Minories in France

[jdy928]

Hello All,

 

I am finally about to commence my first proper layout. I am planning to do a version of the classic Minories, but set in north eastern France (very loosely). My plan is a slightly wider version, with at least one more platform on the side opposite the loco spur and single box, and more goods or parcels facilites on the kick back siding. Track will be Peco code 100. I would like to know if there are any signature track formations that I should include, or any part of Minories as drawn that is not French in formation?

 

Thanks for your assistance.

 

Regards,

 

Jed

[Fat Controller]

Hello All,

 

I am finally about to commence my first proper layout. I am planning to do a version of the classic Minories, but set in north eastern France (very loosely). My plan is a slightly wider version, with at least one more platform on the side opposite the loco spur and single box, and more goods or parcels facilites on the kick back siding. Track will be Peco code 100. I would like to know if there are any signature track formations that I should include, or any part of Minories as drawn that is not French in formation?

 

Thanks for your assistance.

 

Regards,

 

Jed

Try and see if you can find a plan of Gare du Bastille in Paris, which may give you some pointers. It was a relatively small, busy, four-track terminus on an elevated site, which survived into the early 1970s. I believe it was steam-operated until the end.

Anothe small urban terminus was Lyon St Paul, which is still in use today.

[jollysmart]

Try and see if you can find a plan of Gare du Bastille in Paris, which may give you some pointers. It was a relatively small, busy, four-track terminus on an elevated site, which survived into the early 1970s. I believe it was steam-operated until the end.

Anothe small urban terminus was Lyon St Paul, which is still in use today.

 

I think there are some quite interesting videos which gives the flavour of Gare du Bastille, there are some views of the track work and many of the station as well as showing the cramped nature of the site, www.dailymotion.com search Gare du Bastille

Edited August 21, 2017 by jollysmart

[jdy928]

Hi All,

 

Thanks for the reponses. I will certainly look into that location

 

I am also looking for information such as facing crossings were never used, three way points were always used (to give two possibilities, of which I have no idea whether they are correct or not). Did France have left side running on double track? By the way, the layout will be set in the late steam period, using mostly Jouef locomotives.

 

Regards,

 

Jed

[Andy Hayter]

Left side running is the standard throughout France except for the former  Alsace Lorraine system in Eastern France.  This is because between 1870 and 1918 this area was run as part of the greater German empire and adopted right hand running alongside the rest of the German system.

 

Once Alsace Lorraine returned to France the AL system remained right hand running and connection between there and the rest of the French network (at the time the Est system) was largely with flying crossovers - one track carried over the other on a bridge.  

 

Like other networks, facing points were avoided on fast tracks wherever that was practical, and for the same reasons.  

 

Goods sidings tended to be far more likely to be double ended (entry and exit at both ends) than in the UK but there were still many, many single ended sidings.  

 

Double slips and other complex point work were used and especially in the city areas where space was at a premium, but there is certainly no hard and fast rules that I am aware of of when they would be used and when not.  Over the years where possible, simplification of point work has been carried out.   There are still many examples of such formations in use.  

 

If you can get access to some of the French model magazines (Loco Revue, Le Train, RMF) you should get some ideas of how others have interpreted track layout.  Loco Revue have a series of special issues (Hors serie) some of which will again give good ideas on track formations.  You may well be able to find digital copies of some of these available on line.  
 

[Northroader]

The French equivalent of RMweb exists, and well worth dipping into. I tend to look at the pictures,as my French is of the schoolboy nature, and you'll find it's as much of a labyrinth to find things as our web. You'll find it here:http://forum.e-train.fr/

[jdy928]

Thanks All,

 

I will research all those leads. Off to play with my Peco track templates!

 

Regards,

 

Jed

[Pacific231G]

Try and see if you can find a plan of Gare du Bastille in Paris, which may give you some pointers. It was a relatively small, busy, four-track terminus on an elevated site, which survived into the early 1970s. I believe it was steam-operated until the end.

Anothe small urban terminus was Lyon St Paul, which is still in use today.

