Had a look at progress (?) at Reading Green Park yesterday. There is now a tarmaced surface parallel to where the Up platform would be. The current weather highlights a large ditch/drainage channel between the tarmac and the rail tracks. The dry bit next to the tracks appears not to be wide enough for a platform. Interesting to see what they do; place the platform (on piles) over the ditch or re-arrange the drainage which could be interesting in an area with a high water table and liable to flooding.
According to the plans...there is enough room for the platform, but not for the footbridge. So part of the drainage ditch will be diverted a bit to the west to go round that. However, the whole ditch will be lined, presumably to protect the foundations of the platform, and that might narrow it a bit from its current width.
I think the platforms are shown as a bit over 3 m wide, but it's hard to say since the drawings submitted to planing are undimensioned. I find this odd - indeed, baffling.
Now, when I first had to do with technical drawing, our drawing sheets had scale bars printed along the edge. They could be used to set off dividers or compasses, or to read off dimensions from dividers - all very traditional. That would still work on a scale print, whereas using a ruler was only easy on an original or full-scale copy, and only possible on a scale print if the (usually reduction) factor was known. But scale prints were very rare, since the photographic processes need to do them were difficult and expensive. Most copies were taken by contact (diazo prints), so were always full scale.
Now, full-scale paper prints are very rare, and most drawing and looking is done on screens. But to read dimensions you need to have the drawing on a professional drawing system of the right kind. Anything printed off (even on imaginary paper) is scaled by an unknown factor, at least by the time it gets onto your screen. But this is exactly what scale bars were for - so why have they now completely disappeared?
If what planning gets are just the PDFs we can see, they are not really plans at all - they are undimensioned, so no more than sketches. Why is that allowed?
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