Hazel Markham - Buildings

To start with I am keeping to the basics, a station, signal box, waiting room and a goods storage shed. Space on the layout will be restrictive so I need to get the baseboard and track laying started to see about room for other buildings.

The Symington Hoo Railway is a narrow gauge line, so I wanted to keep the buildings small and light rather than the large buildings used by main line railways. At first I thought about a small wooden station building, but looking at photo of Harpenden East I wanted to have something that was better representative of the original station building, so an exception was made and one larger building is planned.

Harpenden East Station C.1960 - from the John Mann Collection

I decided to use the Wills CK16 Country Station from their Craftsman’s range. The beauty of this range is that the “kits” are supplied as sheets, the parts need to be cut out by the builder, so as the plans show a mirror plan to the actual station building layout this is not an issue and the kit can be easily adapted. I don’t want an exact copy of the original station building just a flavour of what it was like.

So why such a large building?

Well as I said I wanted to kind of pay homage to the now lost Harpenden East station and my justification is that Symington Hoo House is just up the road from Hazel Markham and Lord Highfield wanted a station to provide the status and comfort, he and his family required.

All trains carrying the Highfield family (who have their own coach) use the down platform regardless of which direction the family are travelling, this is to save the family from having to trudge over the foot crossing to the other platform and wait for the train in the cold and wet with the hoi polloi, but can cause problems for the signalman.

The other buildings I have chosen to use are more in keeping with the setting and the scale of the railway, they are wooden structures, these are –

SS63 Goods Yard Store from Wills

SS60 Station Platform Shelter also from Wills

503 Platform/Ground Level Signal Box from Ratio

The goods shed and signal box will be adapted to sit on brick rather than steel and stone as supplied and the platform shelter will get a tiled roof to give all three a more uniform look.

All the above have been bought and are waiting to be built.