Theory of General Minories

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Richmond in west London is today peculiar in that it has a set of terminus platforms serving a double track line and a pair of through platforms serving a double track main line, but there is no connection whatever between the terminus platforms and the through platforms.

 

Unsurprisingly, it was not always like this and more varied modelling can be had with the track plan of the 1930s, where the lines are all connected and there are goods facilities on both the up and down sides of the station, long since built over. However, such a plan looks rather large to my eyes!

 

Mike.

 

If one was to model Richmond sometime in the 1880s/90s, it would be spectacular - London & South Western, North London, Metropolitan District (all as at present), Great Western, and Midland.

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

 

Ealing Broadway's even more peculiar

Indeed, although once we are talking about modelling a station on the 4-track section of the GWR main line, I note that we are a long, long way from "Minories". ;-)

 

Mike

[RJS1977]

1 hour ago, KingEdwardII said:

Indeed, although once we are talking about modelling a station on the 4-track section of the GWR main line, I note that we are a long, long way from "Minories". ;-)

 

Mike

 

True, but the District line side is a three-platform terminus...

[KingEdwardII]

3 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

True, but the District line side is a three-platform terminus...

While across the way, the main line tracks have 14-coach "Cornish Riviera Express" flying through ... maybe even hauled by my namesake  

[john new]

1 hour ago, KingEdwardII said:

While across the way, the main line tracks have 14-coach "Cornish Riviera Express" flying through ... maybe even hauled by my namesake  

 

That is a scenario where the idea I have had for a while, but not built, of using an old TV connected to a looping video for an animated digital back scene would be ideal. Why haven't I tried it? I have the spare largish screen telly, but no space to build or store a suitable layout! The idea came to me on Upwey station, thinking that if the branch was modelled as preserved when franchises changed liveries the backdrop could be re-filmed and kept current.

 

Idea floated that's all.

[RJS1977]

46 minutes ago, john new said:

 

That is a scenario where the idea I have had for a while, but not built, of using an old TV connected to a looping video for an animated digital back scene would be ideal. Why haven't I tried it? I have the spare largish screen telly, but no space to build or store a suitable layout! The idea came to me on Upwey station, thinking that if the branch was modelled as preserved when franchises changed liveries the backdrop could be re-filmed and kept current.

 

Idea floated that's all.

 

I had the idea of an animated backscene years ago, but not so much from the point of view of animating a railway in the background, as of animating the weather. That was just an idle thought for some years until I discovered the 'Yo Window' programme and 'Where Seagulls Dare' was born.  Although none of the YoWindow scenes feature railways, the one used on YSD features swaying trees, speedboats, cruise liners, aircraft and hot air balloons, fireworks and a rotating light house! Other scenes available feature a working airport, and moving road vehicles and pedestrians.

[Lacathedrale]

Would Minories work in a terminus-to-terminus design? i.e. Minories at one end, Seironim at the other?

 

 

This is realy just a sketch - showing Minories (top) and Achaux (bottom) using Kato Unitrack on a hollow-core door.

[Zomboid]

That was part of the idea behind Seironim (and the hidden junctions).

 

It's not something that everyone would want, but there's a lot of fun to be had with what you've drawn there

[Pacific231G]

Interesting that you've based the lower terminus on Achaux. I didn't know how well remembered it was and,  apart from the original's short radius crossovers, it's a layout I've always liked at least in its terminus incarnation. Andy Hart did tell me that he'd been quite influenced by Minories while designing it but the electrified back line was an ingenious way of creating a lot of extra operation without having to equip the whole layout with catenary and it somehow gave the impression of a city terminus while still being a relatively compact layout - the actual terminus was 9ft x 18ins on three baseboards. 

The idea of an end to end two terminus layout was (is?) very popular with 0 gauge modellers who'd have the termini in a shed and a garden run between them.   You should though have roughly comparable facilities at each end so if there's a goods yard at "Achaux" there needs to be one at "Minories" otherwise the things have nowhere to go.

