Jump to content
 

Input / Ideas on Planning a Timetable and Creating a Location?


Recommended Posts

9 minutes ago, Ray Von said:

I just wondered if that service couldn't carry on from Minster to Sturry and Canterbury West?

Cheers.

 It could, but for some reason it rarely did. In SE&CR times there were trains that did a round trip Dover-Deal-Minster-Canterbury-Folkestone (over the Elham Valley line)-Dover. But they stopped after the Grouping, probably because traffic on the Elham Valley was so much lighter than on the other legs.

 

In the 1980s there was a period when they ran trains from London via Ashford and Canterbury West as far as Sturry. Presumably because Ramsgate was well served via the Kent Coast or via Deal and there was little else beyond Sturry. The SER built the line there because it was a nice flat route. The trouble is that beyond Sturry it's an area where if you dig a hole it fills with water so the settlements are some distance from the railway.

  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, whart57 said:

 It could, but for some reason it rarely did. In SE&CR times there were trains that did a round trip Dover-Deal-Minster-Canterbury-Folkestone (over the Elham Valley line)-Dover. But they stopped after the Grouping, probably because traffic on the Elham Valley was so much lighter than on the other legs.

 

In the 1980s there was a period when they ran trains from London via Ashford and Canterbury West as far as Sturry. Presumably because Ramsgate was well served via the Kent Coast or via Deal and there was little else beyond Sturry. The SER built the line there because it was a nice flat route. The trouble is that beyond Sturry it's an area where if you dig a hole it fills with water so the settlements are some distance from the railway.

I only ask because there is a line that runs from Canterbury West through Sturry and out to Minster, then a junction for Ramsgate or Dover.

If I am going to lay a fictitious line, would it be better to have this line coming from Minster or Canterbury?  

Edited by Ray Von
Link to post
Share on other sites

I am suggesting that the junction at Grove Ferry is like the one at Minster. At Minster trains from Deal can either go to Ramsgate  (missing out Minster ) or in the Canterbury direction which also goes through the Minster platforms 

  • Interesting/Thought-provoking 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, whart57 said:

I am suggesting that the junction at Grove Ferry is like the one at Minster. At Minster trains from Deal can either go to Ramsgate  (missing out Minster ) or in the Canterbury direction which also goes through the Minster platforms 

I think I get it, are you proposing reviving Grove Ferry as a station and (forgive the quick sketch) a junction like this?755405571_IMG_20210215_1605501842.jpg.6b6a7d8368b3cea6c237d614f98156b7.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hello ,

As an ex Kent lad I’ve been following this with interest and I hope you won’t mind a couple of suggestions, in addition to the excellent contributions so far.

I was brought up in Sittingbourne in the late 60s and early 70s and commuted from Sittingbourne from 1978 – 1983 and Chatham from 1983 -96. I’m just old enough to remember steam at Sittingbourne, I was three years old when the electrification came.

The Kent Coast Cannon Street commuter trains used the old Chatham mainline until Chislehurst Junction and then joined the South Eastern Main Line through Hither Green. There was a service every 20 minutes from Ramsgate in the morning peak and to Ramsgate in the evening. One morning service started at Margate. Two possible suggestions for you.

1.       Assume that one of the Thanet trains starts from Reculver.

2.       There was a solitary Dover to Cannon St via Chatham train in the late 70s/early 80s. You could add a Reculver portion to this at Faversham.

Stops for either option – Herne Bay, Whitstable, Faversham, Sittingbourne, Gillingham, Chatham, Cannon Street.

If you wanted an electric service on the SE line here’s a suggestion. There was a Victoria to Margate service via Maidstone East, Ashford and Canterbury West. It was advertised as far as Minster from Victoria and I think from Margate it was advertised as far as Maidstone East. It was usually a single CEP or VEP unit. Why not add a an additional set for Reculver. The rationale being that it provides a connection to Ashford and Maidstone. The Minster service called at Bromley South, Borough Green, Maidstone East and then all stations.

I do like your layout concept and wish you well with it.

  • Informative/Useful 1
  • Interesting/Thought-provoking 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

That's interesting about the Cannon Street trains, I based my suggestion on my memories of the alternative Charing Cross service from Thanet and Herne Bay which took the North Kent line from Strood and stopped at a lot of places. I can't remember whether there were two Victoria trains an hour, plus one Charing Cross, or just one of each from Herne Bay in the late 60s. I know I used the Charing Cross service when I went to university interviews in early 1970 because I needed to change trains at Waterloo East for a train heading to Guildford and Southampton.

 

This gives me another idea for Ray Von's platform 3-4 services.

