CLASP Railway Station
Built by Chris Warrell in September 2020 for the British Rail 1972 Secretary’s Challenge
CLASP (Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme) was a prefabricated, light-gauge steel building system introduced in 1957 as a system to rebuild schools in Nottinghamshire. British Rail used the system to rebuild stations in the 1960s and 1970s.
My model depicts Slade Green station which was built in 1968, and still exists today, largely unchanged, apart from new entrance doors. I was going to base my model on Kidbrooke which was built in 1972 (to fit in with the BR 1972 Challenge), but was demolished some years ago, as was its replacement! The new one is still being built into the ground floor of some new flats. At my approximate scale of ½ inch to 1 foot, the model should be around 3 feet x 2 feet in plan, but only 5½ inches high, so anyone viewing the model would mainly see flat roof! Lack of buff coloured plates made me see sense and just built a mini version of the station building.
I thought I may as well depict Slade Green, although all the stations built with this system look much the same.