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Eastwood Town - A tribute to Gordon's modelling.


gordon s
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1 hour ago, ROY@34F said:

As you mention Top shed ,

Hi Roy,

SibSnoo, as I understand it, was referring to the top (ie upper) picture of the two previous plans Gordon has mulled over.  However, the sequence you describe is relevant.

 

Alan

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9 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

As Alan has said, I was referring to the top picture, not Top shed. 

 

 

Alan and Sib Snoo , Apologies  , I should have realised . Perhaps what threw me was the fact  that Gordon is basing his wonderful layout on the approaches to KX . and Top shed being mentioned . But of course  not THE Top shed ! Neither plans are anything like Top shed anyway . I look at model steam loco depots at exhibitions with very little suggestion , if any of ash pits , or not enough . There would always be quite a few engines on the ash pits at any big depots . The hardest work was done there mainly cleaning fires , clambering over piles of ash and clinker , maybe hot , underneath to rake and wash out the ashpan , unless you were lucky enough to have a rocking  grate and drop ashpan like standard class engines and A1s.  I know !!

 

Regards , Roy .

 

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35 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

No problem,  these strange and trying times are enough to scramble anyone's mind.

 

 

Thanks but I did ramble on a bit about pits . It's just that someone mentioned fires would be dropped on the short stretch between the coaling plant and the turntable , and I thought that's nowhere near enough room for the amount of engines using a depot of that size . In fairness Gordon hasn't stated which are pit roads anyway I don't think .

I follow this thread because it is loosely E.R.  B.R. and 1960ish when I was on a two year" on loan" stint as a spare fireman at Top shed ( Dec.'59 to Dec. '60 ) from Grantham , and have so many fond memories of those wonderful last days of steam .    And Gordon's trackwork  is amazing  . It's also nice to see something running lately - at last ! and gliding through all that OO-SF point work .                                                                                                                                                                I might add that we rarely cleaned fires anyway at  Top shed !   There was a gang of   ( recently imported ? )   coloured gentleman to do that . Hard working guys and glad of the work no doubt .

 

Regards , Roy .

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It's difficult to measure Neil, with the number of pipes etc around the boiler, but measuring right at the front of the smokebox, they both came in around 20.90mm. Google says it was an ABR5 boiler, whatever that may be. Probably an optical illusion.

 

Spent hours on Templot today trying to come up with a satisfactory shed layout. I love spending time on Templot, but it really is a challenge to both your brain and geometry skills as the slightest movement in one direction can completely through out everything. It probably wasn't a good idea to start with an existing plan and then condense it as that in itself caused numerous problems.

 

Eventually I got there and I hope this appears reasonable. Open to any suggestions of improvement, but would prefer not to have to start again.....;)

 

sketchboard_2020_03_27_1930_41.jpg.31c97993514168cbfc6c6624745583c6.jpg

 

It's probably self explanatory but the purple/maroon box is the coaling stage. The green boxes are ash pits and the black box is for coal empties, having been shunted in to top up the coaling stage. The difficulty was still trying to have an exit from the shed without using the turntable and yet keep the flow through. If needed I could add another ash pit straight ahead beyond the coaler and if necessary extend that line via a turnout below the turntable.

 

The two exit lines on the left cross over the main lines and then join further round before ET station.

 

Apologies for any howlers. It's been a long day.....

 

 

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Thanks for your kind words, Roy. It’s great to know people enjoy my ramblings. Despite having grown up with steam loco’s my in depth knowledge is fairly limited. I do try to get things fairly representative where I can, but am fairly laid back about regions and timescales, particularly when no one is looking......:D

 

Very happy to take on board your experience on these things, Roy. Can’t promise I’ll do everything as anyone who has used Templot will know what appears a simple change can turn everything upside down and almost mean a complete redesign. That’s where compromise has to come into play, if nothing else to protect my own sanity...

 

I haven’t really been out for more than half an hour or so for two weeks and according to my letter I have another 12 weeks from March 21st. Good grief that’s nearly July, but if it keeps me in the game, so be it.....:D

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11 minutes ago, gordon s said:

It's difficult to measure Neil, with the number of pipes etc around the boiler, but measuring right at the front of the smokebox, they both came in around 20.90mm. Google says it was an ABR5 boiler, whatever that may be. Probably an optical illusion.

 

Spent hours on Templot today trying to come up with a satisfactory shed layout. I love spending time on Templot, but it really is a challenge to both your brain and geometry skills as the slightest movement in one direction can completely through out everything. It probably wasn't a good idea to start with an existing plan and then condense it as that in itself caused numerous problems.