  • An hourly Victoria service made up of a 4-CEP which combines with a similar set (or two in peaks) from Ramsgate and Margate at Herne Bay
  • An hourly Charing Cross service - going over the North Kent line - which is a 2-HAP from Reculver which combines with a six/eight coach train from Thanet at Herne Bay.
  • A peak morning fast to Cannon Street taking the route via Chislehurst and Hither Green, returning in evening made up of whatever RV has available

It might be that the Victoria services actually join up and divide at Faversham allowing the Thanet portion to run fast between Faversham and Birchington. It was around 1980 that that form of working started to come in. I have this vague recollection of some trains to Ramsgate and Dover dividing at Gillingham, the Ramsgate portion only stopping at Sittingbourne and Faversham before going up the Kent Coast line while the Canterbury and Dover bit took in stops at Rainham, Newington and Teynham.

  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Ray Von said:

I think I get it, are you proposing reviving Grove Ferry as a station and (forgive the quick sketch) a junction like this?

 

More or less. I had to check where Grove Ferry station would have been in relation to the fictional junction. Assuming your Reculver line wants to avoid gradients and follows the ancient shoreline as much as possible then this is what I think the junction would look like

 

eastkent_map3.png.4a96419217f2005bc668f549d844b9b8.png

  • Like 1
  • Craftsmanship/clever 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Long John Silver said:

There was a Victoria to Margate service via Maidstone East, Ashford and Canterbury West...

I used to travel this service regularly in the mid nineties, as far as Maidstone. 

As I recall it was- Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate, Minster, Sturry, Canterbury West, Chartham, Chilham, Wye, Ashford International, Lenham, Harrietsham, Bearstead, Maidstone East(?)

As my station is at a junction after Minster, I see no reason why a little detour couldn't be made....

Thank you for your supportive words. 

Edited by Ray Von
  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks chaps, time for a quick recap I feel:

 

Platform 2:

1.  Service (started from Ramsgate?) to Victoria via Canterbury, Ashford and Maidstone East. This would be a service terminating at Ramsgate on the return journey(?)

2.  Regular shuttle to Ashford via Canterbury West.

3.  Dover Priory via Minster and Sandwich.

 

Platform 3 and 4:

1. Victoria via Strood.

2. Cannon Street via Strood.

3. Cannon Street (fast) via Chislehurst and Hither Green.

4. Charing Cross via Strood.

 

I might have a trawl back through the thread to check any omissions....

Edited by Ray Von
  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

That's interesting about the Cannon Street trains, I based my suggestion on my memories of the alternative Charing Cross service from Thanet and Herne Bay which took the North Kent line from Strood and stopped at a lot of places. I can't remember whether there were two Victoria trains an hour, plus one Charing Cross, or just one of each from Herne Bay in the late 60s. I know I used the Charing Cross service when I went to university interviews in early 1970 because I needed to change trains at Waterloo East for a train heading to Guildford and Southampton.

 

This gives me another idea for Ray Von's platform 3-4 services.

  • An hourly Victoria service made up of a 4-CEP which combines with a similar set (or two in peaks) from Ramsgate and Margate at Herne Bay
  • An hourly Charing Cross service - going over the North Kent line - which is a 2-HAP from Reculver which combines with a six/eight coach train from Thanet at Herne Bay.
  • A peak morning fast to Cannon Street taking the route via Chislehurst and Hither Green, returning in evening made up of whatever RV has available

It might be that the Victoria services actually join up and divide at Faversham allowing the Thanet portion to run fast between Faversham and Birchington. It was around 1980 that that form of working started to come in. I have this vague recollection of some trains to Ramsgate and Dover dividing at Gillingham, the Ramsgate portion only stopping at Sittingbourne and Faversham before going up the Kent Coast line while the Canterbury and Dover bit took in stops at Rainham, Newington and Teynham.

The Charing Cross trains were hourly off peak, I remember them well, even from Sittingbourne they were about 25 minutes slower to London than the Victoria trains and were usually HAP units. I'm not sure when they were taken off - mid 70s I think. They provided the slow service from Thanet.

The Victoria fast trains sometimes split at Gillingham, sometimes at Faversham depending on year. For a while they split at Gillingham and both portions stopped at Sittingbourne just a few minutes apart. In the early 70s the Dover line had a slow from Victoria which ran as a combined train to Maidstone East as far as Swanley, and then divided. By the time I came back to the area in the late 70s after university, services had changed. By the mid 80s there were fast and slow trains each hour on the Thanet and Dover routes from Victoria with cross platform connections at Faversham, but I'm not sure exactly when this happened. The service was more logical, but less interesting I think.

 

  • Like 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Ray Von said:

Thanks chaps, time for a quick recap I feel:

 

Platform 2:

1.  Service (started from Ramsgate?) to Victoria via Canterbury, Ashford and Maidstone East. This would be a service terminating at Ramsgate on the return journey(?)

