Theory of General Minories

[t-b-g]

There are not a lot of layout designs which provide satisfaction both as a home layout and in an exhibition setting. One of the big plus points of a Minories is that it can be entertaining in both environments. Either as stand alone station or as part of a bigger system it can happily keep me absorbed for a good while as an operator and I have enjoyed watching such layouts as a viewer.

[Lacathedrale]

I have nascent plans for a victorian 2mmFS urban terminus with another member of this forum which is not Minories, but very much of the ilk - double track, commuter services powered by steam locos with a quick turnaround - and I am hopeful that this comes to pass as a long term project, but I must say that I am so fatigued with having nothing meaningful to show for literally years of attempting to bring a layout to fruition, I am very close indeed to getting back on the horse with an RTR layout!

Edited August 22, 2021 by Lacathedrale

[Nearholmer]

JFDI

 

(I hope you can see that I crossed the 'F' out in politeness)

 

Seriously though, when I was on the brink of garden railways, I read a refreshingly to the point article in an American magazine, where the author basically said "Stop faffing about; buy some nice robust LGB track and set-up a circuit on the grass for the afternoon. Once youve got a train running, everything else will flow from there", and I reckon the gist of that is good advice.

[woodenhead]

@Lacathedrale you need to stop overthinking and as @Nearholmer says, do something.

 

I spent too long planning, buying stock that I have way too much and hardly a layout to show for it.

 

You're probably a lot younger than me, so you have time to change your mind, do multiple layouts or whatever, but don't spend so long trying to find the best layout configuration because there isn't one.  I've now made my claim to an area, a time and a layout in N, I am being swayed back towards OO simply because the stock exists and I see any problem encountered on my N layout build as an excuse to rip it all up and start again.  Why have I kept on doing this for most of my life, because when I encounter a problem I panic and rather than find a way forward I go back to the beginning and repeat ad infinitum.  Perhaps I am now recognising I myself am not infinite, I will cease one day and I'd better perhaps change my mindset and build a layout.

[Nearholmer]

“All the model railway layouts we never got round to building”, an exhibition at a major London gallery.

 

 

The trouble with life is that it gets in the way of hobbies, and soon enough you have a very demanding job, a house and garden to look after, children, and for the next 25 years you’re really, really busy.

 

Thats a large part of why r-t-r was invented.

 

Personally, on top experiencing all of the above list of hobby-confounding factors at various stages, I've got a problem in that I find almost all railways, and almost all model railway formats, interesting, so have "changed horses" several times over the past nearly fifty years: 00; EM; 009/H0e; American H0; 0n14; 15mm/ft; H0e again; Coarse-0. I have to try really hard not to get distracted by new possibilities, and have left multiple layouts half-baked.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Pacific231G]

On 12/08/2021 at 09:57, t-b-g said:

 

I agree entirely. Given unlimited space and resources, I still wouldn't want 14 coach trains!

 

In model form, they just don't look as good to me as shorter trains. For a main line long distance train, many real ones were 7 or 8 carriages long and it was only a very few exceptions and in many cases only for short periods of railway history, that these monster 12 or 14 coach trains ran anywhere. Even then, unless you are modelling one of a tiny number of main lines, which actually represent a tiny proportion of all the trains that ran, a 14 coach train is very untypical.

I do agree and I think it may be because we're  trying to reproduce the impression of watching trains from the platform or the lineside but from an agle and distance that is basically equivalent an aerial view. Full length trains simply emphasise that (unless perrhaps you can offer an eye level view as in Pendon's Dartmoor scene)  and a certain amount of foreshortening seems necessary to create that illusion.

 

During my train watching youth in Oxford, I always reckoned eight coaches and no more to be the "correct" length for an express simply because that was the standard rake, including a catering vehicle,  for the London- Worcester trains. I think the London-Oxford fast trains (stopping just at Reading) may have been rather shorter but they didn't have restaurant cars and I've always felt that a proper steam era express really does  need  a restaurant car.

 

I've always rather liked the idea that art is life with the boring bits left out and, unless you're trying to impress the punters on a very  "main line goiing through the scenery exhibition  layout"  I don't think more than say six coaches actually adds very much (I'd be happy if I could get five into the space. without the train stopping in the fiddle yard just as the last vehicle clears the final points in the throat.  