 

We were discussing earlier why Minories seems to work far better than its mirror image. At first sight it appears symmetrical but the answer should have been obvious. It wasn't, at least not to me, until I looked at an article on layout design by Michael Leigh in a very early Railway Modeller (no 6. Aug-Sept 1950) titled Pitfalls to Avoid

The advice was that the upper two plans were fine but the third should be avoided. The reason being that, with the pair of crossovers required to give both sides of a double track line access to multiple platforms, a train will always have to negotiate at least one facing point. In the first two a train arriving from the left hand on either platform will only encounter one facing point and the same for a train departing from either platform. For the third plan though a train arriving or departing on the opposite platform to the running line will meet two facing points. In theory, with the first two plans, the final exit point on the departure line wouldnt actually need  a facing point locks as, shunting moves excepted, it would in  normal side running always be trailed. in the lower plan all four points would need FPLS. In practice I suspect that all four points would be locked but avoiding trains runnning over facing points wherever possible is always desirable.  

. 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

On 30/12/2020 at 17:17, KingEdwardII said:

  On 30/12/2020 at 13:32, RJS1977 said:

 

True, but the District line side is a three-platform terminus...

 

While across the way, the main line tracks have 14-coach "Cornish Riviera Express" flying through ... maybe even hauled by my namesake  

Also true but the District Railway terminus used to be quite well separated from the GWR station with its own station building till what was going to be the GWR's Eaing Broadway and Shepherds Bush railway's platforms were inserted between them for the Central London Railway (now the Central Line) which had joint ownership of the line. The District terminus was/is very Minories with stairs up from both platforms to the high level station building and no concourse at platform level to take up space behind the buffers. Most of it is still there though somewhat reconfigured and the Ditrict Railway station building is now a row of shop fronts with offices above. The stairs were replaced by a footbridge to connect with the rest of the combined station.  It would be entirely possible to model the District Railway Station as seen from the GWML so no need to model that. Though I quite like the idea of a back projected backscene of Kings and Castles hurtling through Ealing Broadway (has anyone ever done that with a model railway, the angles would be critical.) the northernmost platform butts up to a retaining wall though on the other side the ground is flat between the three stations.

 

A somewhat similar situation existed at Reading where the compact four platform SR terminus was alongside but completely separate from Reading Generaland at a slightly lower level. It was a very attractive station in its own right and platform 4a at Reading General just wasn't the same.

Edited January 8, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Lacathedrale]

You're absolutely right @Zomboid - I was just sketching an idea of end-to-end termini . @Pacific231G this pattern might also work in the garden too. I do very much like the idea of a layout SYSTEM which connects a Minories plan towards other areas.

[johnhutnick]

I am in the US, so many things in some UK discussions do not come naturally to me.  Can someone please provide some details so that I can look up the District Railway terminus that is referred to.  

[KingEdwardII]

2 hours ago, johnhutnick said:

 Can someone please provide some details so that I can look up the District Railway terminus that is referred to.  

Sure,

 

The discussion was about Ealing Broadway station in West London, which has a number of elements including a terminus of the District Line (one of the London Underground lines).

 

A general introduction to Ealing Broadway station is available on Wikipedia here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealing_Broadway_station

 

I can't promise that all the details are accurate on that page, but it should give you a general idea. The station has terminus facilities for both District Line and Central Line underground trains and through facilities for the Great Western main line running west from Paddington.

 

There are other stations in the London suburbs with a similar flavour - terminus facilities for London local trains and through lines for trains destined for further afield. I think we started the discussion with Richmond station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_station_(London)

 

In the current era, these stations are extremely busy, not only serving their local communities, but also acting as interchange stations. I used to use Richmond as an interchange on a regular journey from Winchester to Gunnersbury via Clapham Junction.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Pacific231G]

7 hours ago, johnhutnick said:

I am in the US, so many things in some UK discussions do not come naturally to me.  Can someone please provide some details so that I can look up the District Railway terminus that is referred to.  

Hi John

Just to add to Mike's useful information.