 

Eventually I got there and I hope this appears reasonable. Open to any suggestions of improvement, but would prefer not to have to start again.....;)

 

sketchboard_2020_03_27_1930_41.jpg.31c97993514168cbfc6c6624745583c6.jpg

 

It's probably self explanatory but the purple/maroon box is the coaling stage. The green boxes are ash pits and the black box is for coal empties, having been shunted in to top up the coaling stage. The difficulty was still trying to have an exit from the shed without using the turntable and yet keep the flow through. If needed I could add another ash pit straight ahead beyond the coaler and if necessary extend that line via a turnout below the turntable.

 

The two exit lines on the left cross over the main lines and then join further round before ET station.

 

Apologies for any howlers. It's been a long day.....

 

 

That looks quite good Gordon . Nice to see two ash pit roads ,  enough to accommodate 3 or 4 big engines each ? Or another one after the coaling plant as well . As you say , you could do with a turnout to reverse to the shed without using the turntable . It looks like you don't HAVE to use the turntable when coming off shed as all 4 roads converge at least an engine length from the 'table , which is good . The road above the two pit roads : is that for wagons to load ash into ?  Or what about putting the ash wagon road in between the two pit roads ? That would look good I reckon . That's how it was done at KX Top shed  .. Its just a shame that you can't get back after coaling plant to the shed or pits without using the table . But it's difficult I know . It' surprising the room you need to make a proper looking steam depot .

 

Regards , Roy .

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59 minutes ago, ROY@34F said:

Its just a shame that you can't get back after coaling plant to the shed or pits without using the table . But it's difficult I know .

 

Hi Gordon, Roy,

 

Well there is room for a single-slip, diamond-crossing and tandem to provide such a connection:

 

gordon_coal_access.png.30c72194cb564df7df614959b34f5b00.png

 

smile.gif

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

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Hello Gordon,

           It looks rather busy round the turntable. More like a continental type than UK maybe. I thought the number of roads into and across continental turntables always seemed excessive when compared to those in Britain.Even the one at Carlisle in the photos I have seen seems sparse by comparison.

trustytrev.:) 

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  Hi gordon
    ive followed your thread  and admired your pointwork for a long time      .If i might add  you could always put the turn table in the shed and it becomes a round house Burton Shed had 2 turntables one in each shed  and in their hey day had over 100 locos based there It even had a wheel drop pit . The LNER garrat made an appearance at one stage overheating journals and it went over the wheel drop pit It was on its way to the lickey bank as a banking engine . Although its a midland  shed we had an LNER shed 1mile down the line till about 1964 [ Beer traffic  and there was lots of it] . Any way i digress with a round house where the turntable is everything would flow down to the shed  and you wouldnt need so much point work TYdesley shed had a double round house too and im sure somewhere on line there is a trackplan of 1908 vintage  + they also had repair sheds too  phil

Edited by 77philg
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8 hours ago, trustytrev said:

Hello Gordon,

           It looks rather busy round the turntable. More like a continental type than UK maybe. I thought the number of roads into and across continental turntables always seemed excessive when compared to those in Britain.Even the one at Carlisle in the photos I have seen seems sparse by comparison.

trustytrev.:) 

I would agree with that, most UK turntables had minimum numbers of roads on to them. What exactly are the two long dead end sidings directly off the table for? It would be extremely difficult to shunt anything on or off them.

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Slight problem with a roundhouse. If you take 300mm for the turnable and 300mm all round to take the loco’s plus a bit for the building, you’ll need at least a metre wide board and I don’t really have that space. It’s a great idea in theory, but the second problem is lack of visibility once the roof is in place.

 

I take your point Trev, but again I have all the buildings and the space I have is pretty well fixed at 9’ long and a maximum of 30” wide. I want to get some flow through the shed and not limit access to the main building by having to use the turntable. B7 and C10 turnouts all take up space and I’m determined to stay above 3’ minimum radius.

 

All of those inevitably mean compromises. I’ll take another look at my shed books, to see if I can improve things, but the problem as always is designs in your head or scribbled on paper often turn out to be impossible once you try and translate  it on Templot.

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Sorry Mike, our posts crossed. They were a bit of an afterthought and just somewhere for loco’s to stand.  They can easily come out. Like most, I have far too many loco’s and if not out on ET, they are unlikely to run. I do plan to either pack away or sell my US loco’s, so that frees up my display cabinet on the wall.

 

The plan is also to use loco cassette’s via the traverser once built. That will have storage shelves underneath to house cassette’s.

 

OK, this may be a great help to me. I’ve got plenty of time on my hands as I’m grounded for three months, but if anyone wants to put together a very simple block plan of how it could be accomplished, then I’d be happy to go back into Templot to see if it can be done within my own constraints.

