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Layout advise please


John Hubbard
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Can I take advantage of your collective knowledge please?

I want to build a BLT but to be a little different it will be circa 1890-1910, to help justify some small loco's, and coaches along with a limited track plan, as you may already suspect it will have a west country feel with train shed.

The east end will have a two road bridge (the owners thinking ahead to busier times and they will be expecting to extend to the west eventually.

  1. Would the track diagram be conceivable for the time? 
  2. Is the crossing likely in a small space?
  3. Would cattle trucks be run through a good shed or should this be moved to the end of the head shunt, and the shed line shortened?
  4. Should I include a catch point at the end of the goods area before the crossing?
  5. Any other advice on getting this compact, GWR-ish and a little more prototypical?

 

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The plan is not bad!  But the run in to the platform would normally be straight.   They would start with a field and a reverse curve into the platform would be a recipe for derailments in pre 1920s railways and pre 2020 models alike.  I always run tracks as near to the baseboard end as possible, you have a 6ft 6" X 18" layout on a 9' X 30" board.

 

See my doodle. I would chop it in half and stick 18" extra in the middle to allow longer trains.  Most BLTs would take 30 or 40 wagons in the run round loop, so the longer you can make the run round the better even if your FY only takes a loco and 3  X 4 wheelers

 

The diamond is a bit unusual but a loco shed facing the buffers was quite common.  There is a lack of coal sidings, probably need standing for 10 to a dozen on this size of BLT.   Siding at top would probably be an end loading dock with high platforms, 3ft 6" or so and too high for passenger trains.

 

Often GWR, well ex South Devon Railway Train sheds went right at the buffer stop end of the station, Ashburton etc

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Thank you for the advice about a straight run in.  The extra space was for the scenic elements, but I take your point, I'll redesign and add at least another 12" into the loops.

The location of the shed is as per Moretonhampstead, but I did not want to copy the station exactly as it has been done so often.

I suppose an alternative would be to move the engine shed to the west and the goods to the east but that would mean shunting through the train shed.

Would the cattle dock be more likely in the bay platform (1), or behind the engine shed (2)?

 

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Hi John,

 

You are trying to crack an age old conundrum: How to make a GWR BLT that is believable but a little bit different. You are definitely on the right track.

 

All permutations of positions for platform, goods shed, engine shed, cattle dock, etc, are possible so long as they can be operated reasonably sensibly.

Position2 for the cattle dock is very Moretonhampstead, as you know.

 

You are right not to bring the tracks too close to the west end of the boards. Even a little bit of non railway scenery there will help to set the station in the landscape.

 

The bay platform is a very useful modeller's cliche but in your period would a bay be likely? Amongst models, the lack of bay platform would be a factor that made yours more unusual! (Unlikely to have smelly livestock too near the passengers, BTW, although even that permutation was known. See cattle pens on the platform at Princetown!)

 

You always need some form of trapping between the goods and the passenger lines (to do things properly).

 

In your period its very likely that there would have been a small turntable (~45ft) at the station - possibly in the middle of the engine shed siding or in a kick back off it.

 

Consider making the design more dynamic by angling and/or curving the main running line. (I'm sure David didn't mean literally straight, just that the dogleg was undesirable.)

 

As David said, a long back siding or mileage siding for unloading open wagons would be common but wasn't always found as a dedicated length of track. See Ashburton.

 

Edited by Harlequin
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Thank you for the helpful feedback Harlequin.

Agreed, the bay platform should really go.  Traffic would not really have justified it, and it allows more scenic treatment too.

Trap is back in, and I've altered the sidings a little to allow more capacity, but shed line will probably get shortened a bit more, it does not need to be as long as the holding siding.

I've added a 45' table, which I think Moretonhampstead used to have, and it seems so large (relatively), but I guess that just shows how much we compress things.

Some gentle curving added, but it certainly will NOT be parallel to the board edge (not my personal taste).

I'll also need to adjust all clearances to broad gauge even though the BG will have been lifted by my time frame, the buildings Train, goods, and engine sheds will still be to that gauge I think.

