Scenic Breaks, Station to Fiddle-Yard, for French Branchline Terminii?

[BillB]

England has / had lots of road bridges over railway lines, even on branch lines, hence the standard disguise for the entrance to the fiddle-yard, often doubling as the station approach road. My tours of French country stations via google streetview show roads mostly cross railways at ground level, so I am wondering what devices French Branch Terminus to F/Y modellers use to mask the transition. I don't want to model, in effect, an English station with French buildings and rolling stock! A building can block sight of rails passing thru a "sky" wall, but a building on the viewing side of the track requires a wider baseboard than I have (a 65" long x 9.25" wide shelf layout). Or maybe narrow shelf layouts are not a French modelling idiom.

 

Also interested in French branch terminus track plans. and facilities. I know what an English terminus would have, Station Building, Goods Shed, Cattle Dock, etc., but not a French one.

 

BTW I was worried the Jouef / MKD station building kits were of too-grand buildings, but I have noticed that real French country stations in villages of maybe 1,500 population do have buildings identical to the Jouef Gare de Neuvy or MKD Fay-aux-Loges. (Gare de Neuvy is Neuvy-sur-Loire, and it and all the adjacent stations are similar, same for Fay-aux-Loges and the stations up and down that line)

 

All thoughts and ideas gratefully received.

 

Bill.

Edited December 25, 2021 by BillB
typos

[Nearholmer]

Very characteristic: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poste_électrique

[Mol_PMB]

Some trees? 

[BillB]

Perhaps I should have said for context, my current plan, which I am laying out with Peco track on the baseboard, is for a single line to emerge from the F/Y into a Peco 3-way point in the station throat. The F/Y will be a straight track serviced with PECO Loco-Lifts.

 

Passengers will be served by a choice of diesel autorails, initially a REE Renault VH and an R37 Renault X5500 series Mobylette. Maybe later also a Mistral FNC X 5600 class with trailer. Small French diesel railcars seem numerous and fascinating, and several have been modelled.

 

For goods wagons, the 3-track fan in the station area is intended to allow it to be operated as an Inglenook with the loco using the F/Y as a head-shunt when necessary. This can be done using tank engines. The Piko ex-Saxon 2-6-2T and 0-10-0T are both 5.5” long over buffers, whilst the Brawa G 7.1 is only 7.4” over buffers, and ex-Wurttemburg Hh 0-10-0 is only 7.8” over buffers.

 

The period is early post-war, as both my railcars are Ruby Red and Pearl Grey. (I thought Ruby and Pearl  were barmaids at the Dog and Duck!)

 

Merry Christmas,

Bill.

[BillB]

Hmmm! Trees is a good idea, as they might mask the front of the F/Y and avoid the need for a hole-in-the-sky wall type scenic break altogether, they would just fade away as I get to the end area I need to reach across.

 

Thanks,

Bill.

[Oldddudders]

15 minutes ago, BillB said:

Perhaps I should have said for context, my current plan, which I am laying out with Peco track on the baseboard, is for a single line to emerge from the F/Y into a Peco 3-way point in the station throat. The F/Y will be a straight track serviced with PECO Loco-Lifts.

 

Passengers will be served by a choice of diesel autorails, initially a REE Renault VH and an R37 Renault X5500 series Mobylette. Maybe later also a Mistral FNC X 5600 class with trailer. Small French diesel railcars seem numerous and fascinating, and several have been modelled.

We modellers like 3-way points, as they save space, but truly they were not that commonplace in 12" to 1' railways. However, my local preserved station, Bonnetable, on the Ligne des Ducs, has a 3-way as the station throat at the surviving end. 

 

I think the FNC 5600 railcars are by R37, incidentally, and I have not found they run nearly as well as the X5500/5800s. The trailers are fun, though. 

[Nearholmer]

A jeep?

 

 

[BillB]

2 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

However, my local preserved station, Bonnetable, on the Ligne des Ducs, has a 3-way as the station throat at the surviving end. 

Thanks very much. I just had a look and I see Bonnétable has a symetrical 3-way. I have one, but had decided they were not prototypical! I also see an interesting goods shed, an indication of the size appropriate for this size station. There are some old postcards of Bonnétable online that show the passenger trains used the centre track  and the island platform, leaving the track close to the station building and goods shed free for wagons.

 

 

Thanks again,

Bill.

[Pacific231G]

I'd suggest trees or even bushes and/or a building. France is generally far more wooded than Britain so trees make a good option. It was also quite common to find a level crossing at the throat of station so a foreground maison de garde barriere is possible, though possibly a bit, as is a small agricultural buisness or a café de la gare (which were often next to a level crossing)

Because my own layout is tapered (it folds horizontally to form a rectangular box for storage) the throat end was too narrow to give room for foreground trees as a view blocker. However, I'd seen a lot of French modules that use the light box/proscenium arch approach so I simplified this to just have a  black painted return to frame the layout. 

