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Barry Slips


Keithnewton
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I've never seen an example. The characteristic Midland layout for a fan of sidings made use of cascaded 3-way points, as here at Washwood Heath:

 

1495474717_DY2798WashwoodHeathSidings.jpg.19a8da5b27068a7919993fc0b7875679.jpg

 

[NRM DY 2798] or Cricklewood (Childs Hill or Brent, according to period):

 

1546956604_DY2807CricklewoodSidings.jpg.cfa009aaa0687c984d8c86d862aaf941.jpg

 

Do you have a particular location or application in mind?

 

[NRM DY 2807, both reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence].

 

The Midland seems to have been very four-square in its approach to track design, reproducing the same formations time and again. Wayside station layouts for example are highly predictable:

 

1075677386_Midlandstationlayoutssketch.jpg.597aadeef61e76b5dd23bf780d15af8f.jpg

 

 

 

Edited by Compound2632
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1 minute ago, Wickham Green said:

What the Midland DIDN'T like was any hint of a facing switch ...... so they'd have avoided Barry Slips - on running lines at least.

 

Apart from every terminal station, junction, single line ...

 

They avoided them where unnecessary but then so did most pre group companies because of the limitations at the time.

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4 hours ago, beast66606 said:

 

Apart from every terminal station, junction, single line ...

 

They avoided them where unnecessary but then so did most pre group companies because of the limitations at the time.

Or rather, the additional expense in installing and maintaining both them and the interlocking associated with facing points.

 

Jim 

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Thanks all

My layout is a fictitious Midland Railway branch line station, circa 1899 and situated in the Derbyshire Dales (where I hope to get inspiration for the buildings and surrounding scenery in due course). The track plan is simple, however I have included a double slip (opposite the signal box) and was investigating if this could have been a Barry slip? Rosedale2.JPG.bac121e07d1f92a4ed19878f8cf5fdee.JPG

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1 hour ago, jim.snowdon said:

Or rather, the additional expense in installing and maintaining both them and the interlocking associated with facing points.

 

Jim 

Not necessarily. The Companies and the BoT took a strong dislike to facing points following the Wigan derailment of 3 August 1873, and the L&YR was heavily criticised following the Hall Road accident of  27 July 1905 for having facing points on a running line, even though it was a terminal station for half the trains using it.

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25 minutes ago, Keithnewton said:

Thanks all

My layout is a fictitious Midland Railway branch line station, circa 1899 and situated in the Derbyshire Dales (where I hope to get inspiration for the buildings and surrounding scenery in due course). The track plan is simple, however I have included a double slip (opposite the signal box) and was investigating if this could have been a Barry slip? Rosedale2.JPG.bac121e07d1f92a4ed19878f8cf5fdee.JPG

 

I think that a conventional double slip would be much more likely at that location.

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5 minutes ago, Penlan said:

Is there a photo available of a 1:1 scale Barry Slip, please.

The loco yard at Ropley on the Mid Hants Railway has a Barry slip. I am not working there until 30th March but will try to remember to take a photo then and put it here. It is easy to see from the trains and you can get quite close to it when the yard is open and no movements are taking place. 

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7 hours ago, beast66606 said:

 

Apart from every terminal station, junction, single line ...

 

They avoided them where unnecessary but then so did most pre group companies because of the limitations at the time.

And of course because they were legally required to avoid them except where absolutely necessary - which meant the sort of locations you mentioned.   All a consequence of the Wigan derailment as mentioned by 'LMS 2968'

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Discouraged by HMRI maybe, but not illegal. There are very few actual legal requirements as regards the design of railways other than as provided for by the various Regulation of Railways Acts. His/Her Majesty's Railway Inspectors worked by the powers of persuasion, apart  from enforcement of the few Railways Acts and in the formal process for authorising the taking of new railways into service.

 

Jim

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1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

Not necessarily. The Companies and the BoT took a strong dislike to facing points following the Wigan derailment of 3 August 1873, and the L&YR was heavily criticised following the Hall Road accident of  27 July 1905 for having facing points on a running line, even though it was a terminal station for half the trains using it.

The Wigan derailment was instrumental in bringing in the requirement that facing points in passenger lines must be detected as properly closed and locked against movement, ie the requirement for facing point locks.

 

As regards the Hall Road collision, the extract of Col. Druitt's report from the Railways Archive puts it down to driver and signaller error - no mention of any failings in regard to the pointwork.

 

Jim

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12 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

But not actually necessary, or economic.

 

Jim

Depends where you want to get to from which entrance to the pointwork.  With a double slip you can approach from either line at one end and leave by either line at the other end.  A  Barry slip doesn't allow that as it will only give a turnout from one of the approach lines at each end, hence its having a different name from a double slip.  In Joseph's drawing it would mean that either the line from the release loop or the one the goods sidings would not be able to access the running  line in the station throat but could only access the extended siding (I am presuming it is a siding as there are no other equivalents to a trap point shown on the drawing)

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3 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Depends where you want to get to from which entrance to the pointwork.  With a double slip you can approach from either line at one end and leave by either line at the other end.  A  Barry slip doesn't allow that as it will only give a turnout from one of the approach lines at each end, hence its having a different name from a double slip.  In Joseph's drawing it would mean that either the line from the release loop or the one the goods sidings would not be able to access the running  line in the station throat but could only access the extended siding (I am presuming it is a siding as there are no other equivalents to a trap point shown on the drawing)

I knew that when I made the original suggestion, not least from having modelled one many years before in similar circumstances. As I said in the original post, there is not actual requirement to get from the goods shed/siding directly to the main running line. These sidings can, as you have observed, be shunted from the extended siding that functions as a headshunt for the station yard. The other end of the Barry slip allows movement from the run round loop to and from the main running line.

