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Help on new branch line layout


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13 hours ago, Miserable said:

Well that certainly opens it up! Potential for interesting bridge or such on the approach. I suppose having the goods yard split adds operation potential, more need to cross over and such. One of the appealing features of your designs is avoiding filling every space with track, they've all had a nice small country station feel to them. Obviously it's up to you but I'd not go for a whole lot more track - J guess it depends on how you feel about doing scenery ;-)

Definitely makes it look a little bigger. The only two problems I see with this track plan is the reduction of the fiddle yard size and the possible gradient that may be needed to reach the same height of the fiddle yard however I still need to fully sort the space before I can say if it will be a problem. 

I certainly don't think much more track needs to be added but the station areas track plan could be altered if the is a much better solution. On the longer strait piece of track the goods yard could be placed there or sidings but it may look better with the main focus of that section being the scenery and not the track and just keeping it as a long(ish) run towards the station which could be overall more effective.

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You’ve got a great space there, so try to avoid crowding it solid with track if you want it to look realistic - there is actually a lot of operational potential in that station, if you wire it right.

 

BTW, your sidings now look a bit short; the real things were usually quite long.

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2 hours ago, Joeh260 said:

Definitely makes it look a little bigger. The only two problems I see with this track plan is the reduction of the fiddle yard size and the possible gradient that may be needed to reach the same height of the fiddle yard however I still need to fully sort the space before I can say if it will be a problem. 

I certainly don't think much more track needs to be added but the station areas track plan could be altered if the is a much better solution. On the longer strait piece of track the goods yard could be placed there or sidings but it may look better with the main focus of that section being the scenery and not the track and just keeping it as a long(ish) run towards the station which could be overall more effective.

Just another thought. It would depend on the geography of the room a bit, but I'd be tempted to look at the station/yard bit going diagonally from the top-middle to bottom right. It would 'waste' a load of space in the top right corner but you could ease the curves somewhat which might be nice, and perhaps move the headshunt onto the approach line such that it can be accessed from all the roads. Also, just another random thought, if you did that you could have the layout/fiddle yard interface also half way along the top. I'm assuming the bit between the layout baseboards and the fiddle yards is a removable bridge for access, but there's no real reason why the fiddle yard sidings couldn't all extend over the bridge, coming together just before the scenic section, vastly increasing storage space. Just more random ideas!

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39 minutes ago, Miserable said:

perhaps move the headshunt onto the approach line such that it can be accessed from all the roads

 

Not totally sure I understand that, but a word about how/why real railways use head-shunts. The usual reason is to permit shunting to continue while trains continue to run on the main line, although sometimes there are reasons concerned with the gradient of the line too.

 

In model railway terms they are useful to avoid popping in and out of a FY on a short-ish layout, but can be used exactly as in real practice.

 

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6 hours ago, Miserable said:

Just another thought. It would depend on the geography of the room a bit, but I'd be tempted to look at the station/yard bit going diagonally from the top-middle to bottom right. It would 'waste' a load of space in the top right corner but you could ease the curves somewhat which might be nice.

I could increase the radius of the curve a bit on the top right but to the amount I think you mean would probably take too much space as it would make the top right increasingly difficult to access. Although when looking at the slightly newer plan (pdf 7) I have increased the radius entering the station as you suggested but I don't think it can be made much larger.

Edited by Joeh260
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Slight redesign of the layout making the sidings a bit bigger and increasing the radius of which trains enter the station.

(siding on the top left will probably still need increasing in length

7.pdf

 

slight alterations to points

7.2.pdf

 

Edited by Joeh260
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8 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

You’ve got a great space there, so try to avoid crowding it solid with track if you want it to look realistic - there is actually a lot of operational potential in that station, if you wire it right.

 

BTW, your sidings now look a bit short; the real things were usually quite long.

I agree that crowding the layout any more will start to detract from the realism of the layout. I increased the siding lengths more on the newer design (pdf 7)

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Joeh - is what I'm contributing helping, or not, because if not, you only have to say.

Yes it is very much helping as your ideas have significantly changed the plan.

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6 hours ago, Miserable said:

if you did that you could have the layout/fiddle yard interface also half way along the top. I'm assuming the bit between the layout baseboards and the fiddle yards is a removable bridge for access, but there's no real reason why the fiddle yard sidings couldn't all extend over the bridge, coming together just before the scenic section, vastly increasing storage space.

