Simple OO Gauge Test Layout

[petejones]

This is how I imagine the branch line to be. The junction to the mainline begins to the left on the circular layout (the sharp curve, which will be disguised by a cutting), then passes the halt and coal merchant siding, trundles across the level crossing and on to the branch terminus, with it's run-around loop, goods and wagon sidings. Does this seem feasible? Obviously the full circuit above breaks the illusion somewhat, but still...

[Pacific231G]

On 29/07/2019 at 02:50, petejones said:

This is how I imagine the branch line to be. The junction to the mainline begins to the left on the circular layout (the sharp curve, which will be disguised by a cutting), then passes the halt and coal merchant siding, trundles across the level crossing and on to the branch terminus, with it's run-around loop, goods and wagon sidings. Does this seem feasible? Obviously the full circuit above breaks the illusion somewhat, but still...

That looks absolutely fine to me Pete. The double crossover terminus gives good shunting. Peter Denny used it for the original Leighton Buzzard and I think for Tingewick,  and the single siding at the halt will require the daily goods train to take any incoming wagons up to the terminus then back again to be swapped for any outgoing wagons. Local yards and sidings that could only be worked from one direction like that were quite common. You can of course see the line continuing beyond the terminus as a mineral line to a quarry or mine off stage or even a milk depot (as at  Hemyock on the Culm Valley) and again you might have to run round  the empties to propel them on  

[Pacific231G]

On 25/07/2019 at 05:01, PatB said:

 

Have you considered a Deane pattern fiddleyard (where the fiddleyard is placed behind the terminus so both can be conveniently reached by a lone operator, and a "siding" sneaks off from the station throat to disappear behind the scenic break and join one of the FY roads to create a continuous run), if not for this layout, for your planned round-the-room? With a bit of thought, it probably wouldn't be hard to disguise the FY as a bay platform and sidings for a partially modelled junction station.

 

As an aside, the concept of the scenic fiddleyard enjoyed something of a vogue in the early 80s. I can recall at least a couple of plans in RM at the time which employed it in one form or another, and I've recently noticed that one of CJ Freezer's roundy schemes in the PSL book Track Plans incorporates a pseudo marshalling yard and inner relief road for the purpose. It's an idea I rather like, because if you're pushed for space (isn't everybody?) it seems a shame to lose a big chunk of it to the offstage areas.

It's interesting that Cyril Freezer always called this a "Deane pattern" fiddle yard because, so far as I know, Maurice Deane himself used it just once on a layout, Portreath, that only lasted for a couple of years. The reason for that was that he discovered the Culm Valley branch, clearly fell in love with it and promptly built a model of it on the same boards. This included all three stations along the branch and, guess what, a scenic fiddleyard and this was right back  in the post war dawn of the hobby in about 1950-51. Culm Valley didn't incorporate a continuous run and occupied a main board 6ft x 6ft 6in with an operator's well and an extension on one side for the terminus at Hemyock. It was effectively a spiral with the yard on the inside in front of the middle station Culmstock but at a slightly lower level and was a complete yard with a run round, two long sidings and a couple of loco spurs so you wouldn't have to actually handle any of the stock.   The stations were all faithful to the basic track plans of the originals though much compressed and from the photos in Railway Modeller was a gorgeous little layout. 

I've seen a few American plans (some quite early) where the staging yard is fully scenic and often represents the interchange yards at both ends of the imagined route.

[DCB]

The level crossing is a bit improbable that close to a station yet too far away for the signal box to work it.   Much more likely to build the station by the road, if its on the same level, or to build a bridge to save the cost of a gate keeper. 

Likewise the coal siding away from the station would need a ground frame probably on a small box like a small signal box.  The main traffic would be coal and the station would be sited more to cater for coal traffic than for passengers. 

 By the 1890s to the turn of the century small  termini had become pretty formulaic with a platform, a loop and two long sidings.    Earlier convoluted arrangements had often been employed by small local companies to cater for heavy traffic which never materialised.  Many stations had rivers beside or even under them.

I think you would find the kick back siding to be a nuisance, and the other sidings too short.

