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Goods yard clutter


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Hi all ! If there's another thread hiding somewhere about this please advise. If not I could do with some suggestions.....

 

I'm modelling Dinsdale, a BLT on the Great Dales Rlwy, an independent enclave in LMS-land. It's the summer of '39. The place is busy enough to justify 2 stopping goods daily. Other traffic: sheep (weekly market day at Barnstoneworth, other end of branch, is a biggie), a coal siding, as well as ins'n'outs for a small brewery conveniently just offf-stage . 

 

My question: What buildings, huts & sheds would sit in such a yard? Starting with the obvious I've come up with the following so far:

Goods shed & office/cattle dock/weighbridge & office/lock-up store for thieveables (or would they lock stuff in the goods shed overnight?)/lamp store/WC? (it's a long walk to the signalbox karzy)/mess-hut?/store for shunting poles, shovels etc.... and would there be a night watchman employed?

 

So what have I missed? Also how many of the above would be purpose built vs old wagon bodies? And what other general crap would be lying about?

 

Dave

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Let's try.... Goods yard lamp & standard. Stables & horse-drawn paraphernalia, water trough, hitching post, compost heap, shunting horse & hostler, notice board, water stand, large outside scales, loading bank, Landsale yard (coal) If it's a large yard, then a capstan or two.

 

Howzat? 

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As a terminus, Dinsdale probably has shunters and C & W staff as well, and they need a mess cabin, and a C & W stores, possibly a lamp hut.  Lamp huts make for a nice little cameo, with a trestle bench outside and a paraffin jug sitting on it, maybe a lamp body opened and a reservoir or two waiting to be filled and wicks adjusted.  

 

General carp could include a few rusted brake blocks, spare 3 link couplings, and vacuum hoses chucked around the back of the C & W store.  WC would likely be in the goods shed.  Weighbridge goes near the mileage siding.  Everywhere will be connected to the railway internal telephone system, so a distribution pole somewhere out of the way of road traffic and with the line runs clear of rail traffic, and insulators on brackets on the buildings even if you don't model the wires.  Shunters' cabin will have outside telephone repeater bells on a board fixed to the wall near the insulators.  C & W might have a small workbench outside in the summer; better light to work by.  Bench outside mess hut with abandoned cups and tea can, area of ash grey where fags get stubbed out.  Bike or two leaning up against a wall, maybe small motorbike.

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Carriage and Wagon. They and the P.way (Permanent Way Engineers) had a habit of commandeering any accommodation not actually in use by anyone else, either for messing or as a tools/materials/junk store. They were still doing it in the 1990s. 

 

Most 'extra' hutting (as opposed to that provided from the start) would be timber because it was cheaper, and grounded van/coach bodies were free. They can be a good way of including some pensioned off anachronism on a layout. 

 

Edit - non-signalmen should not be expected to be allowed anywhere near a signalbox toilet. The goods yard and the station staff might even be using the public one, none of the stations I worked at in the 1990s had a staff loo. 

Edited by Wheatley
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PS - excellent point..I remember from my Council-worker days that every shed or store had stuff thrown behind it (hidden by the weeds) that we were supposed to have disposed of sensibly!

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There are some interesting suggestions there. Now for a 'what you don't want' and that is the much beloved by railway modellers coal cells right up against the sidings. Yes many goods yards had coal cells but they were generally well away from the rails. Have a look at the aerial photos linked below. NB to 'zoom in' you will need to register and log in but it is free.
<https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW024747>
<
https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW014227>

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If there are coal cells, very often this means that the merchant is based at the goods yard. He would require a hut for an office, his own bagging scales, then probably a sack store, cart shed and facilities for his horses. He may well be using a motor lorry by 1939. Often coal would be unloaded onto the ground quickly to avoid demurrage charges from the wagon owners, then weighed into bags and straight onto the back of a vehicle.

One thing to avoid (and this may seem obvious) is things like wooden pallets lying around. Although they were around during WWII, they don't really become common until the 60s. I seem to recall that there were notices warning coal merchants not to prop up wagon doors for use as bagging platforms.

