My father-in-law, David Cambridge became interested in the model of Hereford that I am building in N Gauge and undertook to build a card model of Barrs Court Station for the layout. I think the model is amazing. 

David did this work a few years ago. Sadly, since then, David has died.

The remainder of this post and those that follow under this heading are David’s own description of the work he did to build the model.

Barrs Court Station

This large two-storey railway station of red brick was built in 1853 for the Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway. The architect was R. E. Johnston and the building with its groups of lancet windows set in rusticated stone panels, its tall chimneys and gables, steep roofs and octagonal stone finials is listed Grade II.

Roger’s N gauge scale model of Hereford railway station and its environs required a model of Barrs Court station. He had taken a large number of photographs of the station, but been unable to trace any drawings or plan of the building except for its footprint on an OS map (see fig. 1).
I had some experience of creating models, albeit in 7mm scale, by calculating dimensions from photographs and creating designs along the lines used by Metcalfe card model buildings. This was relatively straightforward using the MSPaint accessory in Microsoft Windows.

While I wanted the model to be as detailed as I could make it I soon realised that in this small scale certain compromises would be necessary. As regards the brick-work it would not be feasible to create separate bricks in relief, so I decided to draw the elevations in as large a pixel scale in MSPaint as was practicable and to draw in individual bricks.

I settled on a scale of 600 pixels per inch and a table was drawn up listing the number of pixels required for inches and feet in 2mm scale. This ensured dimensional accuracy when printing the designs for the various parts of the model.  The table is reproduced below.

 

Fig. 1

Paint template for HEREFORD station @ 300 x 300 dpi

Prototype dim.      Dim @ 2mm scale                       Pixel equivalent

                                                                    400dpi             300dpi            600dpi

½ inch                         0.08 mm                      1                      1                      2

1 inch                          0.17 mm                      3                      2                      4

2 inches                       0.33 mm                      5                      4                      8

3 inches                       0.5   mm                      8                      6                      12

4 inches                       0.67 mm                      10                    8                      16

5 inches                       0.83 mm                      13                    10                    20

6 inches                       1.0   mm                      15                    12                    24

7 inches                       1.17 mm                      18                    13                    26

8 inches                       1.33 mm                      20                    15                    30

9 inches                       1.5   mm                      23                    17                    34

10 inches                     1.67 mm                      26                    19                    38

11 inches                     1.83 mm                      28                    21                    42

1 foot                          2.0   mm                      31                    23                     46

2 feet                           4.0   mm                      62                    47                    94

3 feet                           6.0   mm                      93                    70                    140

4 feet                           8.0   mm                      124                  94                    188

5 feet                           10.0 mm                      155                  118                  236

6 feet                           12.0 mm                      186                  141                  282

7 feet                           14.0 mm                      217                  165                  330

8 feet                           16.0 mm                      248                  188                  376

9 feet                           18.0 mm                      279                  212                  424

10 feet                         20.0 mm                      310                  236                  472

11 feet                         22.0 mm                      341                  259                  519

12 feet                         24.0 mm                      372                  283                  566