L-Shaped Problem - Track Plan Help!

[Michael Edge]

I like that latest plan but the turntable arrangement doesn't look very likely, although I like the single slip access off the carriage roads. I would push the turntable to the far end of the space and have a couple of kickback roads for extra storage, this would leave room for coal/ash/water on the approach track as well. All these roads radiating off a turntable doesn't look very British to me, unless it's Ranelagh Bridge of course (there's always an exception to everything).

[t-b-g]

I will throw this one into the mix as when people talk about keeping the station throat as short as possible, I have yet to see one shorter than this.

 

 

The wooden measuring stick is resting on goods lines that are not really part of the passenger station. Immediately under the measuring stick is Platform 1, which is only used for departures. Then you have the loco spur, Platform 2, 3 and 4. The line from the single slip pointing down and left is to the goods yard reception rod. Goods trains depart that way but arrive via the crossover you can see starting under the gantry. Everything at the bottom and right is goods yard.

 

Make the slip a double and leave out the point between Pl 3 and Pl 4 and you have a throat giving 3 platforms you can arrive and depart from plus one you can only depart from (which could easily be a loading dock) plus a loco spur, all in 2ft. It was, I believe, Peter Denny who taught CJF the tricks of the trade about using curves to avoid buffer locking on reverse curves. It was a feature from the very early days of Buckingham. There is only one significant reverse curve in this arrangement (from Pl 3 to the departure line) and as it is always used by departing trains, buffer locking isn't a problem. Shunting from Pl 3 to Pl 2 or 1 is done via the up (departure) line. Shunting into Pl 3 or 4 is done on the Down (Arrival) line.

 

Not sure how easy it would be with Peco points though but I thought it might be of interest for those who haven't seen it before. The true P. Way enthusiasts will spot some slightly dodgy check rail arrangements due to the geometry ad crossing noses being in places where proper check rails can't be fitted. Instinct would suggest problems but we get very few and when we do, it is usually the stock with a wide variety of wheel standards, buffer heights etc. that causes it.   

[Flying Pig]

2 hours ago, t-b-g said:

I will throw this one into the mix as when people talk about keeping the station throat as short as possible, I have yet to see one shorter than this.

 

 

Lots more pics of Buckingham here including a signal plan if you scroll far enough, which shows clearly how simple the basic arrangement of the passenger lines is.

Edited June 29, 2020 by Flying Pig
Corrected link

[t-b-g]

36 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Lots more pics of Buckingham here including a signal plan if you scroll far enough, which shows clearly how simple the basic arrangement of the passenger lines is.

 

Not sure where that link takes me but it sure isn't anything to do with the fictional Buckingham Branch of the Great Central Railway as built by the Rev. Peter Denny.

[Flying Pig]

3 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

Not sure where that link takes me but it sure isn't anything to do with the fictional Buckingham Branch of the Great Central Railway as built by the Rev. Peter Denny.

 

Oops - my apologies.  Link now corrected.

[t-b-g]

6 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Oops - my apologies.  Link now corrected.

 

That makes perfect sense now! Yes, Mark has been here a few times and sometimes calls in on his way to or from exhibitions when the route and times work out. He has produced a very nice "illustrated write up" of the layout. 

 

 

[Flying Pig]

10 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

That makes perfect sense now! Yes, Mark has been here a few times and sometimes calls in on his way to or from exhibitions when the route and times work out. He has produced a very nice "illustrated write up" of the layout. 

 

 

 

Thought you might recognise it

[Zomboid]

2 hours ago, t-b-g said:

Not sure how easy it would be with Peco points though

The scissors can't be done without either a change to the alignment, hacking the points around or having a much wider 6 foot, and that would cost a lot in terms of length.

Edited June 29, 2020 by Zomboid

[t-b-g]

5 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

The scissors can't be done without either a change to the alignment, hacking the points around or having a much wider 6 foot, and that would cost a lot in terms of length.

 

It is certainly an area where I found that learning to make my own points was totally liberating. Back in the day I remember well trying to plan layouts based on standard LH and RH points plus the occasional Y or a diamond. I would prefer to think of the modification of points to good effect on layouts like Grantham involves a bit more than hacking them about. That sounds rather lacking in finesse. I had wondered if a Buckingham station throat could be reproduced in 00 with a bit of careful trimming and joining!

[Harlequin]

On 28/06/2020 at 09:39, Leander45690 said:

Wow Phil, this is incredible!

Thanks. It's OK but I can see a few possible improvements.

 

On 28/06/2020 at 09:39, Leander45690 said:

Exactly what I was looking for and gets everything in. How do you do it?!

