Bomen Station Building Plans

Over many decades, I have been acquiring information to aid my prototype modelling.  Unfortunately, the Bomen Station plans have not surfaced.   My understanding is that Bomen station building is unique in NSW, so it would be highly doubtful that a kit would ever be produced.  Drawing my own plans seemed the best way forward.

Bomen station was commissioned as an important station – being the temporary terminus of the Southern line in 1878, and the location of the town of North Wagga Wagga..  But soon after the station was built, the townsfolk drifted to South Wagga Wagga.   Bomen station remained as a staff exchange point, site of the Wagga meatworks, and for general goods.   I covered this in my earlier blog post

A trip to Bomen, armed with my digital camera was the first step.  After taking 50 or so pictures, I returned home, and printed 10.  Armed with these pictures, pen, and tape measure, I returned to Bomen and recorded these measurements on my pictures.  I used metric measurements, as this makes the reduction simple on a drawing

In 1974, I did Tech Drawing at high school, and I found these skills useful.  Whilst I probably should be using CAD, I spend too much time on the computer now, so it was good to get out my set squares, rulers, pencil, eraser, and paper, find a sunny spot, and do some drawings.  Before I started, I added up all the measurements, and compared the 2 sides, and the front and back.  I was out by 1cm on the sides, and 6cm on the front, and rear measurements.  This is well under 1% error, and reassured me that I had not made any major measurement errors.   It took around 6 hours, spent over 2 weeks to finish the plans. 

As I drew them to scale 1:100, a trip to Junee Library, to use their enlarging photocopier made short work of the conversion to 1:87.  My plans will not win any awards, but are suitable for marking out the sides, front and back on styrene brick sheet.  The one aspect that I know is wrong, is the roof. I initially thought a 30 degree slope was close, but the 25 degree for the end drawings is closer again.  I also have the chimneys in slightly the wrong spot – so I will have to go back to Bomen, and really look

What struck me is how big the station will be.  The HO scale footprint of the main building is 30cm x 13cm, and this is not including the Toilet block, and signal box (or indeed the car park at the rear).    I should be able to construct the station full size, however, I will do some more detailed track planning of the Bomen area to confirm I can fit everything in without the baseboards being too wide.

Now comes the “fun” part – actually building the station.

Happy Modelling.