2.  Regular shuttle to Ashford via Canterbury West.

3.  Dover Priory via Minster and Sandwich.

 

Platform 3 and 4:

1. Victoria via Strood.

2. Cannon Street via Strood.

3. Cannon Street (fast) via Chislehurst and Hither Green.

4. Charing Cross via Strood.

 

I might have a trawl back through the thread to check any omissions....

 

Some minor corrections and tweaks if I may.

 

Platform 3 and 4:

  1. Victoria via Chatham and Bromley South - fast train, probably hourly
  2. Charing Cross via Strood and North Kent line - slow train probably hourly
  3. Cannon Street via Chislehurst and Hither Green - fast peak hour service, probably only one or two a day

Cannon Street was really a rush hour only station. It closed at weekends and had a very sparse service during the day. Your period is pre-Big Bang so working in the City was very much a 9-5 job

 

Platform 1 and 2:

  1. Dover Priory via Minster and Deal - all stations stopper, probably hourly.
  2. Victoria via Canterbury, Ashford and Maidstone East - semi fast, four trains daily between 10 am and 4 pm
  3. Schools shuttle to Canterbury West - once daily leaving at 8.15, returning at 4.45

I see the Victoria via Ashford service being more a way of giving stock that provided extra peak services something better to do than festering in a carriage siding at Hither Green all day. (And unionised train crews doing some work running trains rather than filling in the Sun crossword in the staff canteen)

 

You would also need to work in some empty stock workings from Ramsgate since you don't have stabling at your Reculver. Which is an interesting point given that your Ramsgate link comes in on the wrong side of the station for Victoria services and I don't think you have a connection between the two sides. I need someone to tell me whether Faversham would be the serving depot for the LCDR side or whether a reversal at Herne Bay would be the way to get stock to Reculver platforms 3/4.

 

On the other hand, if you can provide some link between the two sides it could provide extra interest. Something like this:

 

image.png.1fab6967a694355f7b019679d4c0a46c.png

 

Then your empty stock train would have to run into Platform 2, reverse into the carriage siding and then change direction again to get to platforms 3 and 4

Edited by whart57
  • Like 2
  • Round of applause 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, whart57 said:

Some minor corrections and tweaks if I may.

Cheers, that's great!  I'm just poring over it now and running a few of the services to see how the traverser copes with the traffic!  I'll check in again shortly! Thanks again! 

Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

Platform 1 and 2:

  1. Dover Priory via Minster and Deal - all stations stopper, probably hourly.
  2. Victoria via Canterbury, Ashford and Maidstone East - semi fast, four trains daily between 10 am and 4 pm
  3. Schools shuttle to Canterbury West - once daily leaving at 8.15, returning at 4.45

This works very well, as you can see the exit assigned to platforms 1 and 2 divides into two tracks on the traverser. 

 

IMG_20210216_105651082.jpg.919c969e21731153e586a2cdfe29ceef.jpg

 

With a freight service essentially occupying one of these lines until it is released to platform 1, it's just a matter of keeping this section of the traverser unoccupied.

This can be accomplished quite easily though:

During the time the freight is "on layout" - the EMU services can be represented by just the one model, arriving and departing platform 2 as per timetable (indeed, while the freight is not on the traverser a second model - maybe a two car DMU in the future - could be used for the sake of variety!)

The EMU can also be brought down to the lower exit of the traverser and double as the coastal services of platforms 3 and 4.

Happy Days!

 

Services to platforms 3 and 4 - the London / Coastal line - are also easily catered for, especially as the deck has ample space for rolling stock for this line (four tracks - five including the lowest one, seven if the upper line is included!) enabling a variety of traffic.

 

Bringing me on to this point:

 

On platforms 3 and 4 - and on the holding siding, there are uncoupling ramps.  One at either end of, roughly, the platform length.

This enables a (diesel) loco to detach from its rolling stock on arrival at any of these three lines, and for a shunter / replacement loco to attach.  This engine could then simply take the carriage section away, as per the timetable or move them "off layout" or to another line.  Either way, this frees up the original engine.

I was just wondering if (in the real world) there was somewhere on this part of the line that the engine could be imagined to go, once it was "light" - I believe the term is(?) In other words, had no carriages attached?

 

Thanks everyone for all the great ideas, it really has made a big difference!

 

 

 

Edited by Ray Von
Typo
Link to post
Share on other sites

We didn't see many loco hauled trains around here. You could imagine a train from the Midlands of the North but that is a little out of your period, by your era Benidorm and Majorca were the holiday destinations of choice, not a caravan on a Thames Estuary clifftop. In the 1980s and beyond you started to get diesel hauled cross country trains to Thanet but why they would end up at Reculver is a little bit of a mystery. However, the rule of it's-my-layout applies so I'm sure one loco hauled train could be accommodated.