 

I too am eyeing up a version of Minories for a French terminus and perhaps apart from a releasing crossover between platforms 1 & 2 I can't see anything in it that would be  less prototypical in a French than a British context. I'd probably extend the loco spur to form a longer bay for parcels, postals and possibly autorails. 

 

The French were rather fond of double slips but seemed rather more inclined to use standard turnouts etc. than bespoke complexes so you'll actually be closer to ptototype using something like Peco track (which is H0 in any case) than you would be for a British station. When they used three way points these tended to be symmetrical rather than staggered.   The Est and then SNCF did use exclusively Vignoles (flat bottom) rail unlike many of the other pre-nationalisation companies that used chaired bullhead (double champignon) .

 

I absolutely agree with Fat Controller about Bastille. This terminus was an incredible exercise in cramming a quart into a pint pot- which makes it particularly interesting for us..At its busiest period in the mid 1920s it was dispatching trains from its five platforms during the peak of the evening rush hour as close as two minutes apart. Because the station was immediately followed by a narrow almost mile long viaduct with room only for the two running lines and there was no room in the cramped terminus site for any stock storage, every outbound train had to be balanced by an inbound working. Before push-pull operation was introduced in its final six years, locos also had to get from the Paris end of an arriving working  to the country end of a later train.

Bastille really was Minories writ large and the process that the Est's traffic Department went through in the early 1920s to rationalise its operation to get about 25% more rush hour trains through it without spending any real money on it (commuters were never very profitable) became a model for suburban terminus operation.

 

Fortunately you have no need to to search for a plan. I've written a couple of articles about Paris Bastille for Continental Modeller and the French magazine RMF so have researched it fairly thoroughly.

This is a plan from the 1950s after SNCF had relaid most of the Est's 46Kg/m track and pointwork with their own standard 50Kg/m types.

 

and this is my rendering of its final layout using Peco large radius pointwork  which gives a total throat length very close to reality and is a bit clearer about which points were left and right handed..

 

 

Apart from one single slip at the very start of the throat (only needed to get the exact entry angle to the viaduct so easily substituted by simple turnouts) and a symmetrical three way in the small loco shed the trackwork was made up almost entirely from SNCF's sharpest standard left and right hand points (with 1: 7.5 crossings) usually used only for sidings. This enabled the designers to cram a very complex throat into a very short length by not having a single reverse curve; and it was a very clever design that enabled simultaneous up and down working with any two platforms.

There were five platform roads and a loco release line for no. 1 and three loco traversers (very similar to those at Birmingham Moor St.) to enable the longest possible trains to be run.

Before it closed to be replaced by the first of the long planned RER lines, Bastille had become something of a living museum with mechanical signals and pointwork controlled from a single small and very Britsh looking Saxby box and was all steam until the very last train departed.on the night of  December 14th 1969 

 

Most of the photos that illustrate my articles required permission to use and I don't want to abuse that trust but here's one from my own collection that shows one of the 131TB Prairie tanks that were specially designed for the line in the 1920s hauling a train of the ex Reichsbahn bogie coaches that came to France as reparations after the Second World War and replaced the rather ancient four wheel double deck coaches that had previously operated the line .

 

 

 

Soon after it closed SNCF's film department released a very evocative film about Bastille and the Ligne de Vincennes and I challenge anyone to watch this and not fall under the station's spell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwn8DzI0rpU&t=521s

What this doesn't show is the choreography of movement required to operate an intense rush hour service before push-pull working was introduced in about 1963. .

 

I agree about Lyon St Paul also being interesting. It too had five platforms (It's four now) but also had a small goods yard and was crammed into an even more cramped site with a tunnel mouth immediately at the end of its throat with a scissors crossover inside the tunnel. It was never as intensively worked as Bastille but goods workings would add to the variety. It's difficult to photograph but I have a plan of it somewhere that I'll dig out.

Edited September 12, 2017 by Pacific231G

[D9020 Nimbus]

Which issue(s) of Contnental Modeller did these articles appear in?

[Pacific231G]

Which issue(s) of Contnental Modeller did these articles appear in?

February and March 2011. I focussed on the terminus itself rather than going very far into the line it served.