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@Robert Stokes  Agreed this is usually avoided although as others have said GWR had an example of everything in this case Moretonhampstead in its early years.  To address the TT breakdown issue, it was not necessary to turn the TT to release an engine i.e. entry and exit were at 180deg, although obv the engine would then not be turned, and a worse case scenario of breakdown during turning wouldn't help.

 

@RJS1977 A very good point (sorry about the pun), for train sheds (and Platform canopies) I usually have them removable by having the legs fit in to brass tubes fitted in to the platform/track-bed.  An idea I think I found on this forum, and thought it made great sense and have since adopted.

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5 hours ago, Robert Stokes said:

I have frequently read that exit from the engine shed should not be through the turntable. If for some reason the turntable got jammed or there was some other problem with it, then the engine could be stuck in the shed unable to get out.

 

Robert

Moretonhampstead and Ashburton, which are very close genetically to what John is trying to create, both had small turntables in front of the shed originally. They were later removed.

 

Actually, @John Hubbard I steered you wrong, sorry, and 45ft may be too big. That was the size at Fairford originally but those at MH, Ashburton and Princetown were smaller. Princetown was 23ft6in but I can’t find a reference for the others. In proportion to the known size of the engine shed at MH it was probably about 23 - 25ft.

Edited by Harlequin
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3 hours ago, John Hubbard said:

...and with a bit more fiddling around...

Option 5.png

That is a bit fiddly and awkward to my eye. And there are some things that don’t work very well.

Sorry, I know this is a difficult puzzle to solve.

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3 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Moretonhampstead and Ashburton, which are very close genetically to what John is trying to create, both had small turntables in front of the shed originally. They were later removed.

Swanage (though not GWR) still has one, with the shed and access roads not at 180*.

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Thank you all, this is really very helpful and useful feedback.

I've tried modifying the last diagram with a smaller table in line rather than off a spur.  A smaller table works better I feel, although that will mean more scratch-building, unless someone has a recommendation?

Then I thought that if the TT is in line, why should I not move it to the East (as per Moretonhampstead), but unlike Moreton' keep the GS south of the station and add the cattle dock at the end of the GS, see last diagram.

Scenic section is a little less open on the west end, but I guess I don't have to worry about what to put in the space :) , and I also have lots of scenic space in the east.  Aesthetically it seems to look right too. 

Again, thoughts please?

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I do prefer sidings "right way round" as in your last diagram but I would move the shed and the yard points out of the loop to the right as your sidings are a bit short. The short bit of track currently at about the 3' 6" mark would do fine to cross the board joint.

 

But this is all very generic 20th Century blt stuff and I have no idea what the period features for 1890 would be.  Very early stations often looked quite different.

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I prefer the goods sidings the right way round as well but I don’t like the cattle pens being through the goods shed.

 

Edit: In all the plans I think the platform should be much longer.


Unfortunately Rational planning usually leads to the same old anodyne BLT track plan. If you want to have something different I think you’ve got to be slightly irrational! :wink_mini:

 

 

Edited by Harlequin
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Personally I wouldn't have a TT that small even if they did occur in reality. After all, the main purpose of a TT is to turn tender pulling engines and how many types are that short? Many modellers, especially young ones, go too far the other way and have a 70' one (possibly just because that's the size Hornby make) which only occurred at major termini. I think that one of about 40 to 45' would be much more useful.

 

Robert

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1 hour ago, Robert Stokes said:

Personally I wouldn't have a TT that small even if they did occur in reality. After all, the main purpose of a TT is to turn tender pulling engines and how many types are that short?

 

Does the 1890-1910 era change any of those assumptions?

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2 hours ago, Robert Stokes said:

You may be right. I model the 1950s and wasn't thinking about much earlier than that. Sorry for being so blinkered.

 

Well, one reason I asked is I am not familiar with how things operated back then, which could be very different (or could be the same) as what we know about later decades.  My assumption also is given we see so few modelling that era that many others also will be unfamiliar.

 

So to be more explicit I guess, can anyone answer what sort of engines would have been used in that era in this layouts area (and thus their length), and would they be happy running them backwards as seems relatively common at times in the BR era.