 

As to where the diesel loco would go to be serviced, I'm not sure. Neither Faversham nor Ramsgate kept loco facilities after electrification. I would guess Ashford but I might be well wrong.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, whart57 said:

We didn't see many loco hauled trains around here. You could imagine a train from the Midlands of the North but that is a little out of your period, by your era Benidorm and Majorca were the holiday destinations of choice, not a caravan on a Thames Estuary clifftop. In the 1980s and beyond you started to get diesel hauled cross country trains to Thanet but why they would end up at Reculver is a little bit of a mystery. However, the rule of it's-my-layout applies so I'm sure one loco hauled train could be accommodated.

 

As to where the diesel loco would go to be serviced, I'm not sure. Neither Faversham nor Ramsgate kept loco facilities after electrification. I would guess Ashford but I might be well wrong.

Thanks, maybe in the future I'll populate the layout with more regionally creditable loco's.  For the time being though, I quite like the idea of having some more interesting engines in my collection.

Maybe there's an engine depot somewhere nearby, possibly Ashford, and maybe the package holiday boom didn't quite "take off" in this reality?

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

There were inter regional excursions, with Peaks or 47s to Thanet. The train in the awful Eltham Well Hall crash was one such IIRC (Yes, loco D1630).

 

There were also outgoing mystex, footex, and Adex, but 33 hauled, of course.

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

There were inter regional excursions, with Peaks or 47s to Thanet. The train in the awful Eltham Well Hall crash was one such IIRC (Yes, loco D1630).

 

There were also outgoing mystex, footex, and Adex, but 33 hauled, of course.

 

Whilst I'd heard of Footex, I had to look up both Mystex and Adex, as these aren't terms I am familar with.  Where these were inter-regional services, was the same locomotive used for the whole journey, in which case outgoing services would be hauled by a southern based locomotive, but incoming services could be hauled by anything from the nearest originating depot?

 

My search for Adex led me to the Class 40 Wikipedia page, which states "Throughout the early 1980s Class 40s were common performers on relief, day excursion (adex) and holidaymaker services ....This resulted in visits to many distant parts of the network....Regular destinations included the seaside resorts of Scarborough, Skegness and Cleethorpes on the Eastern region, with Blackpool and Stranraer being regularly visited on the West Coast.  Much rarer workings include visits to London's Paddington and Euston stations, Norwich, Cardiff and even Kyle of Lochalsh."

 

Whilst it is perhaps unlikely that that there would be many excursions from the northwest of England to North Kent, this would seem like the most appropriate way to accommodate some of the less suitable stock for this layout. I guess the problem is train length as presumably these day excursion services would typically be longer than the length of @Ray Von's platforms.

 

  • Interesting/Thought-provoking 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

47 were semi-common on inbound excursions to Kent, and yes, the loco stayed with the train and went back. There is a thread on RMWeb attempting to collate a list of all the 47 that visited East Kent.

 

Peaks I seem to remember did appear on excursions, but were rare. Maybe no Southern crews were passed to drive them, so they had to have a a driver from their home region, plus a southern pilot.

 

40 I don't recall seeing any, or hearing of any.

 

Almost all outgoing excursions had a 33 (or two). Some went through to wherever with the same loco. I recall trains with 33 going to Spalding Bulb Festival, and taking the Brighton & Hove Albion team by Pullman car to play Norwich, and I've been all the way to deepest Cornwall behind a 33. But, on other occasions, there was a loco-change at somewhere like Mitre Bridge or Willesden.

 

The exceptions were when Hastings units went on adventures. I went on one to Spalding, for instance.

 

The other interesting trains were "Holidaymakers", which were timetabled through trains not shown in the public timetable, with tickets sold largely through travel agents, sometimes as part of package deals with hotels. So far as I recall, they were always hauled by 33 while on the southern, sometimes 12 cars with one loco.

 

PS: There was a Deltic tour of Kent, c1977, "The Man of Kent". 

 

PPS: It was 1978, here is 'Pinza' at Sittingbourne 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnel_one/16233987820

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

I may be wrong as this is Southern territory, but were timetables that clock face in 1980?

 

I seem to recall them being more random as they would be other paths to route around, it seems only recently that the focus on regular x minutes departures has become vogue.

 

For a model railway timetable it doesn't really matter that much, it's more to get an order to what comes in when and what goes out when. 

  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Clock-face, very definitely, although there was variation around the morning and evening peaks as additional trains were run.

 

Southern had been heading in a clockface direction from possibly pre-grouping times on inner suburban routes, and that logic spread with electrification.

 

’On the hour; in the hour; every hour’ was a famous SR slogan from the Brighton Line electrification in the 1930s.

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Agree 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...