 

The first article is eight pages long and gives a general history and description of the station. It was originally planned as the Est's second main line Paris terminus. Instead, it became an almost exclusively suburban operation and in many ways the line was a little world of its own. The first article also runs through the locomotives and carriages that operated services in and out of Bastille over its 110 year life.

The second article is seven pages and focusses on Bastille's operation, especially the 1920s rationalisation that squeezed far more trains into the same limited space by making great use of platform occupancy diagrams and the stopping patterns of trains, the resulting development of its track layout and signalling, its timetables and of course its modelling potential.

 

Needless to say I've done quite a lot of research that was either too detailed to include in the articles or has been found since but I can probably answer most queries. 

 

The sad thing is that, until its closure was imminent, enthusiasts rather ignored this living museum, made so by the decades long protracted gestation of the RER that was bound to make it redundant. As a result, most photos and videos show it in its short period of push-pull working rather than earlier on when, during the rush hours, the loco traversers moving the 131TB Prairie tanks must been going like shuttlecocks and the whole operation would have been fascinating to watch.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Pacific231G

[The Bigbee Line]

It's very tempting to create a small European station. There are some excellent structure kits about to create the theme. I'm currently sitting in Eurostar at Gare du Nord. On the way out of the station there are loads of things to inspire an SNCF style layout. Even a present day model would be interesting. Even the graffiti is in a class of its own. Looking forward to see how this develops.

 

Ernie

Edited September 6, 2017 by The Bigbee Line

[Oldddudders]

Roscoff. A bijou terminus from another era. And that's how a Frenchman described it 30 years ago! And, no, I haven't been there. But I am working on it. 

[Pacific231G]

Try and see if you can find a plan of Gare du Bastille in Paris, which may give you some pointers. It was a relatively small, busy, four-track terminus on an elevated site, which survived into the early 1970s. I believe it was steam-operated until the end.

Anothe small urban terminus was Lyon St Paul, which is still in use today.

I've now found a not very clear plan for St. Paul and some of my own photos which while of poor quality do show the goods shed before it was demolished to make room for (trolleybus?) parking.

 

As well as the visible trackwork there was a scissors crossover just inside the 1400metre Loyasse tunnel. There were five platform tracks, what appears to have been a carriage siding and a single siding with a kickback serving the goods yard.

A few years earlier there had been more sidings in the goods yard accessed by wagon turntables.

In the plan, the building marked Gare just below the St. Paul station building was the lower terminus of the St. Paul - Fourviere funicular that at its upper terminus connected with a small metre gauge electric tramway serving one of the city's main cemeteries.

 

These are the photos I took during a literally flying visit to Macon in the 1990s when I made the short train journey to Lyon.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any more photos even from the car park thanks to a particularly obnoxious station official. At that time it presented the odd image of a fully electrified commuter terminus served entirely by DMUs- the reason being that, when the region took responsibility for local train services as TERs,  it extended a number of routes west of Lyon onto lines SNCF had closed to passengers decades before that had never been electrified.

 

The station is and always has been very difficult to photograph and a good general view would require an aircraft or at least access to the apartments overlooking the tunnel end. 

 

It also looks like an extreme example of modeller's licence as the north east side facing the Rue St. Paul is raised on arches accomodating various garages and lockups while the other side is a sheer escarpment cut into Mont Fourviere and the tunnel mouth is jsut beyond the platform ends. The small goods yard attached to an urban, largely commuter, terminus could make operation more interesting and its cramped site makes it far less spread out than any other French main line terminus that I'm aware of. Even Bastille had more space to play with. 

 

With one of Lyon's five funiculars, trams, "electobuses", buses and a busy railway terminus, the St. Paul district must have once resembled one of those "Wonder Books of Modern Transport" 

 

There was one curious incident at the station on Friday 2nd March 1945, not very long after liberation, when a Mikado that had been damaged in an allied air raid and was being taken for repairs with others as a light engine broke free and headed down the line. With nowhere safe to divert it to it ended up gathering speed through the Loasse Tunnel and ploughing through the buffers into the station building which had been cleared. Nobody was injured and the locomotive, a 141C, was apparently back in service a few months later 

Edited September 12, 2017 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

 

Anothe small urban terminus was Lyon St Paul, which is still in use today.