Interesting that in steam era France the minimum length for an express or rapide - I think because of braking requirements- was five coaches which, purely by coincidennce,  happens to be the minimum length I find credible in H0 . Bradfield,Glouceseter Sq. is designed for max. five coach trains  and seems completely convincing and I don't thiink Frank Dyer ran more than the occasional six coach train on Borchester Market. Most of the expresses AFAIR were five.  

Edited August 22, 2021 by Pacific231G

[t-b-g]

2 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

During my train watching youth in Oxford, I alweays reckoned eight coaches and no more as the "correct" length for an express simply because that was the standard rake for the London- Worcester trains. I think the London-Oxford fast trains (stopping just at Reading) may have been rather shorter but unlike Worcester and Hereford trains, they didn't have restaurant cars and I've always felt that a proper steam era express really does  need  a restaurant car.  

I've always rather liked the idea that art is life with the boring bits left out and, unless you're trying to impress the punters on a very  "main line goiing through the scenery exhibition  layout"  I don't think more than say six coaches actually adds very much (I'd be happy if I could get five into the space. without the train stopping in the fiddle yard just as the last vehicle clears the final points in the throat.  

Interesting that in steam era France the minimum length for an express or rapide - I think because of braking requirements- was five coaches which, purely by coincidennce,  happens to be the minimum length I find credible in H0 . Bradfield,Glouceseter Sq. is designed for max. five coach trains  and seems completely convincing and I don't thiink Frank Dyer ran more than the ocassional six coach train on Borchester Mkt. most of the expresses AFAIR were five.  

 

The biggest layout I have been involved with building is Narrow Road. Originally a terminus to fiddle yard, it is now a complete system with 5 stations and no fiddle yard. The terminus at each end of the line is modelled as a station, there are two through stations, one of which is a junction to a single track terminus. It lives in a purpose built shed, 40ft by 12ft. Even though we had the space available to go for really long trains, we decided on an 8 carriage maximum, which allowed the more interesting to operate system type layout that I have always admired. We like to call it "Buckingham on steroids". The scenic run is in the region of 140ft, being almost three times up and down the shed plus the ends.

 

Buckingham itself, as I have said previously, has a maximum of 5 bogie carriages as its main express and it looks just right. Mind you, in 1907, many GCR expresses were exactly 5 carriages long, so it should!

 

In a discussion over train lengths and layout sizes on Tony Wright's thread I once compared the scenic run on Little Bytham to the scenic run on Buckingham. The trains are on view for a longer distance (admittedly split by a short scenic break between the stations) on Buckingham. It surprised us both. So a shorter train over a longer scenic run gives an even better impression of a train running through the landscape. 

[Lacathedrale]

You're totally right, of course. I was at Beech Hurst (miniature railway) over the weekend and one of the guy's there said: you save 15-20 hours by buying laser cut frames. Maybe two hundred hours on buying a pre-made boiler. It's not so much a question of whether you can do it, but rather 'can you afford the time to do it yourself'. 

 

It made me think alot, part of that result was to offload all of my 'never going to happen' stash - and turn that funding around to buy some shake-the-box turnouts and get started on something that I can bring to completion within my natural lifetime.

 

With that in mind, it is commenced...

 

 

 

[john new]

On 02/08/2021 at 08:34, Keith Addenbrooke said:

 

 

I thought I recognised the layout, though I’ve not seen this particular video before.  There’s a link at the end to www.track-plans.net where there’s a lot more information about the layout which may be of interest for railway modellers.  Of course, the key thing being demonstrated with this design is that the through station has been disguised as a terminus.  It’s great for running trains and reminds me of plans from a Faller track plan book I had when growing up (and which I wish I’d kept).

 

The clever design relies on locomotives and coaches (and some European coaches are very long) that can go round very tight curves when behind the scenes.  I suspect the layout doesn’t see the kind of in-out operation of a classic Minories, but I do like this layout for what it does offer.

 

Incidentally I’m sure I’ve seen other videos of this layout, which are perhaps more aimed at railway modellers (a couple of short ones are also on the website), so I suspect this particular one was put together with more of an emphasis on entertaining a wider audience - hence the choice of music and approach to editing.  It’s got us talking, so it worked!
 