I did originally consider something like that when I increased the layout area but unfortunately nothing permanent can go in front of that corner so may become an obstruction and for whatever reason if the bridge wasn't removed. I could see something getting damaged if somebody else was to remove it. I'm probably best keeping stationary locomotives on more permanent boards.

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Joeh, just a thought if I may - commenting on your ideas would be much easier for all of us if you saved your diagrams as jpegs (.jpg files) before adding them to your posts - they would then display as part of the post, saving us having to download and open the pdfs every time.  Also makes it much easier when working back through the various iterations of the plan ......

 

Cheers, Chris

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I Think the last track plan is what I will end up going for. Will probably order the track/point motors within the next few days. any other suggestions? still rather unsure on how this would be signalled or which are the best readily available signals that can be purchased so any help on that would be appreciated.

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The right-hand diagram has a nicer flow to my eye.  I assume the station is a single platform between the two tracks nearest the operating well?  You might have a look (but perhaps you have already) at the possibilities of having the goods yard sidings kicking back into the top left corner from the run-round loop, which would eliminate the need for the headshunt and the double slip.  Sort of like this ... (excuse the scribblings) 

 

joeh.jpg.9210d70c9a6dc78fd9fd310e93d5bd8c.jpg

 

 

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I'm guilty of suggesting the plan as is, and did so because it avoided an issue with the then nearby FY, and is a not untypical one - it might be most typical of LSWR practice, I think. Kick-back goods yards were a lot rarer than those oriented towards the station, and they've even got their own thread here somewhere. As regards signaling what I suggested, this is about right for pre-grouping southern-constituents, where the ringed arms apply to moves into and out of section from/to non-passenger lines.

 

I'm confident about the main running signals, although not all locations would have had the ringed-arm ones, even pre-grouping, but shunt signals always cause a stack of debate, because practice was exceedingly varied, especially when it came to multiple divergent routes - I know of SR-area pre-group examples where oodles of shunt signals were provided, one for each divergent route, and others where barely any shunts were covered by fixed signals, so you takes your pick. I'm also not sure about yellow shunt signals pre-group - I think they were a post-grouping thing.

 

For companies outside the SR-area, practice was probably subtly different - I can never quite get my head around GWR's use of ringed-arm signals, for instance, which was slightly different, and LNWR/NLR was different again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5EEBE012-6C80-4658-A405-76E927150A69.jpeg

Edited by Nearholmer
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2 hours ago, Chimer said:

I assume the station is a single platform between the two tracks nearest the operating well?  You might have a look (but perhaps you have already) at the possibilities of having the goods yard sidings kicking back into the top left corner from the run-round loop, which would eliminate the need for the headshunt and the double slip.  

I don't think much space would be gained or lost by having the sidings on the top left but it would tighten the curve of the station or make it more straight. also the headshunt wouldn't be eliminated by this process. If the goods sidings where to kick back it would probably have to be from the points leading into the platform and kick back onto the middle left section where it is only currently single track.

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18 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I'm guilty of suggesting the plan as is, and did so because it avoided an issue with the then nearby FY, and is a not untypical one - it might be most typical of LSWR practice, I think. Kick-back goods yards were a lot rarer than those oriented towards the station, and they've even got their own thread here somewhere.

Even if the plan was to be changed to use a less conventional design it would probably still look very similar as most branch terminus do. The is only so many ways to rearrange a station and a goods yard especially if its on a curve. If you do have any suggestions if you think it looks too typical it can still be completely changed.

Edited by Joeh260
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21 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I'm guilty of suggesting the plan as is, and did so because it avoided an issue with the then nearby FY, and is a not untypical one - it might be most typical of LSWR practice, I think. Kick-back goods yards were a lot rarer than those oriented towards the station

 

I'm sure you're right, but I bet there would have been more kick-backs if more real-world stations and yards had had to be approached round a 90 degree bend and fitted into a long thin rectangle that was narrower than a football pitch ...... :jester:

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Just another idea which I'm not sure if possible yet, what do you think of this? The marron looking part would be a removable bridge. It would still be operated like the prior designs but with the ability to become a continuous loop.

8.jpg.23c911ea1c69f205c87487d69f7bf8f5.jpg

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