I thought I had a plan for St. Paul somewhere.

Here it is

I don't remember where it came from but it's consistent with the not very clear plan in my previous post. a thick line represent a voie principale a running lines that trains carrying passengers can use; a thinner line represents a voie de service a siding or other line from which passenger lines are protected by a derail, trap point or in this case by the track layout. The lines perpendicular to the running lines connect the various tracks and sidings via wagon turntables including the apparently unconnected sidings in the goods yard and it's possible that those at the terminal end were used to release the tank locos that operated the station's main commuter traffic. 

 

Measuring it using Google Earth I make the track length of the station from the tunnel mouth to the buffers 248m - less than three metres in H0 scale and the platforms are 160m long so from the ends of the platforms to the tunnel is about 85m. On a diagonal corner site you could model it completely to scale, including the station building in three metres by one and a half metres   

 

Clearly quite a lot of shunting into the tunnel was required ...eeek!!

Edited September 12, 2017 by Pacific231G

[Northroader]

I have to confess I hadn't heard of Lyon St. Pol, just Perrache and Brotteaux. The thing I really like is how the level of the ground changes across the site, rather than being tabletop flat like at Paris Bastille. I'd be tempted to lose a few roads and cut down on the width a bit. It's funny, but your plan is a dead ringer for the old (pre 1885) terminus at Bradford Exchange, L&Y /GNR, except the goods yard is the other side. This was featured in "Locomotive and Train working in latter part of the 19th century" E.L.Ahrons, which gave a very entertaining read. The trains there were pushed into the tunnel, the loco cleared, and then the coaches allowed to roll down by gravity, as it was on 1in 50. I suppose they used a station pilot at St. Pol? With a scissors crossover in the tunnel, I suppose you could get away with a sector table, which would shorten the line and simplify the trackwork.

[Pacific231G]

I have to confess I hadn't heard of Lyon St. Pol, just Perrache and Brotteaux. The thing I really like is how the level of the ground changes across the site, rather than being tabletop flat like at Paris Bastille. I'd be tempted to lose a few roads and cut down on the width a bit. It's funny, but your plan is a dead ringer for the old (pre 1885) terminus at Bradford Exchange, L&Y /GNR, except the goods yard is the other side. This was featured in "Locomotive and Train working in latter part of the 19th century" E.L.Ahrons, which gave a very entertaining read. The trains there were pushed into the tunnel, the loco cleared, and then the coaches allowed to roll down by gravity, as it was on 1in 50. I suppose they used a station pilot at St. Pol? With a scissors crossover in the tunnel, I suppose you could get away with a sector table, which would shorten the line and simplify the trackwork.

I'm not surprised; when I first visited Lyon, St.Paul station wasn't even marked on the tourist map.

 

I don't know about the use of a station pilot at St. Paul. I've got detailed rush hour timetable graphs and platform occupancy diagrams for Bastille from the 1920s and all trains seem to have left behind locos that had arrived at the head of a different  incoming train three or four movements before and there's no sign of a station pilot being used. My impression, though I can't be certain, is that except at the largest termini with separate carriage sidings French railways were far less keen on using station pilots than were ours, possibly because of a general shortage of motive power. It wasn't unusual at some smaller termini to find a large express loco shunting its own train. That certainly happened at Dieppe Maritime where only train locomotives seem to have ever appeared on its quays and I've a picture of a 231G Pacific solemnly shunting the restaurant car of the express it had just arrived with at Croisic.

[Fat Controller]

I've now found a not very clear plan for St. Paul and some of my own photos which while of poor quality do show the goods shed before it was demolished to make room for (trolleybus?) parking.

 

Lyon St. Paul plan 1933.jpg

As well as the visible trackwork there was a scissors crossover just inside the 1400metre Loyasse tunnel. There were five platform tracks, what appears to have been a carriage siding and a single siding with a kickback serving the goods yard.

89 Quartiers Saint-Paul et des Terreaux.jpg

A few years earlier there had been more sidings in the goods yard accessed by wagon turntables.

In the plan, the building marked Gare just below the St. Paul station building was the lower terminus of the St. Paul - Fourviere funicular that at its upper terminus connected with a small metre gauge electric tramway serving one of the city's main cemeteries.

