Nether Madder and Green Soudley Rly

[Nearholmer]

1919 is actually quite a good moment for these purposes, and I think I can offer you the perfect loco!

 

Avoiding the temptation to ramble-off into a potted history of internal combustion motive power up to the end of WW1, which had actually got a bit further on than you assume, can I propose that your railway buys from Messrs McEwan Pratt & Co. Ltd the world's first locomotive with an hydraulic transmission?

 

This was to have been a 150hp 0-4-0 loco, with a White & Poppe petrol engine and the revolutionary Hele-Shaw transmission, and was for a railway in Canada, to which they had already supplied railcars. The running gear was built for McEP by Baguley, their partner company, but then the job was stopped by the outbreak of WW1, and the parts languished until 1921, when they were used to build a steam loco instead.

 

Imagine that it had been completed and that your railway had acted first as the trial ground for it (think Kerr Stuart and their loco on the Welsh Highland a few years later), then bought it.

 

The only drawings I've got of it are in books, and I'm reluctant to copy them over the internet, so, for now, assume it looked a bit (a very little bit) like a British Railways Class 01.

 

Or, I can offer you something that would probably be far too big: a 1000hp Co-Co Diesel-Electric that was due to be built by Hawthorn Leslie for completion in 1915, for use in Australia, but was also cancelled, or moved to a very back burner, at the outbreak of WW1. Drawings for that show either something looking like either a Fred Flintstone Class 37, or a stretched Metropolitan Bo-Bo ........ I don't think they'd settled on the detail of the innards, let alone the body design.

 

There are other potential contenders, but I think that the Cancelled Canadian is a really good one.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

Hi Kevin

I am in 1919. I know there were experimental internal combustion machines around on the railways then but I think these were primarily passenger railbuses to combat the road buses and not so much goods engines to combat the lorry (which became an issue in the next 5~10 years).

 

I am in an alternative timeline though so enjoy some flexibility.

 

 

Banking was a real art and there were many fascinating places where it happened. I feel a bit lucky in that my heights/distances maths planning is so crap that I now find myself with a gradient of around 1 in 30 on my main line and hence this discussion.

Another option is to divide heavy trains at Puddlebrook and send them up to Snarling in two portions.

How about DCC Concepts' up-to-date version of Magnadhesion (usual disclaimer)?

 

https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/specialised-model-accessories/dccconcepts-powerbase/

[Denbridge]

1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

Hi Kevin

I am in 1919. I know there were experimental internal combustion machines around on the railways then but I think these were primarily passenger railbuses to combat the road buses and not so much goods engines to combat the lorry (which became an issue in the next 5~10 years).

 

I am in an alternative timeline though so enjoy some flexibility.

 

 

Banking was a real art and there were many fascinating places where it happened. I feel a bit lucky in that my heights/distances maths planning is so crap that I now find myself with a gradient of around 1 in 30 on my main line and hence this discussion.

Another option is to divide heavy trains at Puddlebrook and send them up to Snarling in two portions.

A light railway such as proposed would not have the luxury of extra motive power to provide banking. The suggestion of dividing trains at Puddlebrook would be far more prototypical and interesting. 

[Nearholmer]

I was going to say that, but decided not to once I spotted that an ancient internal-combustion loco might be in prospect!

[Martin S-C]

Ooh, you people are awful.

 

[/Frankie Howerd]

 

I am a sucker for odd and surprising things, especially engines, as I am sure you know.

To deal with all this in sequence will knacker my brain so, to whack-a-mole things as they pop up, yes, the NM&GSR might well decide that splitting trains at the bottom of the grade is the most economical approach but I would reiterate that this is a fantasy railway inspired by the best British outline fantasy railways of the 1930s to the 1960s so that the logic of economics need not Rule Them All, like the One Ring.

Bear in mind that I have set a limit of 8 wagons plus brake for goods trains, so splitting a train might look a bit Sodor-y. I don't know if 8 wagons plus brake will even be a problem yet so its quite likely we are (erm, well... I am) getting ahead of (my)ourselves in seeking a solution for a problem that may not exist.

 

The converse (obverse?) of this is that banking is fun. If I need to do it now and then I think that will add to the experience of running the railway rather than detract from it. I feel sure that it will detract if I have to do it with every train.

 

If I do have to do it now and then, an interesting loco as banker would be nice, and I do already now have the Brecon & Merthyr 0-6-0ST allocated to this duty, but if, as I said, it ends up being only needed a couple of times a day then 1) a steam loco would not be economical; 2) an internal combustion engine might be more so and (or?); 3) we could do without a banker at all and just split trains into piddley little 4-wagon halves. This option then requires sending a loco and brake down to collect the second half. As with the banker, if this were done one time in five it would be fun. If it were done every time it would become a chore.