In this case, by keeping the throat turning, always turning, so that it can connect to the traverser as far forward as possible. This means that the throat is entirely made of curved turnouts - so for reliable running it would have to be laid carefully and you might have to pay a bit more attention to your wheel back-to-backs to avoid derailments.

 

Putting the turntable in the corner outside the curve makes better use of the space and seems to lessen it's visual impact. (It is drawn as 75ft diameter!)

 

[Michael Edge]

These overscale turntables don't help - biggest UK tables were 70ft and most locos can be turned on 60ft. The manufacturers never seem to have realised that only the wheels need to fit on the turntable bridge, not the whole loco - and on the GW they even got round that with extension rails!

[Zomboid]

Gigantic model turntables are probably also a function of a lack of fine controllability of locos when they were being designed.

 

And if you use momentum in DCC that can prove a problem now, too.

[DCB]

46 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Gigantic model turntables are probably also a function of a lack of fine controllability of locos when they were being designed.

 

And if you use momentum in DCC that can prove a problem now, too.

 

It just needs a delicate hand on the regulator, just like the full size you shouldn't necessarily get it right 1st time, like the indexing, that sometimes needed a few tries to get it right, more than a few last time I saw the Minehead one in use. Large turntables allow more radiating roads which may be a consideration, but clearly not to Triang when they started making what became the Hornby Turntable way back when.

[Zomboid]

There's two things to note in this iteration. The less obvious one is that I've improved access to the turntable, so that it comes off the outbound main. You can't get as many full length radiating tracks in, though.

 

More obvious is the balloon loop. Assuming that a temporarily extended footprint is permitted, the idea would be to hinge the light blue section up against the wall when the layout is not in use. Not without compromises, but it allows the entry & exit to be further to the right, enabling longer platforms should you so wish (I haven't bothered to show them, but it shouldn't take massive imagination. I would imagine that stacking two suburban trains on a loop would be easy enough, whether you'd get 8 carriages and 2 locos onto one is another question, and might well be a bit tight, but depending on the available space you could make the hinged bit (and hence loops) extend further to the left. The main benefit  to my mind is that you don't really need to do any fiddling with trains on the loops, they just come back to the station as and when, having been turned. I've shown a dead end siding too for short/ push-pull trains, which you may or may not want to run. It could also function as a shunting neck if the loops are full.

 

The balloon loop would of course work with any other terminus design if you wanted to do that kind of thing.

 

[tender]

 

Flipping Phil's (Harlequin) layout would now mean the arrivals line seeing a leading crossover (rather than trailing) and spur off to the carriage sidings (as opposed to the Loading dock) and vice versa for the departure line.

Would this give rise to any operational difficulties?

[Titanius Anglesmith]

12 minutes ago, tender said:

 

Flipping Phil's (Harlequin) layout would now mean the arrivals line seeing a leading crossover (rather than trailing) and spur off to the carriage sidings (as opposed to the Loading dock) and vice versa for the departure line.

Would this give rise to any operational difficulties?

 

Shunting between the loco yard, carriage sidings and platforms would have to be done via the arrival line instead of departure.  Not ideal, but not a show-stopper either.

[Zomboid]

33 minutes ago, tender said:

 

Flipping Phil's (Harlequin) layout would now mean the arrivals line seeing a leading crossover (rather than trailing) and spur off to the carriage sidings (as opposed to the Loading dock) and vice versa for the departure line.

Would this give rise to any operational difficulties?

It would all be possible, but you'd probably be better off starting your own thread and getting some clean sheet designs. They'd probably be similar to that, but with some proper thought the issues that mirroring that design poses could be reduced or eliminated.

[tender]

On 28/06/2020 at 09:39, Leander45690 said:

Wow Phil, this is incredible! Exactly what I was looking for and gets everything in. How do you do it?!

 

1 hour ago, Zomboid said:

It would all be possible, but you'd probably be better off starting your own thread and getting some clean sheet designs. They'd probably be similar to that, but with some proper thought the issues that mirroring that design poses could be reduced or eliminated.

 

I was thinking of starting a new thread  but as the OP seems to have found 'Exactly what I (he) was looking for and gets everything in' I didn't think there was much point in starting another thread with much the same title. But I'm happy to do that.

[Zomboid]

You don't have to... But a left curve is different to a right curve with left hand running on a two track approach. And you might have other different requirements.

 

If not then it's no issue...

[DCB]

These plans don't mirror image well.  The run round loop ends up on the departure side of the station and the shunting ends up on the arrivals side. You can tweak it but then everything else starts moving and before you know the pan ends up substantially different and no longer works.   Buckingham is cramped but it looks fantastic.

