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Branch Line Terminus


Campaman
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Hi

 

I am looking at starting a typical branch line terminus layout that I can build downstairs that will become part of my larger loft dwelling layout, my long term plan for the loft to retain interest in building it etc is to base it on smaller end to end/fiddle yard layouts that link together in the loft using a narrow shelf type of arrangement running round the edge, so that I have somewhere for trains to run off to.

 

Based on the above plan and getting it throught the loft hatch I am looking at board size of 20" wide by four foot long each although I can bolt on additional scenic only areas (no track) once in the loft, I have built two boards that bolt together so am looking for some typical branch line plans based on approx 8 foot long by 20" wide to get my creative juices flowing.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

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Also track layout can depend on railway of origin, so which had you in mind??

There is also era to consider. Today, BLTs often consist of a plain line and a buffer stop! The steam era was much more lush in its provision, but the steam/diesel transition had all the advantages of the generous infrastructure of steam days plus a greater variety of motive power. Steam freight with passenger DMUs etc.

 

Tell us more!

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Right 1st one for the creative juices.

 

Red vertical line in the middle is the 4ft marker.

 

post-163-048690800 1290617080_thumb.jpg

 

 

I have assumed that the trains enter on the right.

The red lines are the main / platform lines. With space being tight the platforms would be narrow but with a little ingenuity (maybe removable platforms) and your possible extra scenic boards this could be solved. As laid out there are two platforms .

 

The green lines show the goods yard and goods loop. The loop goes round the back of the island platform. I think that the longer siding on the left hand side would be a coal siding. On the right the longer siding would have the goods shed on it. The shorter siding would contain an end loading ramp, but would most likely just be used for stock storage.

 

The blue line holds some limited loco facilities, water, coal and a small single road shed.

 

This is very much an urban branch line I feel. It does not have the feel of a rural line to me. I think that it's the goods loop that does this.

I have also designed this with the potential to be extended off the LH side, maybe to join back onto the main layout? My excuse for this is the line has been truncated at some point, if you want to reopen the closed section of line then more fun can be had. This gives a good reason for the goods loop joining back onto the main line.

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Your replies are exactly why I am asking for assistance, as I hadn't even thought about what you are asking :-)

 

Yes 00, I am thinking steam/diesel transition era, and as for origin, I hadn't given that much thought but my planned position for this board in the loft does really mean it needs to be a terminus so if that influences other factors then I am open to suggestions.

 

And as per Kris's first offering I am looking to have trains entering from the right, and that plan has already given me spme ideas on the goods layout.

 

Thanks

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Guest stuartp

'Typical' is always dangerous given company differences and regional design peculiarities, so I'll stick with 'plausible'. I've looked at a lot more Scottish terminii than English or Welsh ones but hopefully this isn't too parochial.

 

As a minimum you need a platform, somewhere to run round and somewhere to handle goods - your staples will usually be general mechandise and house coal. Passenger platform on either or both sides of the loop depending on traffic reqirements. Signalbox somewhere near the station throat (RH end) makes giving and receiving the token easier.

 

Your passenger line(s) will need facing point locks so the number of connections to these needs to be kept to a minimum. Likewise, any connections to these from sidings will need trapping - either trap points or a headshunt. In Kris's example above the sidings are actually self trapping - anything running away will either run into the blue headshunt/loco siding or one of the left hand sidings. However, if wagons are to be left on the goods loop then the loop will need trap points at each end because anything rolling away will run onto the passenger line. Keeping connections to the passenger lines to a minimum also reduces the signalling needed.

 

Goods sidings - you might find two or three, one of which might have the goods shed on it. Coal merchants might have heir own dedicated plots alongside a siding in larger yards, with or without sleeper-built coal bins. They were charged rent for the space, ask Stationmaster about this as I'm fairly sure he's posted in the past about coal merchants' tendencies to use elastic tape measures when marking out their plots.

 

The shed and at least one siding needs access for a horse and cart alongside (or a lorry, but most were laid out in horse and cart days). Sidings were often laid out in pairs with cart access alongside. In a rural area you might have a cattle dock of some sort, either a separate structure on its own, or part of a larger loading dock, or even part of the station platform.

 

Whoever is shunting your yard would prefer not to have to run round too often or walk too far to change points, so a fan of sidings to one side of the passenger facilities would be good. Kick-back sidings are a great way of filling up space and adding operating interest to a model but 'operating interest' scales up to 'awkward to shunt' on the prototype so use them sparingly. Not only do you have to run round again to get anything in there but you have to leave the access siding clear while you do it. In reality many would have been 'fly-shunted' but that's almost impossible to do on the model. You might find a dedicated goods loop as on Kris's plans.

 

Add loco sheds (and coaling facilities and a pit), turntables, private sidings etc to taste. There are, of course, exceptions to almost every example above !

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For a model its better to have a head shunt rather than using the main otherwise only one engine can be moving about. Having at least one siding facing the opposite way to the others adds extra run rounds when shunting. Many rural branch terminii tended to sprall look for those where the site constrained the width e.g Kingswear was quite compact for the amount of traffic squeezed in between higher ground and the river. However that tended to increase the length. So much depends on the setting which often forced the design.

Don Willsmer

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That's a tiny turn table Mickey, I know that this is representative or the real thing, but it would not add much to the operation of the branch here. I guess that it's about 6inches long? Just about enough to turn a pannier?

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I don't think you'll get anything to scale in 8ft (it's hard enough to do that in 2mm), not unless you can find space for an over bridge that hides part of the throat and compress this outside the realms of this layout.

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That's a tiny turn table Mickey.....................................I guess that it's about 6inches long? Just about enough to turn a pannier?

