Minories are made of this

[RJS1977]

On 06/04/2021 at 13:06, woodenhead said:

Wonder if he was a Dr Who fan, the Master used a Grandfather clock to disguise his Tardis.

 

 

In theory a TARDIS should camouflage itself by taking the external form of something relevant to its surroundings. This feature on the Doctor's TARDIS failed after taking the form of a police box on a trip to the 1950s and has remained in this form pretty much ever since. (I think there may have been a couple of episodes where this was temporarily 'fixed', only for it to resume its earlier form).

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, Izzy said:

I’ve never liked having mains power anywhere near a layout

Nor I.

[Pacific231G]

12 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Nor I.

I agree, and at exhibtions (and at home) I also always power my layouts via an RCD fitted plug.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Izzy]

I should perhaps add that I have never had the space for a permanent layout so all mine have been of the portable variety, even though now there is room to have one erected for lengthy spells should I choose. But having the control system separate means that it can be used with whichever layout I happen to be using at the time. 

[Pacific231G]

18 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

In theory a TARDIS should camouflage itself by taking the external form of something relevant to its surroundings. This feature on the Doctor's TARDIS failed after taking the form of a police box on a trip to the 1950s and has remained in this form pretty much ever since. (I think there may have been a couple of episodes where this was temporarily 'fixed', only for it to resume its earlier form).

Didn't it also have a system, mentioned in one of the David Tennant episodes, that worked in tandem to make it go relatively unnoticed or ignored by anyone passing by and that was functioning.

That can actually work quite well. I remember that one of the sports centres we used when I was at school adjoined a location where a quite enormous excavation, several storeys deep had been dug. Many years later, when it was "stood down" after the end of the cold war, I discovered from my father, who had been in the Royal Observer Corps,  that this had been the bunker housing its regional HQ (and possibly other cold war functions) . Very few people knew it even existed and everyone in that part of town had quite simply forgotten that there once been an enormous and umissable hole in the ground there.  

It's amazing what you can hide in plain sight. 

Edited August 1, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Worsdell forever]

6 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Didn't it also have a system, mentioned in one of the David Tennant episodes, that worked in tandem to make it go relatively unnoticed or ignored by anyone passing by and that was functioning.

That can actually work quite well. I remember that one of the sports centres we used when I was at school adjoined a location where a quite enormous excavation, several storeys deep had been dug. Many years later, when it was "stood down" after the end of the cold war, I discovered from my father, who had been in the Royal Observer Corps,  that this had been the bunker housing its regional HQ (and possibly other cold war functions) . Very few people knew it even existed and everyone in that part of town had quite simply forgotten that there once been an enormous and umissable hole in the ground there.  

It's amazing what you can hide in plain sight. 

 

Bit like this derelict house a few miles from us... 

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.5131977,-0.7206591,3a,47.8y,82.19h,89.2t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sROUNkQX9hKPpVzRl1KaahQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en-GB

 

Or is it...

 

http://www.hidden-teesside.co.uk/2009/02/19/goldsborough-rotor-bunker/

 

 

[Fishplate]

Have read through your topic over the last few days @Harlequin. Like others I was hooked in by the title as I remember reading about Minories and Cyril Freezer in my Fathers Railway Modelers. 

 

Looking really great. Super woodwork. 

 

I wonder what CJF would have made of the modern  'gubbins'  under the layout ?

 

I must confess there are some sentences about DCC which are just a foreign language. Again remembering some of the early RMs I suspect any models of Minories made at the time of the original plan would have been operated using half a dozen surplus ex bomber / or GPO switches. Chalk and cheese under the board in the 60 odd years since the original plan was published.

 

Looking forward to following progress (as an SECR layout, of course)

 

John

 

[lezz01]

When I knew him dear old Cyril and Nick, his son, modelled Swiss metre gauge, He quite liked modern and innovative systems. His plans made use of commercial products which is why you have to take his quoted train lengths with a pinch of salt. His plans would take 5 or 6 coach trains but the RTR stock available at the time was very under length. This is one of the reasons he modelled continental railways as the stock was much more prototypical length wise than British offerings. He could be a funny old bird at times but then can't we all!?  Non the less he was a very nice chap who always had time for the younger members of the club and he only ever offered advice if you asked for it and he never said you must do it this way or that way.

Regards Lez.     

[KingEdwardII]

On 31/07/2021 at 19:02, Izzy said:

It’s a shame there are no spare contact sets with the MP1’s

Hmm, if you want an extra switch, the MP5 motors have 2 compared with the 1 on the MP1 motors. A bit more expensive and a little larger, but I think they will do the job.

