Access Upgrade 1
Time was when all stations on the network had a station plan with index, codes and photos of key facilities. As is happening everywhere in public transport, the quality of these guides has been declining until they are now almost useless. Such is the current situation at Peckham Rye. Under the generic heading fof "maps" there are two options.
Unhappily, "Station Map" gives a reasonable diagram of platforms 1 and 2 and the booking hall ...
... whilst "Peckham Ryde Station Map" provides the upper level access only to platforms 3 and 4.
From this, we can glean that from street to platform is two floors up. It all begins with a gate line in the coner of the ground floor entrance.
Platforms 1 and 2 form an island between the tracks ...
Platforms 3 and 4 stand beside the central tracks and offer a bit more room.
Platform 3 (above) abuts the main central part of the station building which is currently called a "Community Hall" but was once the main waiting room.
It is also accessed by a most magnificent staircase which has already been restored.
The room contains (has contained, depending on when you read this) an "art installation".
Sarah Sze to transform disused Victorian waiting room at Peckham Rye train station in south London with a new site-specific sculptural installation. Co-commissioned by Artangel, Sze’s new work will open on Friday 19th May 2023, taking over a large, vaulted space above the main ticket office that has been boarded up for fifty years.
fbb cannot find any pictures of the current "installation" but a previous work is illustrated on-line.
Sze employs painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and video to build immersive works that explore our relationship to images, materiality, time and entropy. In recent years, she has created a new form of sculpture that offers an extraordinary model of our fragile world. These large-scale installations – which she refers to as Timekeepers – integrate everyday materials, torn photographs and a multitude of flickering videos in immersive environments with their own fragile ecologies. These works explore the tenuous threshold between the digital and the analogue, the tactile and the imagined.
Presumably, as it is inside the gateline, this new "installation" is only available to those with a rail ticket. fbb is sure hat bleary eyed commuters will choose to leave home early yo enjoy the experience or, maybe, weary eyed commuters will be happy to hang around at the station before wending their way homewards to their cosy pieds-a-terre.
Hmmm?
The atmospheric construction features cascading lines that emerge from the center of the vaulted room to create a mesmerizing model of a fragile world. A multitude of flickering videos illuminate the structure, swirling around the space, conveying the velocity and volatility of life in the age of the smartphone. The installation is free and open to the public.
Yep! Just right to enhance the commute - or drive the passengers to drink!
But the point of this extended twaddle is to prepare our loyal readership for the next phase of Peckham Rye station's regeneration.
Over to Notwork Rail.
This is what is promised. New bigger gatelines, easier route up to the platforms and (not shown on the above architects "impression"), lifts everywhere. Here is he same view enhanced by night-time illumination.
Astute readers will, obviously, wonder how this will be shoe-horned into the existing building's entrance area. (note present staircase and gateline).
And the answer is that it isn't!
As we shall see tomorrow.
Hornby Says Ta Ta To TTA!
Above is a TTA tank wagon. Below is a real one.
Designed to carry between 40 and 45 tonnes of petroleum products, they rarely looked that clean!
Hornby's TTA appeared from 1973 in various liveries, sometimes with ladders ...
... but often without!
You could also buy a set of three.
Hattons will sell you a set of three for just under £30 which at £10 a wagon is something of a bargain these days. EBay will find you a singleton at about £7 plus postage.
Bachmann's TTAs are much better but much more expensive.
Back in January, Hornby announced a brand new re-tooled TTA ...
... which implied three ladders. fbb thinks this was a mistake because "decorated samples" show the conventional double ladder at one end.
Will they be better than Bachmann? fbb will report when his on-order model arrives.
But the new model will set you back £31; which, actually, is not bad for a wagon in 2023. One retailer (who hasn't actually got any to sell yet) described the new Hornby TTA as "fantastically detailed".
Interestingly, the current Bachmann model ...
... is on offer on-line at anything from £27 to £36!
It IS Too Small!
Readers will remember some debate about the new bus station in Ryde. Were its roadways too narrow for buses to pass eadilyy? In the early stages it was, frankly, unclear. But our senior Isle of Wight correspondent now illustrates the suspected truth. He says (with feeling, having driven buses) ...
It IS too tight.
Even if the roadway is technically wide enough, it is very difficult to park a long vehicle accurately alongside a concave curved kerb. See one bus above sticking out a bit from the marked bay.
fbb predicts a spate of removed wing mirrors as an absolute minimum, PLUS the occasional (and expensive) body scrape - even body crunch.
Next Peckham Rye plus other stuff blog : Tuesday 16th May
Peckham Rye platforms 3 and 4, which FBB states have “a little more room”, are already so dangerously narrow that along most of the length of each there is no room for a “yellow line” behind which to stand, since if there were to be one at the correct distance from the edge, it would be almost impossible to stand behind it in the depth of platform provided, let alone walk past someone in the space that would remain. On a busy platform in the rush hour, with a constant stream of people arriving, and no platform staff of course, the safe dispatch of trains from this location is almost impossible. I wonder what works have been include in the plans to make the platform/train interface safer, what with the likely increase in rate of persons arriving on the platforms, and of course many years since a member of staff would be monitoring the level of overcrowding on the platform and using a set of gates to prevent further access on occasions when the platform is already too full… I think I can guess!!
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