The Wiki article seems to be pretty accurate and if you go to Flickr and enter Ealing Broadway District Line you should get plenty of images of that part of the station including a good number showing the train shed roof and the buffer end as it is now, Most of these are contemporary but there are some of the District Railway station seen from the street both when it was a separate station and now.

The District Railway had its own station building but the Ealing and Shepherds Bush Railway (Central Line) platforms were part of the GWR station and marketed as the GWR's route to the City of London.  

 

These maps (each composited from two sheets of the Ordnance Survey 25 inch maps held by the National Library of Scotland ad out of non-commercial copyright) from 1897, 1915 and 1937 show the station's development.

 

 

 

The GWR's Ealing and Shepherd's Bush Railway was joint with the Central London (Underground) Railway and is now the Central Line of London Underground and there are now no direct connections between the three lines that run into and through the station.

Ealing Broadway station was rebuilt in the 1960s with steps down to a single ticket hall about ten feet below street level between the GW and District platforms with a new office building Villiers House (where I used to work) above it. Beyond the ticket barriers, a walkway and footbridge had steps down to the District Line platforms and a "main line" footbridge which you had to go up a set of stair and then down again for the down (from Paddington) slow platform. This also served the up and down fast platforms of the GW main line but these are not normally used. The main steps down from the ticket barriers led to a circulating area in front of the Central line's island platform, with toilets, a waiting room and three food outlets, That accessed the Central Line, the up (to Paddington) slow line platform and, via a gap in the original train shed,  two of the the three District  Line platforms.  

The 1960s station was an excellent example of user unfriendly 1960s architecture at its worst and could hardly have been more awkwardly designed for people who have any difficulty with steps. I say was because it is currently being rebuilt as part of London's new - and much delayed- Crossrail service (the western part of which runs on the GW main line)   I don't know if this involves any major changes to the old District Railway station but I suspect not as it's essentially a Network Rail project.

This rather wordy description should enable you to make sense of the various images on flickr etc.

 

I was by the way slightly inaccurate in describing the District Line station as having been built with a retaining wall. It's clear from the maps that it was actually built in a cutting the south side of which was removed when the Central London Railway platform was added. Looking at Google Earth there is a narrow gap between the north wall of the actual train shed and the newer building behind it (Eaing Squash Courts) that faces onto Haven Green and Street View will take you down the alley leading to the Squash courts and the back of the oriignal station building as well as providing a very clear image of the DR's station building from Haven Green. In any case, if modelling it,  you would still need to view the Distict Line station from the south.

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Zomboid]

All the District line termini are adjacent to main line through routes (Wimbledon and Upminster are the same, though the sidings beyond Upminster make it look like a through station, if you imagined buffers there it would work fine).

[KeithMacdonald]

It looks like when the Central Line squeezed into the gap between the GWR mainline and the District Line, they filled every available space?

 

 

Three stations for three different services.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.51494&lon=-0.29785&layers=170&b=1

[KeithMacdonald]

Would Richmond (District Line / TfL Overground) count as a Minories terminus?

 

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.46344&lon=-0.29790&layers=170&b=1

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

It looks like when the Central Line squeezed into the gap between the GWR mainline and the District Line, they filled every available space?

 

 

Three stations for three different services.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.51494&lon=-0.29785&layers=170&b=1

Pretty well yes especially as the District Railway had already added a third long bay on the south side of their station.

In the 1915 map it looks as though the GWR had built a road access to the up slow side, probably for cabs, and they had to sacrifice that to get the Central platforms in.

Ealing Broadway never AFAIK had goods  facilities, they were at Acton Mainline and at West Ealing. 

 

The idea of the Ealing and Shepherds Bush Railway was to provide a better interchange for people- probably commuters- going from the Thames Valley to the City than via Bishop's Bridge/Paddington. Giving running power to the CLR to extend out to Ealing rather than building the planned GW terminus next door to the CLR's original Shepherds Bush terminus was a better way of doing that as the interchange at Ealing is level for London bound passengers but Shepherds Bush would have required a descent to deep level tunnels.