 

The Princetown turntable, and its twin at Yelverton (junction with the Plymouth-Tavistock-Launceston branch) were not provided for regular turning of locomotives at all, but solely to turn the snowplough when it visited the line. The Princetown branch was vulnerable to drifting snow, being high on Dartmoor, and since it served the prison of the same name (and was one of the few branchlines to be built with a government subsidy, since that was the only way to get the GW to serve the prison) it was considered particularly important to be kept running in poor weather.

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The Princetown turntable, and its twin at Yelverton (junction with the Plymouth-Tavistock-Launceston branch) were not provided for regular turning of locomotives at all, but solely to turn the snowplough when it visited the line. The Princetown branch was vulnerable to drifting snow, being high on Dartmoor, and since it served the prison of the same name (and was one of the few branchlines to be built with a government subsidy, since that was the only way to get the GW to serve the prison) it was considered particularly important to be kept running in poor weather.

 

I'm sorry but something doesn't ring quite right here.. Kingdom & Jenkins only mention the turntables (albeit by inference and placement) as part of the line's loco facilities - and their research of the line appears to have been fairly extensive. An article on the web mentions them as being for snowploughs but - as so often with that source - it is difficult to judge the provenance and depth of research which led to that conclusion (or inference?). Another source suggest that the turntable at Princetown was out of use some years (?how many?) before the line closed which would be odd if it was there solely to turn a snowplough.

 

I further wonder about provenance when considering that the Princetown branch was not built with a Govt subsidy but was financed by the GWR and the Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway - from which it took over much of the branch's pre-existing route. The other thing I find odd is the reference to 'turning a snowplough' as - and here I must admit only to the latterday direct knowledge - the GWR didn't have any independent snowploughs, they were mounted on a loco. Thus a turntable would have to be capable of turning locos (which it obviously was; plenty big enough for the locos that initially worked the line but not big enough for the later 44XX locos and it seems the Princetown one went during their tenure - but it still snowed on Dartmoor).

 

A far more likely explanation for the presence of turntables would be the fact that when the line opened the locos most likely to operate it would have had open back cabs (as indeed did the locos which actually worked it for some years after opening) and would have been well nigh unworkable running bunker first in even a halfway bad Dartmoor winter. But having said that it is always interesting to delve deeper into the history of the lost railway so I would welcome further information on the subject - with due apologies to the OP for drifting off into one tiny piece of the railway. (BTW my local branch terminus had turntablesmile.gif).

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Lets give you another choice.

 

post-163-022899900 1291214462_thumb.jpg

 

 

This is very very loosely inspired by Looe

 

Passenger trains arrive at the platform. Due to space constrants there is no loop here so they have to pull into the goods yard to run round (this is the Looe inspired bit).

The 3 sidings on the left of the plan are the general goods sidings. The set of sidings on the right of the plan I see as being some form of heavy industry, maybe a quarry loading point. I have assumed that this uses it's own engines which have the authority to run in the goods yard (solves the head shunt issue). This / these locos live in a shed on the kick back sidings in the centre of the board. I feel that this shed would also be a wagon repair works for the industry.

 

See how quickly I departed from the Looe them there.

 

This is a very busy plan and not really than in keeping with a typical branch line, but hey what's typical.

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Lambourn is another GWR* terminus that's quite a popular modelling subject. See for example MRJ issue 23 (P4) and issue 32 (2mm finescale); I believe there's also been at least one 00 version in the press.

 

*Other railway companies are available of course, though perhaps not so well supplied with rtr branch motive power.

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

Goods sidings - you might find two or three, one of which might have the goods shed on it. Coal merchants might have heir own dedicated plots alongside a siding in larger yards, with or without sleeper-built coal bins. They were charged rent for the space, ask Stationmaster about this as I'm fairly sure he's posted in the past about coal merchants' tendencies to use elastic tape measures when marking out their plots.

 

I was reading somewhere on here about coal bins, and generally, they often didn't bother, they would order coal in, based on what they could shift in the time they'd rented the waggon/siding for

if they ran out of time they'd dump it on the floor to avoid being fined for keeping the siding blocked / wagon longer than agreed

 

they'd then have a bit more time in which to move the coal before the station / goods yard staff got annoyed.

 

later, when wagon sizes increased with metal sided mineral wagons being used more often, they'd often end up with more coal than they could shift / lower prices in summer to keep coal moving from the pit they might end up over ordering and end up with a fair amount of coal on the ground and not want to keep the wagon and be fined for it.

 

 

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  • 8 years later...

Hi Modellers. I have been building Shunting Puzzles up until now? But just now I have been looking at BLT’s , and there are a range of ideas up and down the regions, mostly using 0-6-0 tank engines. With a small turntable used as part of the runaround, but before I can put this idea into an actual layout I would need a small turntable, just big enough to handle an 0-6-0 otherwise it would defeat the object of space saving. Any bright ideas please?  Happy Modelling Kev 

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On 17/12/2010 at 14:38, Black Sheep said:

 

I was reading somewhere on here about coal bins, and generally, they often didn't bother, they would order coal in, based on what they could shift in the time they'd rented the waggon/siding for

if they ran out of time they'd dump it on the floor to avoid being fined for keeping the siding blocked / wagon longer than agreed

 

they'd then have a bit more time in which to move the coal before the station / goods yard staff got annoyed.

 

later, when wagon sizes increased with metal sided mineral wagons being used more often, they'd often end up with more coal than they could shift / lower prices in summer to keep coal moving from the pit they might end up over ordering and end up with a fair amount of coal on the ground and not want to keep the wagon and be fined for it.

 

 

Only thing was they also had to pay for any excess space they occupied on the ground.

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