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7mm Minories?


malcolmcelyn
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15 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

There was an excellent 7mm SR EMU 'minories' layout on the circuit quite a while ago, but I can't remember the layout's name.

 

I'll have a search. I'm in the process of starting my first ever 0 gauge layout. I'm starting with next to nothing (sound-equipped Dapol 08, a DCC controller and not much else). I was going to make a basic shunting layout, but before I commit, I thought I'd look into a Minories-type layout. I'm looking at a fairly simple idea, that's achievable, but at the same time will be entertaining to operate. 

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2 hours ago, Miss Prism said:

There was an excellent 7mm SR EMU 'minories' layout on the circuit quite a while ago, but I can't remember the layout's name.

 

 

If you've a spare afternoon, check the numerous and lengthy Minories threads in this section, as photos have been posted several times by a member who operated the layout for a while. 

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3 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

If you've a spare afternoon, check the numerous and lengthy Minories threads in this section, as photos have been posted several times by a member who operated the layout for a while. 

I had started Simon, but hadn't reached an 0 gauge version by the time my eyes finally crossed!

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I saw Newford at Wakefield show a few years ago. It was enough to make me dip my toe into the 7mm world and plans are afoot for an O Gauge Minories in my garage.

 

I reckon that 16ft with an 8ft approach and 8ft long platforms will allow me to run trains of up to 5 short pre-grouping carriages with a 4-4-0 or Atlantic on the front.

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18 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

Right, the RMwebber was @Pacific231G and the layout was Newford: pics here and he gives some dimensions in here.

I've just checked my correspondence with Brian Thomas and the dimensions that I remembered in March are correct, 6 ft for the main board (which had all the visible points apart from that for the centre carriage siding on it), Two 4ft by long boards for the platforms and a 10 ft long fiddle yard on a pair of  5ft long boards. The Fiddle yard was simply a set of points on each main line track a few inches beyond the bridge to give four sidings. 

I did manage to take a few more photos of Newford than those I posted in the Is Minories Operationally Satisfying

and these two show a bit more detail of the throat pointwork which, according to David d'Arcy's plan for Littleton (see below)  were all 66 inch radius

 

watfordFS030010.JPG.1711e629ac3fc1c38eb605f223ed891e.JPGwatfordFS030009.JPG.eb680a18cb03b9af8286d77155a876c0.JPG

Apart from adding the centre road between the two platforms (which did give him some problems with clearances on platform 1) and turning the loco layover siding into a short siding for sundries, Brian simply scaled up Cyril Freezer's plan to O scale

 

Brian sold the layout to David D'arcy but not before getting Cyril Freezer to drive the very last train from Newford at the Reading Larger Scale show in May 2004; a nice gesture. He did say that he found the main six foot board, which was built from MDF a bit too heavy and unwieldy and that was one reason for disposing of it.

 

To turn it into Littleton, David D'arcy kept the station and its throat pointwork intact but added an EMU depot, in front of a new fiddle yard and some stock sidings. This gave him a longer run between the actual station and the fiddle yard. He also narrowed the station boards slightly, losing the low relief houses behind platform one. I saw Littleton at Watford Fine Scale in 2011 and a year or so later at Ally Pally so took a good few photos of it

The video of Littleton at the Watford show is still available on Youtube .

 

To answer Miss Prism's question about the relevance of scale. Newford could comfortably handle four car EMU sets but a loco hauled train was tight even with four short carriages or thee full length plus a van. Those are ridiculoualy short trains to fill the platforms of a supposedly main line terminus and in 4mm scale I think one is well aware of that. However, in O scale I found a four car version of the Brighton Belle or a buffet car express completely convincing.

 

I think this is a lot to do with what the eye can take in at a single glance but that's far less apparent on photos.  With suburban type trains that seems less of a problem and I find Geoff Ashdown's EM gauge Tower Pier  which occupies just three metre long (39inch) boards including the cassette fiddle yard entirely convincing. Tower Pier is oprationally almost identical to Minories with the addition of a releasing crossover and a separate set of goods lines. 

