you have this book, but if not I would be happy to scan and post the pics.

Please don't take this as negative nitpicking - just trying to help recapture the old SR! One last thing: one of my enduring memories of Southwold Common and cycling the old railway is the gorse - so can I put in a request for lots of yellow-flecked bushes and a scratch-n'-sniff card for that lovely almond scent?

Am looking forward to seeing SRv2 soon ..

Patrick

[pitleyfalley]

Will mod the cutting so it looks how it should do. The footbidge is staying like that unless someone wants to make me a replica of the original! Was the closet thing I could find to the real thing, and it may get reskinned soon to look more like the original.

Gorse... ill have a go, but it doesnt do the fps rates much good.

Chris

[mccormackpj]

Will mod the cutting so it looks how it should do. The footbidge is staying like that unless someone wants to make me a replica of the original! Was the closet thing I could find to the real thing, and it may get reskinned soon to look more like the original.

Gorse... ill have a go, but it doesnt do the fps rates much good.

Chris

Chris -

I suppose making a more accurate footbridge would require knowing the final width and depth of the cutting. If it is made larger than these two dimensions, it can always sink into the sides and floor - helped by it not being across the top of the cutting, but about 3ft lower. I might be able to stretch my limited 3D modelling skills that far .. let me know the height and width.

As for the gorse, I was only joking! The only scratch-n'-sniff card I remember was for some early role playing PC game and all the smells were of stale pizza. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised ..

Patrick

[pitleyfalley]

Heya,

Okies ill workout the dimensions for you, thanks a lot. Would be really great. As for the gorse, ive got a cunning plan, let me work on it a bit.

Chris

[fadedGlory]

Looking good, Chris!

If you want to, you can use the greens, bunkers and flags from the golf course on the Rye & Camber. I know the author, he has no objections

fG

[pitleyfalley]

thanks Jur... are you sure he wont mind?

Chris

[trainmad]

LOL!

Nice work Pitley

[saddletank]

Was the cutting really that deep? It now looks a scale 50 or 60 feet! Shame - I spent hours getting the fences and vegetation placed all along it's top slopes

Is there a nicer freeware bridge to go across it, that one does look a bit odd.

[sp762]

If you have a picture of the bridge, I'll undertake to knock one out for you.

[mccormackpj]

Re. Southwold Cutting & Footbridge

http://www.kinkajou.eclipse.co.uk/ESSME ... ting01.jpg
http://www.kinkajou.eclipse.co.uk/ESSME ... ting02.jpg

Follow these links to two pics 'borrowed' from Branch Line to Southwold. They show the proportions of the cutting and the structure of the footbridge. Note that the 'bridge started lower than the top of the cutting, with nine steps descending to it on the north side. The structure was made of old rails, doubled to form the vertical supports and curving elegantly to support the footway. The handrails were made of bar, the verticals being doubled. The Southwold carriage shed was also made of old rails with a similar curvaceousness. The vertical supports were encased in concrete at their bottom ends to form a foundation. The concrete blocks were still there in the '60s and '70s (that's last century, not the one before!) with the ends of the FB rails still visible.

As for the depth of the cutting, see my earlier post and The Southwold Railway, Eric Tonks, p11. It was c.20ft deep and as a Sharpie was a gnat's crotchet over 9ft, a train would be about half the depth of the hole. If young Master Jenkins is standing on the footway, then I estimate the height of the handrail as c.40ins. From the cutting pic this would make the height from rail to footway about 120ins = 10ft, just enough to clear a Sharpie! These are approximations but, I think, well within MSTS margins of error.

I am a tyro at 3D modelling, so if sp762 would like to do it and despite my previous offer, please go ahead!

Patrick

[Tonysmedley]

Good luck with the improvements! Don't take too long - it's my 82nd in two weeks.

[saddletank]

I thought it looked a bit deep in your screenshot Chris, given the flatness of the rest of the fenland the route traversed. So the cutting should be shallower than your original route depicted it, in which case feel free to dump my work with the cutting siudes and fencing etc!

[mccormackpj]

My final thoughts on the cutting: on the 1891 OS (available online at http://www.old-maps.co.uk) there is a spot height of 14ft opposite Southwold station and one of 42ft near the top of the High Street. On the modern 1:25k OS the 10m contour is just to the east of the cutting, so the edge would be <33ft ; allowing for the fall to the bridge, this would confirm the c.20ft depth.

It is interesting to note that the 0m contour is crossed as the line emerged onto the marshes, the embankment itself forming the boundary between Busscreek and Woodsend Marshes which lie below sea level. The embankment - such as it was - didn't stop the North Sea trying to interfere with trains, as can be seen in plate 71 of Branchline to Southwold. The line descended from the bridge at 1:66 towards Southwold and from my memories of blackberry picking, it was pretty much at the same level of the marshes - was the SR the only British narrow gauge line to be below sea level?

The location of the footbridge is not shown on the 1891 OS as it was built in 1904, but the pic of the cutting suggests it was roughly at the midpoint of the curve which would be the deepest section. The 1:25k OS does show a footpath aiming for this point which then diverts to the west end of the cutting, probably due to the removal of the 'bridge.

I think it's high time the SR got a quality, detailed history. This is not to denigrate Messrs Taylor & Tonks, but it would be lovely to see something of the same ilk as the Wild Swan books on the Ashover, Talyllyn and Vale of Rheidol. As a starter, there are various items available at the Public Record Office, including plans and I think the company minute book. As a further indication of the growing power of the interweb, I have just found that there is a 1928 photograph of a train in the cutting in Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft!

Enough ..

Patrick