Episode 5 – Translating CORy operation to an English setting
Entry posted by DutyDruid
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Having just walked through a typical operating session of the CORy I thought it might be worth translating that story into something a little closer to home so that it might make a bit more sense to those more used to an English setting than to an American one. I’ve chosen as my model the Meon Valley Railway in the 1950s as it is the stuff of legend in the Club and we can all relate to the places I’m going to describe; and for good measure I’m going to describe the real railway rather than the fictional one that has spawned Soberton and Corhampton.
As we all know, the line ran from Fareham (ok, Gosport if you want to be pedantic) up the valley to Alton. For the purpose of keeping this simple let’s consider that in the “up” direction there was the junction at Knowle where there was a siding for the Asylum (coal), the brick works and the abattoir; there were stations at Wickham, Droxford and Alton; a trailing siding at Mislingford and a facing siding at Farringdon. I am deliberately skipping the stations towards the northern end of the line just to keep it simple – they would all be shunted in the same way as the either Droxford or Wickham.
Fareham being the main junction, freight bound for the Valley would be brought in a block to Fareham Yard and a train assembled much as I described in the last article for cars being sorted in Chelan Yard.
Rather than individual industries, each station and siding on the line had a goods shed, a cattle dock and space for a coal merchant to operate; there were also a variety of yard cranes capable of handling containers, but not at all stations or sidings. The traffic would have been a variety of vans for general goods in, seasonal fruit out, cattle bound for either Fareham or Alton markets (or coming from market), coal and the odd special wagon with an agricultural machine of some sort.
A locomotive (often a T9 or 700 class “Black Motor”) would arrive at Fareham from Fratton to pick up that day’s train for the Valley. I can’t be certain about this without a lot of research, but it seems likely that it would have shunted wagons from its train at the Funtley/Knowle conurbation (remember: brickworks/slaughter house plus coal for the asylum with several layby loops) and then on to Wickham.
At Wickham there was a passing loop and the majority of the goods train could be left on the loop line (or set back into the long siding) while the loco shunted the yard. If a passenger train was due in either direction the signalman would easily be able to direct operations so that it (or they) could pass the goods train.
Shunting done, and once more off up the branch. The next event is the siding at Mislingford, there is a trailing connection so the siding can be shunted in the “up” direction. The train is left on the running line with the brake screwed down in the brake van, the Guard acts as Shunter and the loco exchanges wagons in the train. While this is going on the train has absolute possession of the line between Wickham and Droxford and because on British railways passenger traffic is considered more important than freight – at least in terms of class of train and therefore priority – this particular move has to be conducted with all despatch in order to not impede the passage of the branch passenger, no matter how lowly it is.
All done at Mislingford, then off to Droxford. Here access to the yard is laid out in the opposite direction from Wickham; what does this mean? Well, if there are wagons for Droxford that need to be dropped off “now” then the train will have to stop in one of the platforms, the locomotive will have to uncouple and run round to the rear of the train, part the wagons that need to be dropped off and then shunt them, and then reassemble the train before running around again. Whether this happens on this pass of the station or the down trip will depend on how busy the line is, essentially will the extra moves required be enough to impede passenger traffic? One traffic item that would almost certainly be shunted at this point would be loaded cattle wagons due to the general restrictions related to animal welfare during transport by train.
Off up the line again, at each station either a “Wickham” or “Droxford” style shunt will be repeated. The siding at Farringdon is ignored on the up trip because it is a facing connection which means that any wagons the loco can pull out would have to be propelled on to Alton and placing any wagons in the sidings would leave the locomotive trapped behind it.
Once at Alton the train will pull into the yard, drop off any wagons whose documentation indicates onward transmission from Alton towards London, Basingstoke or Winchester, pick up any wagons that have paperwork to take them towards Fareham and set off down the branch again, shunting first the siding at Farringdon – possible this time because on the down journey because the connection into the yard is trailing – and then any station it has wagons for that it can access.
All this would be governed by a system of waybills. Of course, the real ones would be nothing like the ones I described in my last blog post – either in the UK or the US, but why should that stand in the way of us using that American system of car (wagon) cards and waybills on an English model railway? No reason that I can see, so in the next chapter of this story I will share some thoughts about how we could try something like this at the Club and tell you about a piece of software that has just arrived in the post.
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