Booking Desk

The SD&LUR box is a fairly small structure, and contains about as large a frame as you could possibly fit into it. It also has a fireplace taking up one of the rear corners, and the door at the other. Why is this important, you may well ask? Well, it's all about the furniture; or rather, the space that's left available for the furniture!

One such item is a slope-topped booking desk, where the Train Register is to be located, in which train movements will be recorded. We had considered a wall-mounted variant (decidedly less common on the NER) as opposed to free standing (which would take up a lot of space.





On site we have a couple of potentially suitable desks, so we thought we'd compare them. One was ruled out for not being of NER pedigree. Another was rather large, but a cunning plan emerged: with large windowsills, perhaps the desk could fit on one of these, thus freeing up wall space! The desk chosen to experiment with seems to have come from Ravenstonedale station, just along the line towards Tebay. Unfortunately, it was substantially larger than a booking desk, having come from an office.

At this point, we were very fortunate to be offered a desk originally from Knapton box, which has been in storage for nearly 40 years (came out of the box when it closed, Christmas 1983). This was smaller, or the right style, and what's more; it looked the part! Sadly it has a little wood worm damage, but this has been treated with woodworm killer, and restoration will take place soon.




As can be seen, this desk fits far better into the box in terms of size, especially on the windowsill. It also retains some of its original paint (to go with its 'original wood worm, maybe?)!

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