Hi All,

Something that has been bugging me for a while now that hopefully someone on here can answer......

What were the basic dimensions of the Mark 1 and Mark 2 Police Boxes?

I built my Police Box as close as possible to a Met-style box but noticed that since the series came back the prop box looks shorter and fatter (The Panels are square rather than rectangular)

Now looking at some of the wonderful Pictures that have been posted on this forum I also notice that some of the Mark 1 Boxes are like it (square rather than rectangular)
The Mark 2 (and mark 3) seem to rectangular in design....

Does anyone have the answer to this bugging question 

Regards,

Pete

Well I get the Chrich version 117.62" high from bottom of the base to the top of the lamp housing, not including the lamp and 53.2" wide from post to post.

Base on sketch-up model dimensions made using real measurements taken at Chrich about a billion years ago!

The panels on the door of the Barnet box were 12" x 15", but the panels on the concrete sides were 11 3/4" x 15" or sometimes a fraction shorter. I meant to ask you - did you take any measurements or photographs of this box? My measurements of it are somewhere on this site, I think.

11 3/4" x 15" agrees with the plans but I suspect that the panels of the timber Mk 1 boxes were a neat 12" x 15", giving these boxes a very slightly squarer-panelled look. (The overall size of the box may not have been significantly different whatever the panel dimensions.)

As it happens I've recently posted (in the Mk1-Mk2-Mk3 discussion) a picture of what may be a prototype Mk1 with shorter panels - at most 14 1/2" tall, I'd guess - with correspondingly taller windows, rather in the fashion of your first police box build.

1/4" shouldn't make any visual different.  If you think about it, it's 1/8" more on the left and 1/8" more on the right.  Now maybe 1/2" would make a visual difference.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

how tall would this type of police box be in feet

Quote from: T@RDISman550 on Apr 16, 2018, 05:03 pm
How tall would this type of police box be in feet?

Its a loaded Question since most of them were a bit different depending on which contractor and batch it was built in.

However the general answer would be that it was 5 feet square and 10 feet tall.

thanks i plan to make a 3D model of the met box soon so needed to know 

T@RDISman, that 10 feet tall measure includes the lamp cap, give or take a few inches. If you look at some of the Met Box plans here (http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=2788.msg29117#msg29117), you'll see this box (the Trench plans) measures 9'1" to the top of the last roof step before it starts its pitch to the lamp.

Then take a look at this one Original size, Met Box height that starcross posted on his Flickr site (which he gives the link to here: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=2788.msg29128#msg29128), you'll see the Box (still the Trench Plans) measures 9'6" to the base of the lamp. And then you've got the lamp measurements from the Crich Box (http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=5592.0) to add to the total height.

But as starcross mentioned, 10 feet is the rough average, with each box being a little different because of GPO vs. Trench plans, and who built the boxes. (It's no different than some of our Coast Guard Cutters. We had 13 Cutters that were 270 feet long - what we called the "270-class" - all built from the same set of plans, and even the ones that were built by the Coast Guard Yard came out with no two alike!)

Dino.

Thanks very much for the info, Dino.

More direct links to Topics that have the above referenced plans on the TARDISbuilders site itself:

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=3278.0

and

http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=3280.0

To be a bit more clear about the variations though, all appear to be a combination of which version of Met Box was being built (Marks 1 though 5), varying interpretations of the working drawings for a given Mark, and build differences creeping in over time even with the same builder (due to different moulds, work crews, supervisors, etc). Custom modifications to the base or even roof were on occasion also made as required for a particular installation.

As to the Plans:

The GPO plans were drawn in 1937 strictly as a reference for the GPO's (then new) P.A. 350 signalling system installation, not as building plans for the Boxes themselves.

The Trench "plans" as we have them are really only working drawings for soliciting tenders (bids in the US) for the construction of the first Mark 3 Met Boxes in 1935, so are not exact representations of the final product, much less of any other specific Mark of Met Box.

Both the Trench and GPO plans seem to mix various features of the Mark 2 and Mark 3 all-concrete Boxes, but not necessarily the same ones. Building a Box from either one (or both), however, would be perfectly recognizable as a Met Box, so are a good starting point. Both seem to roughly agree on the overall height as 9'-6" plus the 10 ^5/8" of Beacon height (including the lamp's base and cap, as measured on an actual example), for a ground to top total of 10'-4 ^5/8", and both specify a base width of 4'-7 ^3/4".