 

 

Edited by Pacific231G
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12 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I've just checked my correspondence with Brian Thomas and the dimensions that I remembered in March are correct, 6 ft for the main board (which had all the visible points apart from that for the centre carriage siding on it), Two 4ft by long boards for the platforms and a 10 ft long fiddle yard on a pair of  5ft long boards. The Fiddle yard was simply a set of points on each main line track a few inches beyond the bridge to give four sidings. 

I did manage to take a few more photos of Newford than those I posted in the Is Minories Operationally Satisfying

and these two show a bit more detail of the throat pointwork which, according to David d'Arcy's plan for Littleton (see below)  were all 66 inch radius

 

 

Apart from adding the centre road between the two platforms (which did give him some problems with clearances on platform 1) and turning the loco layover siding into a short siding for sundries, Brian simply scaled up Cyril Freezer's plan to O scale

 

Brian sold the layout to David D'arcy but not before getting Cyril Freezer to drive the very last train from Newford at the Reading Larger Scale show in May 2004; a nice gesture. He did say that he found the main six foot board, which was built from MDF a bit too heavy and unwieldy and that was one reason for disposing of it.

 

To turn it into Littleton, David D'arcy kept the station and its throat pointwork intact but added an EMU depot, in front of a new fiddle yard and some stock sidings. This gave him a longer run between the actual station and the fiddle yard. He also narrowed the station boards slightly, losing the low relief houses behind platform one. I saw Littleton at Watford Fine Scale in 2011 and a year or so later at Ally Pally so took a good few photos of it

The video of Littleton at the Watford show is still available on Youtube .

 

To answer Miss Prism's question about the relevance of scale. Newford could comfortably handle four car EMU sets but a loco hauled train was tight even with four short carriages or thee full length plus a van. Those are ridiculoualy short trains to fill the platforms of a supposedly main line terminus and in 4mm scale I think one is well aware of that. However, in O scale I found a four car version of the Brighton Belle or a buffet car express completely convincing.

 

I think this is a lot to do with what the eye can take in at a single glance but that's far less apparent on photos.  With suburban type trains that seems less of a problem and I find Geoff Ashdown's EM gauge Tower Pier  which occupies just three metre long (39inch) boards including the cassette fiddle yard entirely convincing. Tower Pier is oprationally almost identical to Minories with the addition of a releasing crossover and a separate set of goods lines. 

 

 

Thanks for the information; all very interesting and definitely food for thought. 

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15 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

To answer Miss Prism's question about the relevance of scale. Newford could comfortably handle four car EMU sets but a loco hauled train was tight even with four short carriages or thee full length plus a van. Those are ridiculoualy short trains to fill the platforms of a supposedly main line terminus and in 4mm scale I think one is well aware of that. However, in O scale I found a four car version of the Brighton Belle or a buffet car express completely convincing.

 

The flip side, unless you really want O scale, is that if you could dedicate that same 24' to OO you could have much more realistic length trains.

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On 13/09/2019 at 14:52, mdvle said:

 

The flip side, unless you really want O scale, is that if you could dedicate that same 24' to OO you could have much more realistic length trains.

That;s true but I think anyone doing this in O scale probably does really want O scale. There can't be many saying, "I have 24 feet available and I want to build a layout based on Minories what scale should I use?"  

This is one respect in which railway modelling differs from other modelling disciplines where you may well choose the scale to give the overall size of model you want. Model railways are different because a layout is a model made up of many other models.

As a youngster I used to build Airifix etc. models and it didn't bother me at all that while my Westland Whirlwind helicopter was to the same 1:72 scale as the Sunderland Flying boat, that was far larger than the 1:144 BAC 111 while the aircraft on HMS Victorious at 1:600 scale were tiny. These models only had to be consistent in scale with themselves not with each other. 

 

Similarly I could very easily build a French themed Minories based terminus if I worked in N scale but that simply wouldn't give me what I want. I was left some N gauge GWR stock by my late father and did build a small layout with it. I found though that I simply felt too distant from the action. Modern N gauge stock can be every bit as realistic as its larger scale equivalents but it just doesn't  have the same presence at least not for me. Similarly, though I've never built one,  when I've operated O scale layouts I've been very aware of the sheer mass of an O scale loco and its train. When the wheels really do squeal as  it rumbles over pointwork and you can feel the ground (or at least the baseboard) shake I can well understand the scale's attraction.

Edited by Pacific231G
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