[petejones]

Thanks for your input, David - much appreciated. As it happens I was just playing around with moving the level crossing in order to fit a couple of sidings behind the station. I think the goods shed should be behind the station as well really, more like the GWR.

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by petejones

[petejones]

This is without the kickback siding:

[PatB]

2 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

It's interesting that Cyril Freezer always called this a "Deane pattern" fiddle yard because, so far as I know, Maurice Deane himself used it just once on a layout, Portreath, that only lasted for a couple of years. The reason for that was that he discovered the Culm Valley branch, clearly fell in love with it and promptly built a model of it on the same boards. This included all three stations along the branch and, guess what, a scenic fiddleyard and this was right back  in the post war dawn of the hobby in about 1950-51. Culm Valley didn't incorporate a continuous run and occupied a main board 6ft x 6ft 6in with an operator's well and an extension on one side for the terminus at Hemyock. It was effectively a spiral with the yard on the inside in front of the middle station Culmstock but at a slightly lower level and was a complete yard with a run round, two long sidings and a couple of loco spurs so you wouldn't have to actually handle any of the stock.   The stations were all faithful to the basic track plans of the originals though much compressed and from the photos in Railway Modeller was a gorgeous little layout. 

I've seen a few American plans (some quite early) where the staging yard is fully scenic and often represents the interchange yards at both ends of the imagined route.

 

I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that the scenic fiddle yard was a 1980s innovation, just that there seemed to be a flurry of plans in RM at the time which employed the idea. There was at least one article specifically on the subject (possibly April 83), and an S C Jenkins plan based on Whitehaven which included a fan of sidings at "Cleator Moor" which was intended to act as storage rather than a model representation of anywhere specific. I'm sure there were others, but those spring to mind. The earliest mention I've come across, bearing in mind that I've no memory and limited source material for anything prior to the late 1960s, was Middleton to Blewcote, a RotM some time in 1970(?), where, although nominally a terminus to terminus layout, Blewcote was described as primarily acting as a FY for Middleton.

 

As for the origins of the Deane fiddle yard, that's very interesting. I hadn't realised that Maurice Deane himself had utilised it so little. It probably speaks volumes about how small a group of modellers and writers influenced how the was recorded for several decades following WW2.

[petejones]

At the risk of fiddling this layout to death, this is the latest:

 

[Pacific231G]

10 hours ago, PatB said:

 

I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that the scenic fiddle yard was a 1980s innovation, just that there seemed to be a flurry of plans in RM at the time which employed the idea. There was at least one article specifically on the subject (possibly April 83), and an S C Jenkins plan based on Whitehaven which included a fan of sidings at "Cleator Moor" which was intended to act as storage rather than a model representation of anywhere specific. I'm sure there were others, but those spring to mind. The earliest mention I've come across, bearing in mind that I've no memory and limited source material for anything prior to the late 1960s, was Middleton to Blewcote, a RotM some time in 1970(?), where, although nominally a terminus to terminus layout, Blewcote was described as primarily acting as a FY for Middleton.

 

As for the origins of the Deane fiddle yard, that's very interesting. I hadn't realised that Maurice Deane himself had utilised it so little. It probably speaks volumes about how small a group of modellers and writers influenced how the was recorded for several decades following WW2.

Hi Pat

If not an innovation it was certainly a 1980s revival of an idea that had been all but forgotten and Maurice Deane's Culm Valley was possibly unique at the time. Good ideas often don't bear fruit at the time and have to be re-invented, like A.R. Walkley's portable goods yard from 1926 that Alan Wright had never heard of when he built Inglenook Sidings. 

 

I definitely agree with you about the small group in the 1940s and 50s  though it widened considerably from then on. What we can't know is what other modellers who didn't write about their layouts were doing. Exhibtions tended to show off the work of club members, which is from where the magazines, particularly the new Railway Modeller, seem to have found most of their contributors.