 

The objective here is always, always... Fun, not Operational Correctness or Logical Use of Railway Company Resources.

 

This brings me to the "8 wagon" thing which is for the moment a completely arbitrary number. It is based on the weight of the model train but also on the size of the room. I would much rather have a model landscape with small trains bumbling through it than a bunch of baseboards dominated by trains. I have see a layout of 24ft x 12ft that in my mind looked like half that size because it was covered in 6- and 8-coach passenger trains and 40-wagon goods tarins. What should have been a sweeping big expanse of scenery felt like a 8x4 tail chaser. So I set the train length limit to be short for this reason. Once I get some track down and see trains trundling around a 27ft long room I may decide that I can have a 10 or 12 or 14 wagon limit but for now I am sticking on the side of caution, if only because moving double-figures of wagons about means a railway needs appropriate sidings, run around loops and so on to handle them.

John - the DCC concepts system looks like a very neat answer. I suspect a home made system would work just as well at 1/10th the price. Some kind of cheapo steel sheet or foil under the track and a bagful of e-Bay Neopriuminiumumy-whatever-the-word-is magnets should do it.

 

Mr. Denbridge - Another whack-a-mole moment. This is NOT a light railway. It's an independent railway of the kind amalgamated at the grouping - or not, in the case of the M&SWJ. Its a fairly beefy route of single track secondary line which in my head covers 20 to 30 miles of modest-population, high-yield farming land between Hereford and Gloucester (more or less), with industrial tentacles into the coal, iron, timber and stone rich resources of the northern Forest of Dean. The Witts End Light Railway is however a very cheaply built line, but it's a branch off the main NMR-GSR route. This logic lets me do things that would never be considered by the likes of anything Col Stephens owned, or any tramway, come to that.

[CameronL]

Hi Martin.

 

Please may I add my thoughts to this whole banking / are the engines up to it discussion?

 

You've definitely got an idea of how your layout is going to operate. There will be certain trains of a standard length - coal trains and your longest passenger rake. These will be known quantities and, having seen some of the engines you'll  be running, I'm sure that there will be no problem in finding the right engine to get these trains up The Hill without banking. Making sure that this will happen is just a matter of assigning the correct loco to the train. They'll stroll up The Hill without any need for banking. (On an early layout of mine I had a Hornby Pannier that would take 12 wagons up a 1:20).

 

OK. But what about the rest of your loco stock? And do you want to do banking operations?

 

First off, let's talk about the locos which won't pull the standard trains up The Hill. Until the trials happen you don't know which ones these will be, but what if one of them is something you've always wanted or have fallen in love with and can't be fixed with some extra lead? Do you sell it because it won't work on your railway?

 

No. Find this lightweight something it can do. In a way you're lucky because your layout is split just about into two by The Hill. That gives you plenty of scope for operations that don't cover the whole system. Both Nether Madder and Green Soudley have extensive loco facilities. Wouldn't it be possible to find uses for the lightweight locos that don't involve a trip up The Hill? For instance, a small loco based at Nether Madder could run a short freight to Snarling for transfer to the Witts End branch, or that beautiful Witts End passenger set could have a loco change at Snarling for an onward trip to Nether Madder. Both these movements involve plenty of shunting without going near that 1:30. (I think there's a prototype for one company's engine pulling another company's coaches -I'm sure someone else will know more about it than I do).

 

I seem to remember on an earlier page that you mentioned a colliery train taking miners to the mine. That immediately brought to mind a small, old engine with about three four-wheel coaches. Your lightweights should be able to cope with that (unless I'm totally wrong about what you plan the mine train to be). You could also run short mixed services of maybe one coach and a couple of wagons (possibly at a slack time of day). A lighter load that a lightweight might handle. 

 

You could even run an occasional passenger service from Green Soudley to Puddlebrook. Just because they can go further doesn't mean they have to.

 

So, you can have engines that can cope with the 1:30 with your longest trains and a use for those that can't.

 

Do you want banking? 

 

Well, operationally it's fun, but you've already said that you don't want to bank every train. With some creativity about how your locos are used you could completely do away with banking altogether. However, if you do want to do some it could be as simple as the loco assigned to a train breaks down and the only alternative will need a banker. Other options are available. In this way banking becomes an option under your control rather than a necessity, and you still have plenty for all your much-loved locos to do, whether or not they can cope with The Hill.

 

Hope this gives you some ideas.

