Operation will be more interesting with passenger trains to bring staff and visitors to the hospital, so a suitable "station" was needed. Now, Whittingham hospital had a somewhat grand station with a substantial train shed, and Calderstones hospital had a temporary wooden station with canopy for the mainline ambulance trains during WW1. I thought my layout might be more interesting if the platform had a canopy, but something rather more humble. After a bit of browsing what was available, I thought the best starting point was the venerable Kitmaster/Dapol/Airfix platform canopy kit. The mouldings are dated 1959 so it has been around a while, but other than a little flash it's still a perfectly good kit.
Rather than build as intended with two girders under the middle part of the frame, I used one under the far edge (which required removing and moving the downward brackets), the near edge simply has a strip of plastic as it will sit on a brick wall.
The roof itself is as per the instructions, except I filled in the end half-panels with plain plastic sheet as this looks better, and can hide the end of the glazing better.
The four pillars in the kit are intended for platform mounting, but I need to support the far edge of the canopy from the ground beyond the track, and one pillar for each of the five roof trusses seemed logical. For strength I decided to use brass, and happened to have tube in stock in two sizes that fit one inside the other, plus a slightly larger plastic tube. I made them up with the larger section forming a wider base, topped with a slice of the wider plastic tube and with another short section of plastic tube below, leaving about 12mm of the thinner brass tube to fit into holes in the baseboard. Short lengths of the plastic tube were also cut and glued under the girder under the canopy, forming sockets for the pillars to fit into.
1.5mm holes were drilled into the baseboard after careful measuring. I realised I needed to make the pillars removable - I'll need to remove the canopy to relay the track and insert a point later - yet all would have to be firmly fixed in place. I found paperclip wire was a tight fit into the tube, so inserted a length in each (they get progressively longer thinking this might make them easier to fit into place one at a time). The idea is the soft iron wire can be bent over under the baseboard holding the pillars in place. 3mm lengths of the plastic tube were cut and inserted into the foamboard making a solid spacer to the ply, and fixed in place surrounded by PVA glue.
For the near side I made up a brick wall with more of the Wills arched windows in the style of the other buildings, I decided three looked better than two. Although the wall was simple enough to build it proved complicated since every dimension seemed to depend on another - the width of the canopy, height of the wall, width of the platform, clearances to the train and gap to the pillars...
The canopy would also need to be fixed to the wall and yet removable when needed. The plastic strip sits on top of the wall, I added another strip at 90 degrees which protrudes down the inside of the wall locating it side to side. A couple of holes were then drilled through the inner strip and the brick wall and paperclip wire "pins" pushed in to secure the roof down. I'm hoping these can be held in place with a blob of glue or some tape, allowing them to be pulled out when needed.
Once I'd got all the dimensions sorted the rest of the platform was made up from more Wills sheets. The Ratio fencing (including sloped section) was found in the bits box and fitted, this leaves the view a bit more open than a brick wall would have (and there's plenty of brick!). The platform is deliberately narrow, but at a scale 10' wide (or about 9' inside the fence) it's plenty wide enough for the expected traffic, and as you can see it can hold a couple of 4 or 6 wheel coaches and a loco. The canopy seems to fit in well, it's not too large, looks more interesting than an open platform, and is effective at hiding the hole in the sky at the left end.
A view from the yard side that won't normally be seen, which is a shame as it looks rather good from this side! This has taken somewhat longer than I'd thought, interrupted by a family holiday and the Pevensey show, but I think the result was worth it.
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