Thanks to @Satan's Goldfish for sharing - nice to see it again.

I almost always watch YouTube with the sound off as most of the music used is naff.

[john new]

On 22/08/2021 at 23:52, Pacific231G said:

I do agree and I think it may be because we're  trying to reproduce the impression of watching trains from the platform or the lineside but from an agle and distance that is basically equivalent an aerial view. Full length trains simply emphasise that (unless perrhaps you can offer an eye level view as in Pendon's Dartmoor scene)  and a certain amount of foreshortening seems necessary to create that illusion.

 

During my train watching youth in Oxford, I always reckoned eight coaches and no more to be the "correct" length for an express simply because that was the standard rake, including a catering vehicle,  for the London- Worcester trains. I think the London-Oxford fast trains (stopping just at Reading) may have been rather shorter but they didn't have restaurant cars and I've always felt that a proper steam era express really does  need  a restaurant car.

 

I've always rather liked the idea that art is life with the boring bits left out and, unless you're trying to impress the punters on a very  "main line goiing through the scenery exhibition  layout"  I don't think more than say six coaches actually adds very much (I'd be happy if I could get five into the space. without the train stopping in the fiddle yard just as the last vehicle clears the final points in the throat.  

Interesting that in steam era France the minimum length for an express or rapide - I think because of braking requirements- was five coaches which, purely by coincidennce,  happens to be the minimum length I find credible in H0 . Bradfield,Glouceseter Sq. is designed for max. five coach trains  and seems completely convincing and I don't thiink Frank Dyer ran more than the occasional six coach train on Borchester Market. Most of the expresses AFAIR were five.  

Many years ago when I thought I could use the garage for a layout (scrapped later due to damp problems) I experimented with what length of train looked acceptable to represent a main line service. 3 definitely train set, 4 better but still looked a bit short, 5 with a buffet car in the rake looked ok to represent the NYMR’s 7 I was aiming for. All bearing out what @Pacific231G says above.

[Nearholmer]

3 car trains are fine for secondary line, or minor cross country services, no catering and lots of time to look at the scenery while you eat a picnic on your knees. A 4-4-0 or mogul up front, and maybe a 4W van in the mix, and you have the classic short train that CJF was always on about.

 

Which is why I think Minories can well be used as one of those secondary termini in a back street in a big town or small city: Reading Southern; Northampton St. John’s; Banbury Merton Street; the list is endless, most closed in the 1960s, and some were busier than others.

 

Thr operational pace wouldn’t be as frenetic as at the city terminus of a suburban line, but it would be plenty to keep a person entertained at home on a dark winter evening.

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

15 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

... on a dark winter evening.

 

or even on a dark summer's evening, if your weather has been anything like August has been here at Fritters Towers.  Haven't seen the sun in weeks...

[Nearholmer]

Yesterday evening it was nigh-on dark when son and I got back from footy practice c1945, so I know what you mean!

[t-b-g]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

3 car trains are fine for secondary line, or minor cross country services, no catering and lots of time to look at the scenery while you eat a picnic on your knees. A 4-4-0 or mogul up front, and maybe a 4W van in the mix, and you have the classic short train that CJF was always on about.

 

Which is why I think Minories can well be used as one of those secondary termini in a back street in a big town or small city: Reading Southern; Northampton St. John’s; Banbury Merton Street; the list is endless, most closed in the 1960s, and some were busier than others.

 

Thr operational pace wouldn’t be as frenetic as at the city terminus of a suburban line, but it would be plenty to keep a person entertained at home on a dark winter evening.

 

Absolutely. Setting the layout away from the main cities simply widens the likely variety of trains.

 

Mine have been set in places like Mansfield, as a terminus from a line to Nottingham Victoria, which give the opportunity for a commuter service to Nottingham, plus a daily through train via Nottingham to London, plus portions of trains that come from elsewhere, like Sheffield, which are detached at Nottingham.

 

The new one is a secondary terminus in the outskirts of Sheffield, right in amongst the industrial area. The idea is that the goods only facility at Attercliffe was extended to include a small station so that some services didn't go all the way into Sheffield, which was running out of capacity. It can have local services to Doncaster (worked by the GNR and possibly some Midland Railway services too),  Barnsley (worked by the GCR) and down the Sheffield District Railway to join with the former LD&ECR at Langwith Junction, which would be a mix of Midland Railway and GCR in the period being modelled.