 

Regards

 

Cam

[Annie]

Your mention of sidings raises an important point Martin.  With a system layout where everything is seen and on stage as it were adequate siding space to contain all the rolling stock with spare siding space left over for traffic movements and trip workings between stations is absolutely essential.  I discovered this with my huge rambling GER based digital layout and I ended up having to put in a lot more sidings and loops than I originally thought I'd need to avoid causing traffic choke points.  And as you know most of my little railway empire is tramways and branchlines where nobody could call the traffic on the line intensive.

[St Enodoc]

4 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

Ooh, you people are awful.

 

[/Frankie Howerd]

Dick Emery shirley?

[Martin S-C]

Thanks for the input Cam, when the track is laid and powered up then we shall see what we shall see!

Good point, Annie. I have added several sidings and extended others since the plan was first drawn up. There's a very long siding at the colliery labelled "stabling road" where coal empties will live. There are two new sidings at Nether Madder plus the carriage & wagon works sidings are really just for storage. I added one more at Green Soudley plus a short transfer road where freight for the branch can be dropped off at Snarling for onward movement to Witts End.

If you check the plan I've written down the length of every siding intended for storage and there's about 80 feet of sidings. I can still take stuff off the layout at the exchange sidings as well.

[chuffinghell]

On 03/04/2019 at 04:01, St Enodoc said:

Dick Emery shirley?

 

Have you just called Martin 'Shirley' ?

[chuffinghell]

17 hours ago, Martin S-C said:

..............If you check the plan I've written down the length of every siding intended for storage and there's about 80 feet of sidings. I can still take stuff off the layout at the exchange sidings as well.

 

80ft? wow!

 

That scales at approx 1.15 miles now thats impressive!

Edited April 4, 2019 by chuffinghell

[St Enodoc]

2 minutes ago, chuffinghell said:

 

Have you just called Martin 'Shirley' ?

Possibly... or perhaps I called Shirley Emery a dick. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle refers - or not.

[Martin S-C]

I was surprised as well. Amazing how it adds up. Most are in 2ft to 3ft chunks though, and that includes the three exchange sidings which really should be fluid areas, and not storage.

[Long break to edit while posting]

I decided to go check the plan and see how much siding space there actually is. The discussion set my four brain cells running and they insisted, in consultation with my OCD index, that I find out.

Total siding space 126ft 3ins (this includes every track that ends in a stop block except for loco release roads. It excludes all running lines and release/run around loops).

 

Of this sidings allocated exclusively to:

Locomotive storage - 15ft 9ins (yes, this surprised me too).

 

Scenic features - 51ft (this covers all sidings in goods yards and industries)

Neither of the above two categories can be called stock storage.

 

Carriage storage - 10ft 6ins (it doesn't surprise me that I have given less space to storing coaches than I have to engines!)

So pure storage space remaining - 49ft (this is all sidings both on and off-stage where if I leave the track stuffed full of vehicles the operation of the layout is not hindered). In addition it would be fair to assume that half the scenic sidings/goods yard roads/industries could be half full at any one time without the place looking cluttered. This generates another 12ft 9ins of storage.

49ft + 10ft 6ins + 12ft 9ins = 72ft 3ins. On top of this is 15ft 9ins for locos and another 38ft 3ins of goods yards and industries.

If an 8-wagon/2-coach train averages 27" long this 72ft is space for about 32 trains. And at an average 6" per loco, 31 engines. Hm. Not a terribly productive diversion, just interesting.

Edited April 4, 2019 by Martin S-C
I'm sure these stupid letters keep moving about and disappearing after I type the post.

[CameronL]

Hi Martin.

 

Have you done the sums and worked out how much of that storage space is taken up by your current stock? And therefore how much is still available? 

 

Will this produce an acquisitive gleam in the eye or get you searching for the number of a good therapist?

 

Cam

[Martin S-C]

I seriously dare not do that!

BTW, current up-to-date plan below in case anyone is remotely interested. The most recent changes are the scenic treatment of the canal entry and exit arrangements at Green Soudley wharf, brought about by the need to fix some nitwit's hopeless maths when calculating how high a train is and how much space it needs underneath another baseboard. I changed the south exit because two canal tunnels looks odd. This isn't mean to be Dudley.

The other change is the Puddlebrook banker siding which may or may not exist.

All sorts of terrain/track heights added, plus approximate siding lengths.

 

[Annie]

Wow! - absolutely stunning Martin.  Now that is a layout track plan.  All other layout track plans must now bow down and give it homage.  

[BWsTrains]

Banking,

 

Thanks Martin for your detailed response, it's a good job I'm a member of the Flat Earth Society (in modelling terms) so don't face this problem.

 

One thought is that under DCC it'll be no issue to have Consist setups that pair all likely loco combinations and a simple lookup list when these addresses are required. Limitation I can see in this is that these presumably are stored on the controller device and will be lost in case of a "hard" power off. My NCE PowerCab stores saved info, I guess under backup power from a Capacitor, but even this becomes unreliable if I dare to be too long between uses!