 

The fiddle yard is interesting and an important step in the development of the model railway from simply running trains to operating a railway. Before WW2 layouts with fiddle and hidden yards were very rare (though they'd been used very early on for railway company display layouts for grand exhibtions). The best known was the famous Maybank layout, an O gauge  main line terminus to semi-automatic four road traverser (hidden under a high level MPD) and the Alheeba State Railway - an early scenic layout that inspired John Ahern- with an off stage yard of two tracks including a run round crossing representing the world beyond the state's frontier. I think W.S. Norris's superb O gauge layout had some hidden storage sidings  but, those are the only examples I can find in MRN or MRC. Single station layouts were invariably  continuous runs while anyone with the space for a multi station layout- Edward Beal the best known- invariably came up with a self contained railway, point to point, out and back, continuous or a combination of those elements and never worried about the fact that wagons from other companies were simply there. 

After WW2 the branch line terminus to fiddle yard layout seemed to arrive almost fully formed (though the hidden yard was often a fairly elaborate shunting affair with a track plan almost as complex as the terminus). Notable early examples such as Peter Denny's first portable versions of the Buckingham Branch, seemed to  almost set the direction of much of the hobby in Britain. I think this had largely come from the influence of Maybank which had appeared at the MRC Easter show almost every year through the 1930s and showed that realistic operation could be carried out in a very limited space- even less space if you replaced the main line terminus with a branch line and worked in 4mm scale.

 

The Americans took a different approach and very influential there was Frank Ellison's Delta Lines which set the pattern for point to point layouts where complete operations were carried out between two ends that were essentially interchange yards. Model Railroader has made his  seminal series of six articles from 1944  The Art of Model Railroading available as a free download

http://mrv.trains.com/how-to/model-train-layouts/2017/03/frank-ellisons-delta-lines-and-1944-series-the-art-of-model-railroading

The pdf  includes a complete plan and route diargram for the Delta Lines and the articles include his thoughts and ideas on everything from staging yards (don't hide them bring them into the foreground) to timetabling and car cards. They are well worth reading.

 

Elsewhere the idea of the off-stage fiddle yard or even on stage storage sidings seems to have taken a very long time to develop. In LocoRevue there was a single  article on timetabling in 1952 but the first layout with a fiddle yard doesn't appear until 1972 and the emphasis there seems to have been far more on running trains than operating them.

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by Pacific231G

[petejones]

Flipped the plan as the control panel will be at the station side, plus moved the goods shed and crossing, and lengthened the sidings.

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by petejones

[petejones]

Quite a few changes here - getting more GWR-like?

 

[petejones]

And with a siding at the halt, for wagons. I will be finalising the plan this week as I intend to start on the track cutting/laying over the weekend after extending the baseboard.

 

[petejones]

And revised lever frame:

1. Spare (White)
2. Signal, Up, Home, Platform (Red)
3. Signal, Up, Home, Loop (A) (Red)
4. Signal, Up, Starter, Platform (Red)
5. Signal, Up, Starter, Loop (A) (Red)
6. Facing Point Lock, Up Loop (A) (Blue)
7. Points, Station Siding (Black)
8. Spare (White)
9. Spare (White)
10. Spare (White)
11. Points, Goods Shed Siding (Black)
12. Signal, Shunt, Station Siding (Red)
13. Electrical Release to 2 Lever Ground Frame (Blue)
14. Facing Point Lock, Down Loop (B) (Blue)
15. Points, Down Loop (B) (Black)
16. Signal, Down, Starter, Loop (B) (Red)
17. Signal, Down, Starter, Platform (Red)
18. Signal, Down, Home, Loop (B) (Red)
19. Signal, Down, Home, Platform (Red)
20. Spare (White)

Edited July 31, 2019 by petejones

[petejones]

And as a full-length branch line:

 

 

[The Johnster]

Nowt wrong with that, Pete, perfectly cromulent.  You might want to move the signal box closer to the level crossing and the goods yard needs a trap point to protect the main line from it, not to mention signal protection.  The halt siding also needs trap protection.  

 

This has implications for positioning your distants, and the obvious suggestion is a scenic break somewhere in the top left corner.  I'd be tempted to have a dairy or something as a kickback from the loop into one of the corners.  Ratio do a provender store which is almost perfect for your halt siding!

[petejones]

8 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I'd be tempted to have a dairy or something as a kickback from the loop into one of the corners.  Ratio do a provender store which is almost perfect for your halt siding!