 

From a purely modelling point of view, a Barry slip is considerably easier to build than a double slip, and not being able to cheat by shunting everything from the main line adds operational interest. Using one is entirely plausible, as well as a departure from the usual modelling stereotype.

 

Jim

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35 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

The Wigan derailment was instrumental in bringing in the requirement that facing points in passenger lines must be detected as properly closed and locked against movement, ie the requirement for facing point locks.

 

As regards the Hall Road collision, the extract of Col. Druitt's report from the Railways Archive puts it down to driver and signaller error - no mention of any failings in regard to the pointwork.

 

Jim

That doesn't mean that the Railways shied away from facing points because of a fear of them, and almost all lay-by sidings were single ended at the trailing end rather than loops, and the inconvenience of stopping a goods in advance of the pointwork and then setting back must have been more expensive than the costs of FPLs.

 

Thinking about it, I recall it was the press, including the railway press, which criticised the L&YR rather than the MoT.

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16 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

I knew that when I made the original suggestion, not least from having modelled one many years before in similar circumstances. As I said in the original post, there is not actual requirement to get from the goods shed/siding directly to the main running line. These sidings can, as you have observed, be shunted from the extended siding that functions as a headshunt for the station yard. The other end of the Barry slip allows movement from the run round loop to and from the main running line.

 

From a purely modelling point of view, a Barry slip is considerably easier to build than a double slip, and not being able to cheat by shunting everything from the main line adds operational interest. Using one is entirely plausible, as well as a departure from the usual modelling stereotype.

 

Jim

So let me get this right.  A freight train arrives in the platform and the engine runs round (unavoidable),  the trains is then shunted to the run round loop from the platform line (because it can't go anywhere else as far as the yard is concerned), and is then drawn back to the extended siding which forms a headshunt in order to shunt the goods sidings because it can't shunt them from the running line.  Seems a long way round to do a straightforward job of shunting the whole lot from the running line - which is how it would normally be done.  A layout like that would be a long way from popular with the blokes who had to shunt it.

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And probably no less popular than the moves required to get coal wagons to their siding, which involves a reversal in the bay platform.

 

Ultimately, we are dealing with a model railway, not a model of an actual prototype. A problem that model railways have, compared to their full size equivalents, is a distinct lack of space, leading to track layouts that whilst plausible are not exactly how the prototype would have done things given rather more space. We also have rather diferent priorities when it comes to "labour"- granted, the full size train crew would want to get the job done as expediently as possible, but the operator of a model railway is doing so for fun, rather than as a paid job. A layout that is too easy to operate can be boring.

 

Jim

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10 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

What the Midland DIDN'T like was any hint of a facing switch ...... so they'd have avoided Barry Slips - on running lines at least.

 

I doubt there was ever any use of a Barry slip on a running line, by any company?

 

10 hours ago, beast66606 said:

 

Apart from every terminal station, junction, single line ...

 

They avoided them where unnecessary but then so did most pre group companies because of the limitations at the time.

 

The Midland's way of doing things really wasn't set up for dealing with single track branch lines. The only really long stretch of single line was the Hereford Hay & Brecon section. The preference was for a good long passing loop, onto which the standard double-track wayside station layout could be grafted. 

 

4 hours ago, Keithnewton said:

Thanks all

My layout is a fictitious Midland Railway branch line station, circa 1899 and situated in the Derbyshire Dales (where I hope to get inspiration for the buildings and surrounding scenery in due course). The track plan is simple, however I have included a double slip (opposite the signal box) and was investigating if this could have been a Barry slip? Rosedale2.JPG.bac121e07d1f92a4ed19878f8cf5fdee.JPG

 

Again, the single-line branch terminus really isn't a Midland thing, though there were examples. Even Wirksworth, geographically the closest to your supposed location, was in essence a double-track through station layout.

 

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23 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

That doesn't mean that the Railways shied away from facing points because of a fear of them, and almost all lay-by sidings were single ended at the trailing end rather than loops, and the inconvenience of stopping a goods in advance of the pointwork and then setting back must have been more expensive than the costs of FPLs.

 

Thinking about it, I recall it was the press, including the railway press, which criticised the L&YR rather than the MoT.

One reason for lay-by sidings being single ended with trailing entries was that it kept all of the points close to the signalbox. The conversion of refuge sidings into loops with facing entries was really only made practicable by the availability of electric point machines, as otherwise the for end points were beyond the limit of mechanical operation and would have needed a second signalbox to be provided, with all the attendant costs.

 

Jim

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There was in Midland days some aversion to double junctions connecting fast and slow (or passenger and goods) lines. This led to disaster at Sharnbrook in 1909: a down goods train on the down goods line was intended to be crossed to the down passenger line, to avoid a queue of mineral trains. This was to be achieved by setting back through the trailing connection from the down goods to the up passenger, then drawing forward through the trailing (facing from the PoV of this manouever) crossover from the up passenger to the down passenger. Unfortunately the signalman pulled the lever for the connection from the goods yard to the down passenger rather than the up/down passenger crossover (the levers being adjacent in the frame) and the enginemen didn't immediately realise that they were wrong line. The signalman accepted an up express goods, which made a head on collision with the down goods at nearly 60mph. The destruction of rolling stock was appalling and the enginemen of the express goods train were tragically killed.

 

Setting back onto the wrong running line rather than into a lay-bye siding to allow a following train to pass was not uncommon - forgetting that such had been done was the cause of the Quintishill disaster.

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