 

Through carriages could come from the GNR at Doncaster and up the former LD&ECR from Lincoln and possibly other destinations.

[Nearholmer]

How about the DN&S terminus at Southampton, the route to which never got finished? Or, a separate station for the LNWR line at Cambridge? 

[t-b-g]

20 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

How about the DN&S terminus at Southampton, the route to which never got finished? Or, a separate station for the LNWR line at Cambridge? 

 

Very suitable I would have thought. Although I might struggle to find a reason to bring out my collection of GCR,GNR and Midland stock if I adopted one of those! I do have enough LNWR stock to do the Cambridge station but it is all in use on "Narrow Road".

[Nearholmer]

I have to suggest South of England ones, because it all gets a bit foggy in my mind north of Brum, until Scotland, with minor zones of exception!

[St Enodoc]

48 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

Mine have been set in places like Mansfield, as a terminus from a line to Nottingham Victoria, which give the opportunity for a commuter service to Nottingham, plus a daily through train via Nottingham to London, plus portions of trains that come from elsewhere, like Sheffield, which are detached at Nottingham.

Our school model railway had a location called Mansfield (Southwell Road). In earlier times it had been an 0 gauge terminus but by the time I went there it had become a 00 gauge fiddle yard, retaining the name.

[t-b-g]

18 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Our school model railway had a location called Mansfield (Southwell Road). In earlier times it had been an 0 gauge terminus but by the time I went there it had become a 00 gauge fiddle yard, retaining the name.

 

It is a fascinating and much neglected part of the world for model railway purposes.

 

I remember an article on Mansfield (Midland) which had the grand total of 3 platforms and was a through station. The article pointed out that in pre WW1 times, Mansfield had more trains every day than St Pancras and that out of all the trains that ran there (well over 100 in the day) only 4 actually went through. Everything else either started or terminated there. There was a great network of lines, with 7 different routes spreading out from Mansfield, mostly built for coal traffic but with passenger services as well and nearly every passenger train would fit in a 4ft long platform in 4mm scale. Even in later LNER/LMS days or in BR days when the 6 wheelers had long gone, most trains were 3 or 4 bogie carriages.

 

Your typical set was Brake 3rd, All 3rd, Composite, Brake 3rd. or Brake 3rd, Composite, Brake 3rd. Of course there were many variations but they would be your "typical" trains once the 6 wheelers were replaced by bogie stock.

[Pacific231G]

6 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

Absolutely. Setting the layout away from the main cities simply widens the likely variety of trains.

 

Mine have been set in places like Mansfield, as a terminus from a line to Nottingham Victoria, which give the opportunity for a commuter service to Nottingham, plus a daily through train via Nottingham to London, plus portions of trains that come from elsewhere, like Sheffield, which are detached at Nottingham.

 

The new one is a secondary terminus in the outskirts of Sheffield, right in amongst the industrial area. The idea is that the goods only facility at Attercliffe was extended to include a small station so that some services didn't go all the way into Sheffield, which was running out of capacity. It can have local services to Doncaster (worked by the GNR and possibly some Midland Railway services too),  Barnsley (worked by the GCR) and down the Sheffield District Railway to join with the former LD&ECR at Langwith Junction, which would be a mix of Midland Railway and GCR in the period being modelled.

 

Through carriages could come from the GNR at Doncaster and up the former LD&ECR from Lincoln and possibly other destinations.

All that is true but what do you do if you like Pullmans, CIWL sleeping car trains and restaurant car expresses.? (OK you could build Ft. William old but that was  a single track throat and had just two points)   Six would be fine and I think you can get away with five coaches for that especially with a bit of judicious view blocking (when do you get to see more than three coaches from the side in a single view at any big city terminus)   but any less and you're into relative incredibility. 

 

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but CJF came up with the idea of a basic four coach train which on its own would be a semi fast but, by adding a restaurant or buffet car it became a long distance express, a sleeping car for an overnight train, a TPO for a postal express , etc. I think that was more about  economising on the cost of coaches than squeezing a quart into a Whisky glass but it made sense.  