 

These are the photos I took during a literally flying visit to Macon in the 1990s when I made the short train journey to Lyon.

Lyon St Paul DT 1.jpgLyon St Paul DT 2.jpgLyon St Paul DT 3.jpgLyon St Paul DT 4.jpg

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any more photos even from the car park thanks to a particularly obnoxious station official. At that time it presented the odd image of a fully electrified commuter terminus served entirely by DMUs- the reason being that, when the region took responsibility for local train services as TERs,  it extended a number of routes west of Lyon onto lines SNCF had closed to passengers decades before that had never been electrified.

 

The station is and always has been very difficult to photograph and a good general view would require an aircraft or at least access to the apartments overlooking the tunnel end. 

 

It also looks like an extreme example of modeller's licence as the north east side facing the Rue St. Paul is raised on arches accomodating various garages and lockups while the other side is a sheer escarpment cut into Mont Fourviere and the tunnel mouth is jsut beyond the platform ends. The small goods yard attached to an urban, largely commuter, terminus could make operation more interesting and its cramped site makes it far less spread out than any other French main line terminus that I'm aware of. Even Bastille had more space to play with. 

 

With one of Lyon's five funiculars, trams, "electobuses", buses and a busy railway terminus, the St. Paul district must have once resembled one of those "Wonder Books of Modern Transport" 

 

There was one curious incident at the station on Friday 2nd March 1944, not very long after liberation, when a Mikado that had been damaged in an allied air raid and was being taken for repairs with others as a light engine broke free and headed down the line. With nowhere safe to divert it to it ended up gathering speed through the Loasse Tunnel and ploughing through the buffers into the station building which had been cleared. Nobody was injured and the locomotive, a 141C, was apparently back in service a few months later 

Gare St Paul - Accident Friday 2 March 1945.jpg

I think you might want to check the date for the 'buffer-stop-collision'- Lyon wasn't liberated until September 1944. 

The site of the former goods shed etc is now a turning-circle for the trolley-buses, combined with a car parking space; woe betide anyone who parks outside the designated space, as Lyon drivers don't take prisoners.

The electrification now sees use again, as the line from L'Arbresle is now a 'tram-train'.

If anyone wants to see a view from above, I recollect there is one in 'L'Horlogier de St Paul', directed by Bertrand Tavernier.

[Pacific231G]

I think you might want to check the date for the 'buffer-stop-collision'- Lyon wasn't liberated until September 1944. 

The site of the former goods shed etc is now a turning-circle for the trolley-buses, combined with a car parking space; woe betide anyone who parks outside the designated space, as Lyon drivers don't take prisoners.

The electrification now sees use again, as the line from L'Arbresle is now a 'tram-train'.

If anyone wants to see a view from above, I recollect there is one in 'L'Horlogier de St Paul', directed by Bertrand Tavernier.

Well spotted. It was indeed 2nd March 1945; 1944 was a typo now corrected.

 

Apart from being called tram-trains and using the presumably now extended electrification do they have any other differences in how they're operated compared with the EADs that were still operating services out of there in 2008?  Looking at Google Earth's timeline the goods shed was demolished sometime between 2002 and 2005. It had certainly gone by the time of my second visit to Lyon  which I thnk was in about 2003.but the trains were definitely still EADs then. 

[Fat Controller]

Well spotted. It was indeed 2nd March 1945; 1944 was a typo now corrected.

 

Apart from being called tram-trains and using the presumably now extended electrification do they have any other differences in how they're operated compared with the EADs that were still operating services out of there in 2008?  Looking at Google Earth's timeline the goods shed was demolished sometime between 2002 and 2005. It had certainly gone by the time of my second visit to Lyon  which I thnk was in about 2003.but the trains were definitely still EADs then. 

I haven't yet travelled on it, but I did find this video on line:-

The large station towards the end is L'Arbresle, I believe. The lengthy unit seen leaving is one of the Bi-modes that now work longer routes from Lyon westward, at least as far as Tours.  

Amusingly, the roads leading to the various stations are indicated by signs saying 'P+r'; (Park and Ride)