This works well for me as, though it's obvious from the other end of the layout, I don't see it from my normal operating position so the illusion works.

Obviously you could us a wider return to limit the view of the hole from a greater range of angles.

 

You can see both buildings and trees used to hide the fiddle yard exits in this photo of Giles Banabe's very effective portrait of French "Départemental" railways St. Emilie (the standard gauge terminus of which largely inspired my own layout) 

 

The metre gauge "hole" in the foreground being much smaller required less masking than the standard gauge one hidden behind the "Engrais Hurel" buildings and silo (which also provided a kick back goods siding to make shunting far more interesting)

 

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

23 hours ago, BillB said:

 I don't want to model, in effect, an English station with French buildings and rolling stock! A building can block sight of rails passing thru a "sky" wall, but a building on the viewing side of the track requires a wider baseboard than I have (a 65" long x 9.25" wide shelf layout). Or maybe narrow shelf layouts are not a French modelling idiom.

 

Also interested in French branch terminus track plans. and facilities. I know what an English terminus would have, Station Building, Goods Shed, Cattle Dock, etc., but not a French one.

 

BTW I was worried the Jouef / MKD station building kits were of too-grand buildings, but I have noticed that real French country stations in villages of maybe 1,500 population do have buildings identical to the Jouef Gare de Neuvy or MKD Fay-aux-Loges. (Gare de Neuvy is Neuvy-sur-Loire, and it and all the adjacent stations are similar, same for Fay-aux-Loges and the stations up and down that line)

 

All thoughts and ideas gratefully received.

 

Bill.

A small French branch line terminus would quite possibly have had just two goods sidings - one serving the goods shed and adjoining loading dock and the other usually a voie de debordement - what we would call a mileage siding and the Americans a team track- where shippers would load and unload complete wagon loads. British goods yards usually also had a coal siding (which might be part of the mileage siding) and coal pens for the local coal merchants but these were fairly rare in France where rural domestic heating was more often based on local timber. There would probably also be a weighbridge to work out how much to charge the shipper. 

The goods yard would generally have a single set of points connecting it to the running line with usually a key locked derailer rather than trap points to protect the running line and more use of key locked individual point levers than ground frames. The practice at some British termini (e.g. Ashburton) of having separately accessed sidings for a good yard, end loading dock and cattle dock seems to have been far less common in France.

 

There might very well also be a private siding for a local grain solo, sawmill or other agribusiness (I chose a winery for mine)  that might be accessed from the running line separately from the goods yard.

Permanent cattle docks, as found on many if not most British BLTs seem to have been less common in France- I suspect because agriculture was more local there- but temporary pens could, if necessary, easily be erected on the loading dock*.  At a terminus there might be another siding between the running line and the goods yard to enable wagons to be sorted but with 9.25" of width available you probably won't have room for it and I wouldn't let that worry you. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you view them, almost all French BLTs  seem to have had a small annexe traction probably with room for just one loco (as of course did most British examples). This was because the first train of the day would likely leave at some ungodly hour in the morning to connect with the morning train to Paris. I was going to include one on my layout but the winery offered far more operational value. I did though have to invent a suitable fiction to explain its lack. 

 

A set up that was quite common on local Départemental raiways, both standard and metre gauge,  was a terminus consisting of just three loops formed by the running line, a run round loop behind it (looking from the station building) with the loco shed on a short spur at one or other end of th run round, and a single goods loop running between the station building and the running line with room for a platform between them. This served a goods shed that was connected to the station building, a loading dock (on which the goods shed effectively sat) and a loading/unloading area. 

There are good examples of this arrangement on the metre gauge CF du Baie de la Somme, on the standard gauge Mamers-St. Calais (though Bonnetable wasn't a terminus though it is now

https://gertrude.paysdelaloire.fr/img/caecfddb-2ad1-4b45-af2c-8d67af1b14ff and on the still intact SG terminus of the Voies Ferrées des Landes at Sabres (now providing the rail only access to the Ecomusée at Marqueze three kilonetres up the line) 

Some stations on single track lines of the PO also used this arrangement but, on "national network" branches it was far more common for the goods yard to consist of blind sidings either to one side of the station buildings  or opposite them (which does allow for longer sidings on a shortish layout)

The Jouef and MKD station buildings, though generally underscale (1:100 rather than 1:87)  are good examples of the type of generic station buildings  found all over France. Though the major companies might have somewhat charateristic designs, a lot of lines were built by contractors who simply drew on their own pattern books (Very similar stations can also be found in Spain and Portugal often built by the same contractors) though regional variations would include the roof pitch and roofing material (usually slates or roman tiles and sometimes shingles)

Station designs would be fairly common along a line with their importance revealed by the number of doorways on the platform side from two for the very smallest stations to perhaps seven or more for an important terminus or junction. I'd expect a terminus to have at least three to five doors with typically three or four for the main two story building ( the chef de gare and family nornally lived over the shop in a first floor apartment)  with single story wings on one of both sides.