It's interesting to speculate on whether Ealing Broadway would have needed additional platforms if the branch to Shepherd's Bush had been built as originally planned or would every train using it have gone through Ealing.

 

I did wonder why, when they added the Central to the statIon, the GWR built an Island platform rather than putting one Central platform opposite the GWML up slow platform  and the other as a single faced platform opposite. Thinking about it, because platforms used by MU stock are interchangeable - an arriving train will depart from the same platform. it makes more sense to route passengers to a single entrance from where they can get on whichever train is going first. It would also probably allow for separate ticket control by the Central even though it was a joint CLR/GWR service so presumably had combined tickets and seasons. 

What I don't understand about Ealing Broadway is why, with a lower frequency, the District Line still requires three platforms to accomplish what the Central Line manages with two. It may be why crew changes on the Central Line take place at White City.   

 

[KingEdwardII]

2 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Would Richmond (District Line / TfL Overground) count as a Minories terminus?

Keith,

 

The present-day Richmond probably counts as Minories - the current arrangement is that the terminus District / Overground lines are entirely separate from the SWT through lines - there is no connection between them whatever. The present-day operations are a bit monotonous - 4 TfL trains in/out per hour plus up to 10 District line trains - busy but not much variation.

 

The older trackplan in the map above is a very different story since all the tracks were connected and there were goods facilities on both the down & up sides of the station - much more variety possible, but it's a lot larger than the Minories plan.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Zomboid]

3 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

What I don't understand about Ealing Broadway is why, with a lower frequency, the District Line still requires three platforms to accomplish what the Central Line manages with two. It may be why crew changes on the Central Line take place at White City

Probably because there are three platforms and they're not going to take one out.

 

I don't know how they operate Ealing as it's not somewhere I ever go, but at Stratford on the jubilee line they only use two platforms off peak.

[Chris116]

At Wimbledon the District line has and uses four platforms. Most of the day they are timed to run with three platforms filled and when the fourth train arrives then one of the three already there departs. It means that if anything is delayed they still have time for the driver to get to the other end and depart on time.

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Would Richmond (District Line / TfL Overground) count as a Minories terminus?

 

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.46344&lon=-0.29790&layers=170&b=1

Look at the goods headshunt! Far too short - you'd never see that on the prototype...

[Pacific231G]

12 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Look at the goods headshunt! Far too short - you'd never see that on the prototype...

Well spotted. I hadn't noticed that feature of the rebuilt Richmond station before. 

 

It's 348 ft long so about four foot six in 4mm scale! so yes very short compared with the length of the sidings that look to be the usual combo of goods shed, mileage and coal with one siding for each and a fourth running back to the Corporation depot. I wonder how much goods it actually handled though, as it grew as a commuter suburb, Richmond on Thames must have consumed a lot of domestic coal. Originally that headshunt had served a single long kickback siding to a Corporation Depot so I wonder if that was a way to isolate the corporation's shunting of its siding (with horses probably) from the main line operation.

 

Richmond is particularly interesting as, before it was rebuilt in its present Art Deco form in 1937, there were effectively two stations,  if anything even more separated than the GWR and District Railway stations at Ealing though there was a footbridge connection between them.

Richmond Station 1933

The LSWR's Windsor line had its main buildings on the north side of the the through lines to the west of the Kew Road bridge but with platforms extending under the bridge and the District/North London Railway terminus was on the eastern side of the bridge though there was a footbridge connection. I assume had been the terminus for the LSWR's line from  Addison Road (now Olympia) on the West London Line to Hammersmith (long dismantled) and from Hammersmith to Turnham Green and Richmond (now the District Line) line. Until 1910 the GWR also ran trains from Paddington to Richmond via a branch off the Hammersmith and City line that joined the L&SWR just to the the west of their Hamemrsmith station. 