[t-b-g]

8 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

All that is true but what do you do if you like Pullmans, CIWL sleeping car trains and restaurant car expresses.? (OK you could build Ft. William old but that was  a single track throat and had just two points)   Six would be fine and I think you can get away with five coaches for that especially with a bit of judicious view blocking (when do you get to see more than three coaches from the side in a single view at any big city terminus)   but any less and you're into relative incredibility. 

 

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but CJF came up with the idea of a basic four coach train which on its own would be a semi fast but, by adding a restaurant or buffet car it became a long distance express, a sleeping car for an overnight train, a TPO for a postal express , etc. I think that was more about  economising on the cost of coaches than squeezing a quart into a Whisky glass but it made sense.  

 

It is fairly easy to have a portion of an express which has been detached at some other point and worked through to a lesser destination to justify short trains of more prestige carriages.

 

Looking for a real place where such things happened is not really the same sort of layout project as building a Minories, which by its very nature is going to be fictional.

 

The way I tend to work is to take real trains and formations and transpose them into my fictional settings. So knowing that there really was a 3 coach portion detached from a Pullman train in West Yorkshire, which was hauled by a tank loco, I would invent a portion of the nearest available Pullman train and run it into my Minories. If it happened in only one real place, then I can justify it in my fictional world.

 

If you want 5 modern or very long main line bogie carriages and you want a platform that will take your 5 vehicles with a decent sized loco at each end, you really need a platform of nearly 7ft in length in 4mm scale.  I did build a Minories inspired layout with that length, which actually did handle trains of 8 shorter bogie carriages (set in the pre-grouping era) and with a fiddle yard to suit but visually it just wasn't very balanced and didn't really please my eye as much as the shorter, better balanced version. It was rather too long and thin in the way it looked. That doesn't mean somebody else shouldn't do one. It was 20ft length in total. 8ft for the buildings and platforms, 4ft throat and an 8ft fiddle yard.

 

I think I have mentioned it before but the longest train on Buckingham, the main Marylebone Express set, complete with Buffet Car, is 5 bogie carriages long and with a big 4-6-0 on the front is exactly 4ft 3ins long. It is a scale model of a typical GCR express of the pre WW1 period and it is manageable in an 8ft Minories layout.

 

There will always be limits and restrictions on train lengths on a short layout and you have a choice to live with them or to build a bigger layout!  

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Of course, you can simply use carriages that are outrageously sub-scale in length.

 

The train now departing from two different termini has carriages about  13.5” long, in 0, and it still looks like a train to me.

 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Zomboid]

9 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

Very suitable I would have thought. Although I might struggle to find a reason to bring out my collection of GCR,GNR and Midland stock if I adopted one of those! I do have enough LNWR stock to do the Cambridge station but it is all in use on "Narrow Road".

I've mentioned my idea of a joint LSWR/ GCR terminus in Oxford. No reason why it couldn't be just one of those...

 

It's actually basically the premise of Buckingham isn't it? The BLT can be in Woodstock or somewhere out that way and there you go, just change the nameboards and it's job done.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, Zomboid said:

I've mentioned my idea of a joint LSWR/ GCR terminus in Oxford. No reason why it couldn't be just one of those...

 

It's actually basically the premise of Buckingham isn't it? The BLT can be in Woodstock or somewhere out that way and there you go, just change the nameboards and it's job done.

Oxford's not a bad location for might have been or once were termini. The Met planned an extension to the Brill Branch with a terminus in St. Clements on the other side of Magdalen Bridge (they got as far as having an address for it) , that would have likely been Met/GC joint and at least one of Peter Denny's timetables included a daily Buckingham- Oxford service. The GWR branch from Didcot to Oxford originally had its terminus just to the west of Folly Bridge. Had the line north to Banbury and Worcester that caused its replacement by the current through station been forced even further west by the University, it might have remained there as a reversing terminus rather like Bath Green Park (or possibly like Tours or Orleans with some trains passing to an out of town station-Botley perhaps- with a shuttle connection and others terminating).      

[Zomboid]

6 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Oxford's not a bad location for might have been or once were termini

There's the actual LNWR one to use as inspiration too of course.

I never knew about the Folly Bridge station (or Grandpont as it seems to have been known), but keeping it is an interesting might have been scenario.