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36 minutes ago, mdvle said:

 

So to be more explicit I guess, can anyone answer what sort of engines would have been used in that era in this layouts area (and thus their length), and would they be happy running them backwards as seems relatively common at times in the BR era.

I can give you some info about this but some of it is speculative.

 

Both MH and Ashburton were built as Broad Gauge lines and were initially operated by 0-6-0T and 2-4-0ST locos. (Possibly also Gooch 4-4-0STs?) The turntables date from those broad gauge days.

I think that these broad gauge tank engines preferred ro run "forwards" for some reason and so the ability to turn them was required. Hence the small turntables.

I guess that this need was still seen as important around the time of gauge conversion because the turntables were retained at that time but soon after that improved locos probably made them redundant. The MH turntable was removed between 1900 and 1913.

 

Princetown was different. It was standard gauge from the start and the turntables there and at Yelverton were specifically retained to allow 19XX 0-6-0 locos with snowploughs to be turned and run between trains to keep the line open during heavy snow.

 

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Looking through Lyons and Mountford GWR Engine Sheds before 1947, there was a wide variety of turntable lengths throughout the system. Tenby had an 18' 6" one until 1932, whilst several had ones around the 24' mark, including Kingswear, Carmarthen, Falmouth, Uxbridge and Liskeard. The last survived until 1918, although the others were replaced with lager turntables or the depot closed around the turn of the century. Truro and Pontlotty had 30' 0" tables, until 1900 and 1928 respectively, whilst there were several at 34-35', including Tiverton which lasted until 1908. New turntables around 45' seemed to be in favour from around 1890.

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46 minutes ago, Nick Holliday said:

Looking through Lyons and Mountford GWR Engine Sheds before 1947, there was a wide variety of turntable lengths throughout the system. Tenby had an 18' 6" one until 1932, whilst several had ones around the 24' mark, including Kingswear, Carmarthen, Falmouth, Uxbridge and Liskeard. The last survived until 1918, although the others were replaced with lager turntables or the depot closed around the turn of the century. Truro and Pontlotty had 30' 0" tables, until 1900 and 1928 respectively, whilst there were several at 34-35', including Tiverton which lasted until 1908. New turntables around 45' seemed to be in favour from around 1890.

 

Tenby was originally built by an independent railway company (the Pembroke & Tenby, later extended to Whitland, then Carmarthen when the GWR converted one of the main line tracks to standard gauge).

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As hinted by others, I think it might help to have a ‘back story’ up to 1890, because that might help decide many features.

 

If this imaginary town failed to prosper, the railway might be semi-fossilised, but if the place has grown, the station has probably had to grow with it, and had money spent on modernisation.

 

Personally, I find fossilised 1840-60 station very interesting and characterful. They were often laid out before facing point locks became reliable, so you get things like the goods siding at Moretonhampstead that crossed over the platform road, and you might get wagon turntables surviving in the goods yard.

 

Irish prototypes can be quite useful sources, because there many towns simply didn’t grow during the life of the railway and all sorts of archaic stuff lingered until the 1960s and got photographed just before being swept away, whereas most English examples were mostly modernised before anyone thought of photographing the nether regions of goods yards etc.

Edited by Nearholmer
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Afterthought:

 

Cirencester Town, wonderful station building, and at your period the place had a tiny turntable, I think, and was definitely part-fossilised, being a really early line (1840s). A bit big, but some useful ideas?

 

Also, consider places away from the usual Devon area. Minstreley in Shropshire, joint GWR/LNWR, Presteigne, Henley in Arden first station etc.

 

A good station to illustrate development before, during and after your period is Calne, for two reasons: it kept growing to accommodate ever-increasing traffic; and, the set of 25” maps on NLS maps is complete, starting with a real beauty of a map from the 1880s, which makes clear that the place had a wooden station building, no signalbox, and one signal post (possibly two arms). By the early 1900s it had gained a more solid station, a signal box, more signals (probably FPLs at the same time) etc.

 

Abingdon station seems to have been another very interesting one in the period between gauge conversion and rebuilding c1909, because it retained a very nice overall roof, and even after modernisation it had a very antique track layout. Map info is not so easy for that one, but someone must have produced a history of the line.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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