 

Yours, Mike.

[RJS1977]

3 hours ago, lezz01 said:

 Non the less he was a very nice chap who always had time for the younger members of the club and he only ever offered advice if you asked for it and he never said you must do it this way or that way.

    

 

That's pretty much the impression I get from his writings - RM, of course, but also books like his book on railway signalling. Very rare that he would say something *must* be done - the only time I can think of was when he was discussing layouts in sheds and said that if the roofing felt is starting to deteriorate it must be replaced immediately (based on his experience when it wasn't....). Most of the time it was hints and tips, and always in a conversational style of writing.

[Pacific231G]

9 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

That's pretty much the impression I get from his writings - RM, of course, but also books like his book on railway signalling. Very rare that he would say something *must* be done - the only time I can think of was when he was discussing layouts in sheds and said that if the roofing felt is starting to deteriorate it must be replaced immediately (based on his experience when it wasn't....). Most of the time it was hints and tips, and always in a conversational style of writing.

From my few conversations with him, and of course his writing, that was my impression too. Though he started out working in EM, his aim always seemed to be to encourage railway modelling as a popular rather than an elite hobby. He wanted people to take up the hobby and never to think that their efforts- though they could always be developed- were simply not good enough. 

My last and longest conversation with him, which was over a sandwich lunch at one of the Chatham shows (in the old, and as it tuirned out leaking, shipbuilding shed) was about Minories. He was rightly proud of his most famous plan and had concluded that the best approach to adding goods facilities was not the zig-zag arrangement from platform three but a kickback to a couple of sidings, maybe serving a shed (which gets over the problem of not having enough space between them for a horse and wagon (mechanical or equine) from a headshunt alongside it. He also suggested a short siding for brake vans but I don't thnk he ever drew that up and I wondered how useful that would be for such a small urban yard.   

[Nick C]

On 01/08/2021 at 13:57, Pacific231G said:

Didn't it also have a system, mentioned in one of the David Tennant episodes, that worked in tandem to make it go relatively unnoticed or ignored by anyone passing by and that was functioning.

That can actually work quite well. I remember that one of the sports centres we used when I was at school adjoined a location where a quite enormous excavation, several storeys deep had been dug. Many years later, when it was "stood down" after the end of the cold war, I discovered from my father, who had been in the Royal Observer Corps,  that this had been the bunker housing its regional HQ (and possibly other cold war functions) . Very few people knew it even existed and everyone in that part of town had quite simply forgotten that there once been an enormous and umissable hole in the ground there.  

It's amazing what you can hide in plain sight. 

Isn't that a "somebody else's problem field", as described by the late Douglas Adams:

 

Quote

An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot.

...

The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

 

[lezz01]

Whilst I have posted a similar comment to this elsewhere on this forum as this thread is a dedicated  minories one I don't think it would be out of place here. On night Cyril and I had a long conversation about minories in the library at Kean house, the home of the MRC. He told me that although the published plan was set in a cutting he only did this because he thought it would be easier to hide the hinges in this format. He told me that he actually thought that it would look much better if the station was on a viaduct with the road level with the station entrance at 90 deg to the tracks. There would then be a side road parallel to the tracks with a falling grade down to an embankment with the viaduct arches occupied by various businesses. The main road on the embankment and the river itself would be crossed by a large iron bridge with a loop for a goods warehouse and maybe a carriage siding on the bridge. The Warehouse itself would be on the far side of the river and be a multifloored affair with coal drops to the for and a two track entrance for rail vehicles with the road entrance below onto a smaller embankment. The warehouse could be used as a blocker for the fiddle yard or if space permitted the tracks would continue on past a small MPD and into a fiddle yard beyond that. Thus keeping all train movements in view. That is how he saw Minories personally. I thought then and still do, that Minories in this form would be absolutely spectacular and probably the very last word in urban layouts.

Regards Lez.         

[woodenhead]

8 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

Whilst I have posted a similar comment to this elsewhere on this forum as this thread is a dedicated  minories one I don't think it would be out of place here. On night Cyril and I had a long conversation about minories in the library at Kean house, the home of the MRC. He told me that although the published plan was set in a cutting he only did this because he thought it would be easier to hide the hinges in this format. He told me that he actually thought that it would look much better if the station was on a viaduct with the road level with the station entrance at 90 deg to the tracks. There would then be a side road parallel to the tracks with a falling grade down to an embankment with the viaduct arches occupied by various businesses. The main road on the embankment and the river itself would be crossed by a large iron bridge with a loop for a goods warehouse and maybe a carriage siding on the bridge. The Warehouse itself would be on the far side of the river and be a multifloored affair with coal drops to the for and a two track entrance for rail vehicles with the road entrance below onto a smaller embankment. The warehouse could be used as a blocker for the fiddle yard or if space permitted the tracks would continue on past a small MPD and into a fiddle yard beyond that. Thus keeping all train movements in view. That is how he saw Minories personally. I thought then and still do, that Minories in this form would be absolutely spectacular and probably the very last word in urban layouts.