Before the 1937 rebuild the goods depot had been on the south side of the through line east of the Kew Road bridge where the car park is shown and the multi level car park is now. This had a dead end goods depot rather than the later more traditional goods shed. The original goods yard had included a small coal yard but the kick back siding on the north side that ran to the Corporation depot may have also been a coal siding. That pre 1937 goods depot was on the site of the original  terminus of the Richmond and West End Railway  (a susidiary of the LSWR) that moved when the line was extended over the Thames to Twickenham to Windsor and Reading.

 

A kickback goods yard from a terrminus is of course an extrememly useful prototype that lends itself to filling the dead space (if you use recangular baseboards) on the lower right hand side of Minories as per CJF's later versions.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Pacific231G

[RJS1977]

12 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Look at the goods headshunt! Far too short - you'd never see that on the prototype...

 

I'm not sure it's quite as bad as it looks. Although the goods shed siding is quite a long one, remember that wagons would need to be pushed through the shed to make way for more wagons, and when the shed and the siding beyond it are full, no more wagons can enter the shed. So the effective length of the siding is from the shed entry arch to the buffer stops, which is about the length of the headshunt.

 

Likewise the siding which runs furthest east has a point towards the end of it, which limits the effective length of the siding to the space beyond the point. I suspect this siding may have in effect been a short branch line serving an industry at that end of the goods yard, rather than a long storage siding.

 

The only 'long siding' as such is the one adjacent to the run-round loop, the purpose of which is unclear.

Edited January 10, 2021 by RJS1977

[Pacific231G]

39 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

 

I'm not sure it's quite as bad as it looks. Although the goods shed siding is quite a long one, remember that wagons would need to be pushed through the shed to make way for more wagons, and when the shed and the siding beyond it are full, no more wagons can enter the shed. So the effective length of the siding is from the shed entry arch to the buffer stops, which is about the length of the headshunt.

 

Likewise the siding which runs furthest east has a point towards the end of it, which limits the effective length of the siding to the space beyond the point. I suspect this siding may have in effect been a short branch line serving an industry at that end of the goods yard, rather than a long storage siding.

 

The only 'long siding' as such is the one below this, the purpose of which is unclear.

The 'long siding' alongside the run round loop looks like a coal siding as, in the 1950s map , there are what look like coal pens above it and also below the siding that runs alongside the Corporation Depot (though they might have been for roadbuilding materials or aggregate for the Corporation. .

There was loco road below the headshunt as the turntable on  this 1910 map shows and it also looks like the headshunt was also being used to bring coal to the coaling stage to the east of the turntable.

 

Richmond Station in 1910 (map published in 1912)

 

The District Railway from Gunnersbury was electrified in 1905 and the steam hauled services from the WLER and Paddington had gone by 1910. The LNWR didn't though electrify the North London line from Broad Street to Richmond until 1916 so in 1910 there were still steam locos operating into the terminus and running round their trains as the releasing crossovers indicate. Whether any of them were tender locos needing the turntable by then I don't know nor whether there were still some other steam hauled services into the terminus platforms after 1916 but, in any case, it's likely that the loco siding was simply not removed, though the TT was,  and it would have been used for other purposes such as PW or stock storage. There was no point in spending money to remove a yard siding if it is was still ocasionally useful. When the goods yard was moved to the north side of the running lines in the 1937 rebuilding they did quite a lot of retracking and it looks like the loco siding became the end of the new headshunt and the original headshnt was removed. You'd need to get the various maps to the same scale to compare the various track layouts and see what tracks were actually moved.

The upper siding after the points towards the end of the Corporation Depot siding was rather longer in 1910 and ran into the depot yard so I suspect that by the 1950s the Corporation had greatly reduced the amount of material they were handling by rail but a short spur of their second siding hadn't been removed. the part of the siding within the yard had likely been remoed or more likely tarred over. Remember that the presence of a track or a building such as a coaling stage on an OS map doesn't mean that  it's still being used.

 

Unfortunately, apart from the art deco buildings there seem to be a dearth of historic  images of Richmond-u-Thames station on the web. I could find nothing of the pre 1937 station nor its goods depot. I've not yet tried Britain from the air yet and that may yield something. 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Pacific231G