 

Colin

 

 

[south_tyne]

Love the latest plan Martin. I for one am very interested in seeing it and I know that many others will be too!  

 

As I have said before, it's a wonderful project and I am really enjoying following your progress. Cannot wait to see it develop over the coming months. I just have total admiration for your drive, commitment and vision to bring your little empire to life. Inspirational stuff 

 

Keep on sharing,

David

 

[Martin S-C]

13 hours ago, BWsTrains said:

Banking,

 

Thanks Martin for your detailed response, it's a good job I'm a member of the Flat Earth Society (in modelling terms) so don't face this problem.

 

One thought is that under DCC it'll be no issue to have Consist setups that pair all likely loco combinations and a simple lookup list when these addresses are required. Limitation I can see in this is that these presumably are stored on the controller device and will be lost in case of a "hard" power off. My NCE PowerCab stores saved info, I guess under backup power from a Capacitor, but even this becomes unreliable if I dare to be too long between uses!

 

Colin

Hi Colin

I may have been wrong about the consist addressing in DCC. I suppose its possible to have a loco retain its own address as well as be talked to by a controller under a consist address. Its something I need to read up on.

I will be using NCE PowerCabs as well, though I might get one ProCab too for those extra things. I wasn't aware they lost the data over time with battery drain but in my case I think there will be fairly frequent usage.

I believe DCC systems also have a limit of how many addresses can be stored. My friends Lenz system's limit is 200 addresses. Pretty sure I won't ever approach that, even if I do go down the route of every possible consist pair and with visiting engines added on but its another factor to be aware of.

Thank you for the kind comments about the plan, everyone. As you know by now I am a somewhat fetishistic planner! I just hope the LLC boys and I can deliver what I see in my mind's eye and what people's expectations are.

[Martin S-C]

On 04/04/2019 at 12:14, St Enodoc said:

Possibly... or perhaps I called Shirley Emery a dick. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle refers - or not.

Ooh, titter ye not!

[Martin S-C]

A while back someone asked about my locomotive fleet. Rather than list everything like a Layout of the Month article from Railway Modeller of the 1960s here is a link to my 1919 era rolling stock files area of my Dropbox account. Thousands of words spoken by pictures and all that. I am, I must confess, more than a little embarrassed by this ridiculous collection because I went through a phase of just buying everything I liked. A lot are unbuilt kits so you'll just enjoy a photo of the box covers for now. Some are the manufacturers library photos and some, from models not yet released, are photos of the real engines.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pnjm0otqc70oq6k/AADTZw-7MArDd8TfvnNXVIwla?dl=0

I am currently playing about with the company loco lining scheme. I have decided on an M&GN style yellow ochre livery with an orange-chocolate-orange band for tenders, tank, bunker and cabsides and boiler bands, etc. There's two basic options: the lighter orange colour outside the chocolate - or inside. Given the yellow ochre base colour I find the combination of chocolate-orange-chocolate seems to work best (example 3) but this is contrary to all lining conventions I've discovered which always have a darker colour edged by lighter colours.

There is an option of going with black instead of the chocolate. The colour difference may not be very obvious to the layout visitor, especially once weathered and varnished, but I will know its there! I do prefer the chocolate but it will increase the cost of the bespoke transfer sheets a lot. Also if I go for orange-black-orange I can do the whole thing very cheaply by just using 1950s BR coach lining sheets.

What do people think of the four options?

 

The 1363 class saddle tank hasbeen stripped down and resprayed so I'm using this as a test bed to try things out. I have some BR lining transfers on order so we'll see how they look. Boiler fittings are just placed on loose for the piccies.

 

 

 

[Corbs]

I think I agree with you in that putting the darker colour on the outside makes sense in order to avoid a light-light-dark-light-light effect where the orange may get lost? So it would be light-dark-light-dark-light?

[Martin S-C]

I left out the samples. Eejit.

 

Now my babblings have a reference point.

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2019 by Martin S-C
I'm a clueless buffoon who forgets to add images to forum posts as well as forgets to attach attachments to e-mails.

[Corbs]

Ahhh I see now. I think the main difference is that 1 and 3 look like 2-line lining whereas 2 and 4 look like 1-line lining, because the orange is quite close to the background colour.

[woodenhead]

I see your coal is also yellow, are you planning on running them on high oil content Tasmanite rather than the locally produced stuff?  

 

Maybe the colour needs to be a little deeper in hue. it looks almost like some sort of NCB livery present rather than a light railway.  The deeper colour on your lining samples look better

 

What are your plans for the GW cast numberplate - removal and a painted number?