As luck would have it, the Midland Railway Association (£20 a year subs, worth every bean) has a very generous website library of resources and, blow me down! Here before my very eyes was an architect's scale drawing of the very station, complete with measurements and even internal details. Not that you will ever get to see any internals, but they allow you to see why external features like windows, doors and chimneys had their purpose. The same design was used for Henlow, Cardington, Rushton, Isham and Oakley but it is also obvious when you look at them, that the same architects were also responsible for Kibworth, Desborough, Kettering and Wellingborough and no doubt, many others. The give away feature is the use of the iconic cast iron windows, couple with the red and black brickwork. It is obvious that in the 1850s, the Midland Railway was flush with money and full of pride. Hoorah!
A world of compromises and choices
It's a funny thing. When you open any can of worms, you discover there are no two worms exactly alike if you look closely. Who would? OK, maybe that stretches a poetic liberty a bit far. What I meant to say is that it was fine to consider copying the features of my local station until I discovered the architect drawings and noticed the differences. Those became even more relevant once I had found pictures of the other stations based on the same plans. Henlow is no more, but Rushton is easily visible from one side and just as near home. I found online images of Cardington, Glen and Rushton, including interesting pictures, inside and out, on a website dedicated to decaying buildings.
The problem was now that I had the added info, I could see how the architects intended Glen to look, guess at how the builders ignored them from time to time and did something else. Later, the ravages of time would add some features and destroy others. Where elegance had been in the mind's eye, now stood ugliness. Sometimes it went the other way. I rather like to look of the paired buttresses against the door but they were not intended and it is hard to guess when they were added or even why, given their position and lack of evidence of cracking or shifting of the end wall. We will never know. Oddly, on the opposite, track side wall where there is the same doorway, they built a single buttress only. It dos also look as if the buttresses share the same date and brick stock as the bricked up entrance.
So, though I like those buttresses, they have no place in this building. I've built them so they'll find a use somewhere!
The chimneys look impressive at Glen, until you see the ones at Rushton. I assume that Glen was the same but maybe they were originally only half the size. I can find no image of Glen from its early days. If, as I suspect, the upper halves of Glen's chimneys were removed, it was done very neatly indeed and before one collapsed because if that had happened, you'd expect to see some evidence of that on tiles somewhere.
One big difficulty arises from the low resolution of old photos found, including this one of Rushton. It does show that the chimneys today are original though it is interesting to note that it was found necessary to add very tall deflectors or cowls on pots even well above ridge height.