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Layout Help Please

Ed Winterbury

By Ed Winterbury,
in Layout & Track Design

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The Johnster

The Johnster

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The 4-4-0 Churchward County was extinct before the war, not Churchward's most successful design with a reputation for poor riding.  The Hawkworth 4-6-0 County is a post war loco, the later examples being built by BR.  Some of these were turned out in lined black with red backed number and name plates.  Both classes ran in South Wales and one of the reasons the 4-4-0 Counties were built was for work on the 'north to west' Shrewsbury-Newport line which was joint with the LNWR who had banned 4-6-0s on it.

 

Large main line locos might appear at Clarence Road if it were used in the late 60s or 70s as a parcels terminal overnight, as the truncated 'Riverside Branch' platforms at Cardiff Central (as it was by then) were for many years, so if you were continuing the WR scenario with steam lasting until the 70s and blue diesels, yes, the 4-6-0 County and other tender steam locos along with Western, Hymeks, 47s and any of the diesels that worked in South Wales, and you could run excursions up from West Wales as well as the parcels traffic with mk1 or mk 2 stock.

 

But, sorry Ed, no HST!  If you need to run HST and this is a basic requirement and a deal breaker if you can't, then you need another scenario: not even a freelance layout 'based on' Clarence Road will be suitable for HST operation!  It is too small.

 

A word about loco/coach compatibility at a very simplified level; steam locos were fitted with vacuum brakes and steam heating equipment, and could only work with coaching stock similarly fitted, which were mk1s and earlier stock, and some earlier mk2s.  Later mk2s were air braked and could not be worked by steam locos or some WR diesels such as Warships, Class 22, and Hymeks.  Later mk2 stock still was electrically heated and air conditioned, and could not be worked by Westerns; 47s were the norm in South Wales by then.  Mk3 stock, introduced with the HSTs, was obviously compatible with those, but versions were produced to run with 25kv electric locos on the WCML and ECML; these would not appear in South Wales.  Your train set, your rules, of course, but steam locos with mk 3 stock or a HST power car with mk1s or 2s looks dreadfully wrong!

 

Warships, Class 22, and Class 50 were more commonly associated with West Country work and men at South Wales depots did not have traction knowledge of them, so would be unlikely at your putative 70s Clarence Road unless the location was changed to Bristol.

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Pete the Elaner

Pete the Elaner

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You seem to be getting much more specific with what you want. This is not necessarily a bad thing but you did earlier (much earlier) state you had "quite a mixed bag of stock- LNER A4, Hunt, Pendolino, Javelin, MML HST Loco, Jouef TGV New White/Black Livery, Caledonian 272 0-4-0ST, Autorail (SNCF Region Aquitaine) as well as some DC BR stock"

 

This still leaves you with 3 choices:

1. Make up a fictitious scenario to support all you want to run.

2. Decide what you want to model then buy/sell appropriate models.

3. Invoke rule 1 & just run the lot anyway

 

Given the broad variety of your stock, it is hard to think of any scenario which will support option 1.

You seem to have moved towards option 2 by focussing on a particular area.

Option 3 always exists.

 

Option 2 can be interesting, demanding & challenging. Even with today's large variety of RTR models, there are few places you could model without having to kit or scratch build some stock or buildings.

If you want to go down this route, then try not to squeeze too much onto the layout. An interesting twist which some of my friends have used is to look at an area in which a railway was planned or you think could have been useful, then plan the railway to serve the area. The area around it would be more built up because of the railway & there may even be a factory with its own rail ink.

 

Option 3 - "rule 1" is still a valid option.

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The Johnster

The Johnster

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Rugby specials that came from 'down line', Swansea, Llanelli, and so on, stabled on the branch which was closed to normal traffic on Saturdays anyway and continued to do so after passenger closure and in fact right up until the track was lifted in the early 70s. In diesel days they were almost universally sets of mk1s hauled by class 47s, with maybe the odd Western.  Steam would turn up almost any ex GW or BR standard 4-6-0.

 

The method of working was as follows; the first train to arrive would proceed empty from Cardiff General/Central to the terminus at Clarence Road and the loco would shut down, having no more work to do until much later!  The next would follow it and the loco would buffer up to the last coach of the first train, then be uncoupled from it's own train and coupled to the stock of the first train.  The next would repeat the procedure until the down line was full of 10 coach trains and trapped locomotives, and then the procedure would be repeated on the up line.  

 

After (or rather towards the end of) the match, two fresh locos were sent up to Cardiff General from Canton, and coupled to what was now the front of the first train on the up and on the down, and draw them forward into the 'Riverside' platforms 8 and 9.  Once the final whistle blew, the old Arms Park started hemorraging humans, and a tidal wave of fans would engulf the station within about 90 seconds, continuing as a solid flood of humanity for about 30 minutes, with the 'down line' fans directed to the Riverside platforms.  About a thousand or so rugby fans would get on each train, and the trains would be given right away down line, either main line or via Barry and the Vale of Glamorgan if a conflicting movement might have delayed them at Cardiff; the name of the game was to get them all away as quickly as possible now.  The next pair of trains would then draw forward into Riverside, and the others pull up behind them, and the sequence would continue until all the trains had cleared, leaving the 2 locos originally trapped on each road to run light to Canton; the whole massively intense procedure would take about 50 minutes.

 

To add to the atmosphere, which depending on how Wales had done was either joyous or sombre, this would often take place in the gathering gloom of a winter evening, and was almost as much fun to watch as the match!  Similar operations would be simultaneously taking place on the Valley Lines platforms where everything that could turn a wheel and some stuff that probably really shouldn't or couldn't would be pressed into service, and the up side main line platforms as well.

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Ed Winterbury

Ed Winterbury

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Definitely Pete's option 2, but without the sale of items. Rule 1 will be invoked quite a lot, but nothing will look too drastically out of place.

 

So for me, I will take Johnster's help and summarise it as follows:

 

The train will come in and go to the platform, awaiting the fans. This might also include some box vans, plank wagons and luggage vans. I.e. anything where someone can clamber on. A class 47 will then couple up and haul the train away. The loco that pulled the coaches in (likely to be a small tank) will run light engine out, then come back later with more trains. Does anyone know the teams that were in the same league or level as Cardiff? This can help pinpoint which region would be running. Also, would a Hunt come in for a train from the East Coast?

 

Thanks!

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RJS1977

RJS1977

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Definitely Pete's option 2, but without the sale of items. Rule 1 will be invoked quite a lot, but nothing will look too drastically out of place.

 

So for me, I will take Johnster's help and summarise it as follows:

 

The train will come in and go to the platform, awaiting the fans. This might also include some box vans, plank wagons and luggage vans. I.e. anything where someone can clamber on. A class 47 will then couple up and haul the train away. The loco that pulled the coaches in (likely to be a small tank) will run light engine out, then come back later with more trains. Does anyone know the teams that were in the same league or level as Cardiff? This can help pinpoint which region would be running. Also, would a Hunt come in for a train from the East Coast?

 

Thanks!

 

No, they wouldn't have included goods wagons in rugby specials! Until relatively recent times there would have been a supply of coaches which were no longer in regular passenger use but were dusted off for special events, summer Saturdays etc.

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Ed Winterbury

Ed Winterbury

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Now the primary design phase is over, I'd like to gauge the general consensus as to whether this article should be moved back to Layout and Workbench, or it should stay here.

 

I'd like to take this opportunity to pat you all on the back and summarise the progress we've made in the past month or so.

 

We've pinpointed a period (WW2 to 1970s), found a location (Clarence Road) and found a track plan as well as discussing bracing.

 

Thanks and keep it up!

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