 

The key issues are the size of approximately 9’ x 3’. Entrance has to be from the lower left hand side. The shed building takes four lines and the cooling stage requires two. The turntable needs 13” diameter (327mm) and the shed building itself is 22” x 15” (560mm x 380mm). Being of the age I am, I’m ambidextrous with measurements......:D

 

It’s the actual flow I’m interested in, not an absolute scale drawing.

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10 hours ago, trustytrev said:

Hello Gordon,

           It looks rather busy round the turntable. More like a continental type than UK maybe. I thought the number of roads into and across continental turntables always seemed excessive when compared to those in Britain.Even the one at Carlisle in the photos I have seen seems sparse by comparison.

trustytrev.:) 

A good example of a multi road turntable and shed is one I suggested to Gordon sometime ago. Nine Elms has 9 tracks going to the turntable. Now could ET become southern region think of all those great Bulleid Pacific's with a few standards thrown in for interest.

 

Keith

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Can you merge the coaling road and lower ashpit road  a loco length from the turntable? that way you could still operate with a faulty turntable, albeit with a lot of to and fro. Only the top two sidings would be inaccessible, although they  could similarly  be merged with the top shed road a loco length from the turntable.

 

Wrong railway, but Oxford shed had this arrangement...

 

Dave

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14 hours ago, gordon s said:

It's difficult to measure Neil, with the number of pipes etc around the boiler, but measuring right at the front of the smokebox, they both came in around 20.90mm. Google says it was an ABR5 boiler, whatever that may be. Probably an optical illusion.

 

Spent hours on Templot today trying to come up with a satisfactory shed layout. I love spending time on Templot, but it really is a challenge to both your brain and geometry skills as the slightest movement in one direction can completely through out everything. It probably wasn't a good idea to start with an existing plan and then condense it as that in itself caused numerous problems.

 

Eventually I got there and I hope this appears reasonable. Open to any suggestions of improvement, but would prefer not to have to start again.....;)

 

sketchboard_2020_03_27_1930_41.jpg.31c97993514168cbfc6c6624745583c6.jpg

 

It's probably self explanatory but the purple/maroon box is the coaling stage. The green boxes are ash pits and the black box is for coal empties, having been shunted in to top up the coaling stage. The difficulty was still trying to have an exit from the shed without using the turntable and yet keep the flow through. If needed I could add another ash pit straight ahead beyond the coaler and if necessary extend that line via a turnout below the turntable.

 

The two exit lines on the left cross over the main lines and then join further round before ET station.

 

Apologies for any howlers. It's been a long day.....

 

 

I don't know a great deal about steamy sheds, but have studied diesel depots in great detail, observing flows, replenishment, servicing and stabling.

 

Your plan looks fun, although I feel it's not going to satisfy you in the long run - there's too many compromises and the thing that screams out to me is the scale of what you're trying to achieve in the given space. Sorry if that sounds cruel, but you're only going to be happy with something on a smaller scale that looks right. Percentage wise, I'm sure there would be a good representation of stabling sidings compared to quick turnaround and servicing track, so understand how your plan has come together.:) 

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Had a bit of a play around with the existing plan. I've taken out the two storage roads (as per Mike) and rejigged the entry point so everything comes in shed wise on one line and coal deliveries on the other. You can now access the coaling stage from the shed (as per Martin) and a mod after the coaling stage (as per Dave) means you can reverse back without going to the turntable directly. The turntable needs moving up a fraction, but that's a big job, so I can live with it until other decisions are made.

 

sketchboard_2020_03_28_1054_26.jpg.d1a675ca940bab4b039bfa424af81bf7.jpg

 

 

Edit: Thanks Kier, posts crossed. What seemed like a lot of space, soon disappears....;)

Edited by gordon s
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Gordon, I think that's pretty promising. I'm not sure about all those roads into the turntable, though, could a couple be dead ends for stabling?

 

Also with all the other activities on ET how much time do you want to spend shuttling locos and wagons around the shed? It's different if the shed is the focus of the layout, but your's appears to be more a place to display engines and bring them out for a run.

Alan 

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When I started the Waverley project all those years ago it wa a simple shed - it sort of grew, I'd be interested to hear how unworkable it is, because I'm planning some mods when I get it back out of storage...

 

Locos arriving from the left can either keep right on arrival and go straight down to the shed roads - turning if needs be,  If they take the first left they run through the ash pits then pull forward.  The crane is as the pic

 

 

 

Screenshot 2020-03-28 at 13.13.15.png

Screenshot 2020-03-28 at 13.14.51.png

Edited by bigwordsmith
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All this talk of Locomotive sheds and space restrictions, pop over to smoke Edge’s Herculaneum dock thread and have a closer look at Brunswick Shed in the latest photo.  All very cramped.

The turntable is behind the Roofed coaling ramp.

 

Paul

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