 

*In some parts of France there were large scale bi-annual movements over surpisingly long distances of sheep between  summer and winter pastures mainly in Provence and the Pyrennean regions known as "transhumance". Between the 1920s and the early 1950s a good proportion of this traditional activity was  carried out by rail rather than by driving the flocks along the roads (something you really didn't want to get stuck behind!)  though from the 1950s trucks took over this traffic. Looking at contemporary images of this activity, the sheep seem to have been herded across open loading docks with little sign of temporary pens.

https://journals.openedition.org/rhcf/1162?lang=en

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Gordonwis]

On 25/12/2021 at 16:17, BillB said:

England has / had lots of road bridges over railway linesMy tours of French country stations via google streetview show roads mostly cross railways at ground level, 

 

Also interested in French branch terminus track plans. and facilities. I know what an English terminus would have, Station Building, Goods Shed, Cattle Dock, etc., but not a French one.

 

BTW I was worried the Jouef / MKD station building kits were of too-grand buildings, but I have noticed that real French country stations in villages of maybe 1,500 population do have buildings identical to the Jouef Gare de Neuvy or MKD Fay-aux-Loges.

 

1) You have been unlucky with your searches it seems. There are 1000s of road over railway bridges in France, often at the end of stations. 

A good start is to look at lines in hillier areas. Two I can think of quickly as I have photted from them in the past...:

https://goo.gl/maps/T4MNqDSjcisrtPeh9

https://goo.gl/maps/w1Y7KVvxhwSiDvpL8

 

2) France has comparatively few actual branch termini (particularly 'small' termini), especially in lowland areas. If you look at maps of the French railway network, the majority of lines linked with other lines, hence no termini. There are also examples of lines where there was a  terminus but it was laid out as a through stations but the line beyond was never built.

 

3) You have noticed correctly. The same style buildings can be seen to  serve small towns as well as tiny villages. French public works engineering has always been very standardised (eg you will find that the 'standard' station building style also look like canal lock keepers' houses). The 'standard' design varies slightly by regions and by original company (eg PLM stations buildings are a slightly different style to 'Est' buildings, but the layout is generally the same (eg 2-door, 3-door of 5-door two storey buildings)

 

Liste de gares en France — Wikipédia (wikipedia.org)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_gares_en_France

Edited December 29, 2021 by Gordonwis

[BillB]

Thanks very much for the narratives on branch-line stations.

Bill.

[Pacific231G]

Hi Bill

Gordon is right about the relative lack of branch line termini in France (though even in Britain there were probably more junction-junction branch lines than junction-terminus). This was largely because the entire national network was planned by the government and then let out to private companies through concessions rather than being the result of local initiatives.  Termini tended to appear when a line ran into an impenetrable barrier such as the Alps, the Pyrenees, or the sea (around the coast there were quite a few, some of them quite small. 

 

Where termini were more common, and often more compact, was on "Départemental" railways. These were not part of the national network but came under the aegis of the local authority (though Paris still had to approve them) and were largely designed to end the isolation and poverty of much of rural France. They were roughly equivalent to our light railways and run, at least at first, by private companies as concessions. Though most of them were metre gauge (a very few were 60cm)  there were enough standard gauge examples to provide plenty of prototypes and these tended to survive longer than their metre gauge equivalents.  Some of them such as the late lamented Chinon-Richelieu line (preserved until the local mayor took against it) were fairly indistinguishable from national network branches though they tended to use lighter rail section. Unfortunately, they also tended to follow contours so had even fewer road overbridges and didn't offer workings like the daily (and sometimes nightly) through coaches to  and from Paris that were such a feature of branches serving resorts or spas.

 

You mentioned quite rightly not wanting to simply build a typical British BLT with French buildings and stock and that probably applies to the service level as well. Apart from the often summer only through coaches on those lines that had them, for most French branch lines both "National" and "Local" two or three passenger trains and one or two goods trains (one of the passenger services was also often an interminably slow mixed train) was the usual daily ration. In both cases the service level tended to be written into the concession with no incentive to develop it further.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Pacific231G