Re Zomboid's iteration "Flipping Phil's"  think I would reverse the order of the curved crossovers, trailing then facing and think about adding  a lead from the yard to the out going main a la Buckingham to get more capacity into the goods side of things.

Also having the top platform double sided would meet the OP original requirement for 4 platforms especially if the crossovers were swapped as I suggest.

[Zomboid]

On 29/06/2020 at 14:45, t-b-g said:

I will throw this one into the mix as when people talk about keeping the station throat as short as possible, I have yet to see one shorter than this.

 

 

The wooden measuring stick is resting on goods lines that are not really part of the passenger station. Immediately under the measuring stick is Platform 1, which is only used for departures. Then you have the loco spur, Platform 2, 3 and 4. The line from the single slip pointing down and left is to the goods yard reception rod. Goods trains depart that way but arrive via the crossover you can see starting under the gantry. Everything at the bottom and right is goods yard.

 

Make the slip a double and leave out the point between Pl 3 and Pl 4 and you have a throat giving 3 platforms you can arrive and depart from plus one you can only depart from (which could easily be a loading dock) plus a loco spur, all in 2ft. It was, I believe, Peter Denny who taught CJF the tricks of the trade about using curves to avoid buffer locking on reverse curves. It was a feature from the very early days of Buckingham. There is only one significant reverse curve in this arrangement (from Pl 3 to the departure line) and as it is always used by departing trains, buffer locking isn't a problem. Shunting from Pl 3 to Pl 2 or 1 is done via the up (departure) line. Shunting into Pl 3 or 4 is done on the Down (Arrival) line.

 

Not sure how easy it would be with Peco points though but I thought it might be of interest for those who haven't seen it before. The true P. Way enthusiasts will spot some slightly dodgy check rail arrangements due to the geometry ad crossing noses being in places where proper check rails can't be fitted. Instinct would suggest problems but we get very few and when we do, it is usually the stock with a wide variety of wheel standards, buffer heights etc. that causes it.   

The "do this in peco" challenge was gnawing away at me for a day or so, so I had a go and came up with this, which I think does all the same things. Excluding the freight departure it's just over 2 feet long, using peco mediums. The only reverse curve in sight is platform 4, and that has a straight in the middle - plus it could be eliminated by curving the other platforms round to align with it.

The loco spur could be put to the outside using a 3 way on either of the outbound line LH points to get the platforms closer to the actual throat.

 

Using a single slip to make a scissors crossing is of course the Seironim trick, though I've seen it done on other layouts previously to that. 

 

[Zomboid]

And here's that peco-buckingham arrangement modified to fit into @Leander45690's specified space. I haven't bothered with the freight yard, but there's plenty of space for it. Platforms could be up to 4'6" long, which should be enough for a fairly big engine and 4 carriages, which is all that the traverser would hold anyhow.

Points are now mostly curved, and carriage sidings have been sacrificed in the name of having 4 platforms.

[t-b-g]

28 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

The "do this in peco" challenge was gnawing away at me for a day or so, so I had a go and came up with this, which I think does all the same things. Excluding the freight departure it's just over 2 feet long, using peco mediums. The only reverse curve in sight is platform 4, and that has a straight in the middle - plus it could be eliminated by curving the other platforms round to align with it.

The loco spur could be put to the outside using a 3 way on either of the outbound line LH points to get the platforms closer to the actual throat.

 

Using a single slip to make a scissors crossing is of course the Seironim trick, though I've seen it done on other layouts previously to that. 

 

 

Nice work. I like that.

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, Zomboid said:

Points are now mostly curved, and carriage sidings have been sacrificed in the name of having 4 platforms.

 

If a carriage siding is vital, it might be possible to work one in between platforms 2 and 3, but empty stock movements to carriage sidings further up the line (i.e. offscene) are probably more fun.

[Zomboid]

Now with added centre carriage siding/ run round. And I've populated some freight yard, but not with a huge degree of effort.

I think someone could have quite a lot of fun playing trains on this. The throat has that nice "major station complexity" to it, whilst being fundamentally only 3 turnouts long (the centre road and freight departure turnouts are the only ones that go outside that footprint, and both could easily be dropped for a smaller layout).

Platforms are 5' long, so anything that'll go on the traverser will fit, but there's no space for a concourse or building.

I figured that since it's on the arrivals side, the freight would need its own shunting neck rather than blocking the main.

The turntable could be moved up and left a bit by losing the radiating roads, so the scenic break could cover a bit more of the 2nd and 3rd radius curves on the approach to the traverser. Obviously at the cost of on-scene loco storage.