 

That would fit in well with the Welsh theme - thanks. I've just sent a load of unwanted stuff to Hattons for a part-ex, so can order one in.

[The Johnster]

Croeso bwtti bach if you're going to model a Welsh prototype!  Are you going local, Darkest Dyfed?

[petejones]

7 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Croeso bwtti bach if you're going to model a Welsh prototype!  Are you going local, Darkest Dyfed?

 

Steady with that Welsh langauge - I can't undertand a word of it! My partner is learning Welsh and is finding it a struggle. Having said that, she won a local Welsh speaking competition recently and had her piccie in the local paper, so she can't be doing too badly.

 

I was going to base this layout on a what-if branch line off the Cardi Bach. Originally I was looking at modelling Cardigan station, but it's an odd one to do what with that great curved approach.

[petejones]

Added in the dairy and moved the signal box. I can't add any catch points as space is very tight.

 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by petejones

[petejones]

I had a look at the baseboard today and decided to scrap it as (a) it would be too heavy with the additional ply round the edges and (b) it was not very sturdy. So now I need to look at either making a board from any scrap I have around the place (I have some 18mm birch ply, but it's really heavy so can't use that). Failing this, I may look at an open frame with craftfoam sheets laid on top edged with 3mm ply.

[petejones]

Not much in the way of scrap wood lying around (logs and tree trunks aplenty, though), so I can up with a frame design (see below, one cross-strut moved to the left slightly to avoid one of the points). The outside frame will be 21mm x 69mm redwood PSE timber, the cross-struts, 21mm x 44mm PSE. I will drop 600mm square craftfoam panels into the frame and these will be glued in place. Beneath the points, I will fix small sections of additional PSE (or perhaps some thinner plywood) so I can screw the point mounts to those. This lot cost me £60, so a lot cheaper than buying a baseboard kit and (hopefully) a lot lighter. I may edge the frame with quadrant beading, but not sure how that will look until I try it. I won't be adding a fixed backscene as I want to view the layout from three sides (one side will be against a wall). I may build a moveable backscene at a later date so I can put it opposite where I am sat for pics and viewing pleasure...

 

[petejones]

Here is the latest plan - no changes apart from adding some text about the different storage buildings and I moved the signal box back to the end of the platform as this seems a common place to site them - the signalman will be able to see the level crossing from there, won't he? Oh and I realised there are icons for bracket signals, so I added those too!

 

Edited August 2, 2019 by petejones

[petejones]

A couple of shots of the primed buildings that I have for the layout so far - just waiting for the Wills station building and goods store kits to arrive from Hattons. I won't use all the huts and if I use the lean-to from the engine shed kit, I will have to cover the gap in the roof where the chimney was supposed to go. I also need to fill the gaps in the platform kit before I prime it. I used white primer from Army Painter as it gives a slight texture to the plastic and is good for either acrylic or enamel paints, of which I use a mix of both.

Edited August 2, 2019 by petejones

[The Johnster]

Your signalman can see the level crossing, but not up and down the road, so how can he shut the gates safely against road traffic?  The signalbox needs to be adjacent to the crossing, and I would site it on the outside of the curve where the view of station operations is better.  And you still need signals to control and protect the turnout leading to the goods yard.

 

I'm also a little concerned about one of your goods yard roads, the one at the back of the platform.  What is it for?  It is inaccessible to road vehicles for the purpose or loading or unloading mileage wagons, and it blocks access to the station by road as well.  I'd be inclined to make this the goods shed road, and site the other one further back to act as a coal and mileage road.  Mileage traffic is the cheapest rate general goods traffic which is loaded or unloaded by the customer's staff, not handled by railway staff at all; it is dealt with on plain sidings with paved access for road vehicles that can back up to the railway wagons or vans.  The distance between goods yard roads is traditionally 18 feet, the turning circle of a horse drawn 4 wheeled vehicle, and incidentally that of the well known Scammell 'Mechanical Horse'.

[petejones]

Thanks for the feedback. How's this? Is it OK for one of the sidings to be at an angle, as I've done?