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On the real station I'm modelling, the lampies hut was an old Signal wooden box, the top floor, , but the oil store was brick built, a few feet away.  It was actually  near the station building not the goods yard.

 

The linemen may well have had a stack of new sleepers and old ones, Certainly a few bits and pieces of track metal work lying around but not big stuff unless it was just delivered or about to go.

 

The Goods yard I'm modelling had a small hut for paperwork and the telephone so they could talk to the Box on point moves.

 

One of the two signal boxes had the stack of coal against the wall with a two handled old galvanised washing tub sat on the pile, obviously used to carry coal, to the various places with a stove..

 

None of the three coal merchants had their staithes in the coal yard, but they were just "outside the wire" on their own property.

 

The coal merchants used to drive their lorries along side the wagon, knock out the pins out with the edge of a shovel, let the door drop onto the lorry, and start shovelling from there, sometimes bagging it at the time, using a scales on the lorry, sometimes just shovelling onto the lorry, if so low sides would be fitted to the lorry  with just the wagon side one dropped down.

Edited by TheQ
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Have to agree with the Fat Controller there. Wheels are a definite no-no. Unless you are modelling one of the Colonel Stephens type light railways who had their own styles of "Bush engineering", all the heavy jobs went to specialist workshops. The majority of crates and packing cases that originated from companies in Britain would also have been returned unless they were one offs.

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1 hour ago, Fat Controller said:

To add to the list of things to avoid: cable drums were charged out at a very high figure, so should be returned as soon they'd been emptied. Wheel-sets would probably not be seen, either, unless some means of lifting wagons was present ( either jacks or a crane).

 

One pet dislike is wheelsets of any type on the set-up, unless of course, the display is meant to be item-specific. One exhibition layout was, and still is- beautifully done, and very watchable. But! There was a loose Romford wheel propped up against the locomotive shed wall. In real life, it means that an 0-6-0 is currently working as an 0-5-0. 

 

"Ere John, can you pass over some spare spokes? This pannier has a couple missing..."

 

"Sorry mate, can't help you. I've only got spare red oil for tail-lamps......"

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That used to be a common sight on layouts. It's one thing to be able to jack a locomotive up on timbers, drop out the wheelsets and send them away to have the tyres turned (again this was the type of thing done by minor railways who didn't have much in the way of a 'works' ) But pressing a driving wheel off an axle, worse still pressing it back on with the correct quartering would be impossible at the average engine shed.

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Regarding coal staithes we have had this debate before . At some stations , Wadhurst is a good example the staithes were alongside the siding ,at others , Knockholt for example the staithes were on the far side of the cart road from the siding, at others the coal was left in heaps by the siding

Brian Harts book on the Hawkhurst branch has some excellent photos showing the arrangements at Hawkhurst

At Brasted on the Westerham branch a grounded van served as an office with the coal in heapsby the siding 

Again some useful photos appear in Ron Strutts book on the Westerham branch. 
it appears there are no hard and fast rules so I would never say never 

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An education this thread is. Yeah Marc, glad I asked! Mind now racing with ideas. 

 

While we're here, a quick off-piste question (thread-starter's privilege): How do you get rid of the grey arrows on a completed SCARM diagram?

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23 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That used to be a common sight on layouts. It's one thing to be able to jack a locomotive up on timbers, drop out the wheelsets and send them away to have the tyres turned (again this was the type of thing done by minor railways who didn't have much in the way of a 'works' ) But pressing a driving wheel off an axle, worse still pressing it back on with the correct quartering would be impossible at the average engine shed.

Pressing railway wheels on and off axles is a serious task. The link here is to a video lilmed at Stonehenge Works on the Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge Railway on 29/01/2019. An axle is pressed into a wheel. The machine was obtained from the the Motor Rail & Tramcar Company in Bedford when they closed down. The finished wheelset will be used on coach 14 which is currently under construction.

 

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