Regards Lez.         

Which is perhaps where Inkerman Street took it's cues from

http://www.lmssociety.org.uk/inkerman.shtml

[lezz01]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Which is perhaps where Inkerman Street took it's cues from

http://www.lmssociety.org.uk/inkerman.shtml

Yes indeed.

Regards Lez.

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, lezz01 said:

Whilst I have posted a similar comment to this elsewhere on this forum as this thread is a dedicated  minories one I don't think it would be out of place here. On night Cyril and I had a long conversation about minories in the library at Kean house, the home of the MRC. He told me that although the published plan was set in a cutting he only did this because he thought it would be easier to hide the hinges in this format. He told me that he actually thought that it would look much better if the station was on a viaduct with the road level with the station entrance at 90 deg to the tracks. There would then be a side road parallel to the tracks with a falling grade down to an embankment with the viaduct arches occupied by various businesses. The main road on the embankment and the river itself would be crossed by a large iron bridge with a loop for a goods warehouse and maybe a carriage siding on the bridge. The Warehouse itself would be on the far side of the river and be a multifloored affair with coal drops to the for and a two track entrance for rail vehicles with the road entrance below onto a smaller embankment. The warehouse could be used as a blocker for the fiddle yard or if space permitted the tracks would continue on past a small MPD and into a fiddle yard beyond that. Thus keeping all train movements in view. That is how he saw Minories personally. I thought then and still do, that Minories in this form would be absolutely spectacular and probably the very last word in urban layouts.

Regards Lez.         

Much harder to arrange that as a folding layout though.

[lezz01]

Well you can make hinges that fold down so not as hard as you might think.

Regards Lez.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, lezz01 said:

Well you can make hinges that fold down so not as hard as you might think.

Regards Lez.

Not sure I follow that, Lez. Surely the depth of each board will be much greater for a viaduct than a cutting, making the overall folded layout a lot more bulky?

[Haddocksrock]

Not sure if I am imagining it but I am sure I once saw in one of the magazines or possibly in one of his books an extended plan of Minories in modules as you described above? Each further section had two main tracks in the same location so the modules could be 'mixed and matched'.

[Simon Moore]

It's really nice to see someone doing something pre grouping & on a classic layout trackplan. I have always fancied doing minories myself at some point probably west riding based like everything I do usually is. 

I am suprised no one's done something like this with all the pre grouping railways now on offer to us from Hornby & Bachmann. I have always though the mix of stocks at the station section of York museum looks superb & would in model form. 

 

I am enjoying this thread I look forward to more.

 

Simon

[Izzy]

I think one of the - many - advantages of the classic Minories as built here is that once folded over there is automatic self-protection to the topside. No extra covers to make or find room for when not in use. For the space starved all these aspects matter. 
 

Like Peter Denny and others I think CJF’s talent was in encouraging others to try their hand at making things, that achievement was possible at many different levels. Hence this very enjoyable and interesting thread.

[lezz01]

Fold down hinges are arranged something like this.

This arrangement allows you to have any separation you want dependent on the height of the hinge plate.

I hope this sketch makes it clear.

Regards Lez. 

[rhnrhn]

8 hours ago, Haddocksrock said:

Not sure if I am imagining it but I am sure I once saw in one of the magazines or possibly in one of his books an extended plan of Minories in modules as you described above? Each further section had two main tracks in the same location so the modules could be 'mixed and matched'.

 

You're not imagining it....

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_11_2013/post-7286-0-78508000-1385570285.jpg

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

47 minutes ago, rhnrhn said:

 

You're not imagining it....

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_11_2013/post-7286-0-78508000-1385570285.jpg 227.42 kB · 31 downloads

 

 

Surprised at CJF putting facing points on the MPD module. Trailing would work just as well and save using a double slip.

[Joseph_Pestell]

Pacific 231G has often mentioned the station at Paris-Bastille (closed early 1970s when traffic was diverted to RER A.

 

A model of it is featured in this month's Loco-Revue (issued around 22 July). I have not managed to get a copy yet. The preview photos in July's issue looked superb.