Theory of General Minories

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

If you have experience of such an arrangement, can you pass on any tips and does it work well in actual use?

 

I have about 6 different ideas floating around in my head for fiddle yard designs and anything that helps me settle on one will be appreciated!

Sorry Tony, it was just a slightly flippant comment on the lift-out tray that could be turned end for end, in other words the Denny fiddle yard.

[t-b-g]

12 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Sorry Tony, it was just a slightly flippant comment on the lift-out tray that could be turned end for end, in other words the Denny fiddle yard.

 

Of all people, I should have thought of that one!

 

 

[Pacific231G]

53 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Sorry Tony, it was just a slightly flippant comment on the lift-out tray that could be turned end for end, in other words the Denny fiddle yard.

Isn't that the one Peter Denny designed to enable Leighton Buzzard Mk 1 to be used as a stand alone portable exhibition layout but never actually built? (Building Leighton Buzzard pt 3 Finishing Touches RM July 1960)  I know he used lift-out trays but weren't they always mounted on a turntable?

[St Enodoc]

9 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Isn't that the one Peter Denny designed to enable Leighton Buzzard Mk 1 to be used as a stand alone portable exhibition layout but never actually built? (Building Leighton Buzzard pt 3 Finishing Touches RM July 1960)  I know he used lift-out trays but weren't they always mounted on a turntable?

The term Denny Fiddle Yard was coined by CJF and referred specifically to the lift-out tray type. It was discussed last year elsewhere on RMweb:

 

Tony commented that Peter Denny only used them in turntable form himself.

Edited June 4, 2020 by St Enodoc

[t-b-g]

53 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

The term Denny Fiddle Yard was coined by CJF and referred specifically to the lift-out tray type. It was discussed last year elsewhere on RMweb:

 

Tony commented that Peter Denny only used them in turntable form himself.

 

I had queried whether the lift out tray was ever built as I had only seen other versions of the fiddle yard but an eagle eyed Denny enthusiast drew my attention to a description of the lift out tray being used in the July 1951 Model Railway Constructor. The layout was, at this time, fully portable and set up and taken down each time it was run. A single sentence refers to avoiding the need to put locos and stock on by having the "marshalling yard" (No fiddle yard yet!) on a tray that was removed at the end of a running session with all the trains kept on it. Whether it was turned to reverse the trains or not isn't mentioned.

Edited June 4, 2020 by t-b-g

[Pacific231G]

4 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

I had queried whether the lift out tray was ever built as I had only seen other versions of the fiddle yard but an eagle eyed Denny enthusiast drew my attention to a description of the lift out tray being used in the July 1951 Model Railway Constructor. The layout was, at this time, fully portable and set up and taken down each time it was run. A single sentence refers to avoiding the need to put locos and stock on by having the "marshalling yard" (No fiddle yard yet!) on a tray that was removed at the end of a running session with all the trains kept on it. Whether it was turned to reverse the trains or not isn't mentioned.

Hi Tony

I've just been through those 1951 articles and the relevant section in the Wild Swan book and there is an apparent anomaly. He describes the portable tray for the rolling stock and that appears in a diagram (diagram 15 on p44 of Wild Swan) in the July 1951 MRC article, but the trackplan in the August 1951 MRC ( p 42 in Wild Swan) clearly shows a complete "storage sidings or marshalling yard" ending in a turntable and hidden under the hill behind Tingewick which can be clearly seen in Michale Longridge's two photos of Tingewick on p49. There's also a reference in the electrical description to the lights for the marshalling yard under the hill behind Tingewick "which would otherwise have been in semi-darkness". There's no indication whether the tray included the turntable or simply fitted between the marshalling yard points and the turntable. In either event it looks as though it was brought in and out with the stock as part of the erection and strike down of the layout rather than being used operationally during a session. The turntable storage sidings came after that but there's a rather terrifying description of using it at home "In order to turn the tray round when the unit was up against the wall in the passage-way, it was necessary to lift the tray off its pivot, rest one end on the next section, raise the four guides, change hands and replace the other way round." all with most of his hand made stock on it. 

 

Going back to my current experiments with Minories, the points used and Casterbridge North, What would you estimate to have been the typical radius (or crossing angle) of Peter Denny's points on Buckingham? I know they varied and were tailored to specific situations with some surprisingly sharp but he's rather vague about any actual dimensions in his various writings.

The crossing angle generally defines the maximum length and therfore the minimum radius of a turnout though they can be shortened as Peco has done with its small radius point using the same 12 degree crossing (tan 0.2 or #5) as the three foot radius medium turnout but their large radius points had to use a shallower frog angle and curve beyond the crossing to get to tghe same diveregence angle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Pacific231G

[t-b-g]

8 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Hi Tony

I've just been through those 1951 articles and the relevant section in the Wild Swan book and there is an apparent anomaly. He describes the portable tray for the rolling stock and that appears in a diagram (diagram 15 on p44 of Wild Swan) in the July 1951 MRC article, but the trackplan in the August 1951 MRC ( p 42 in Wild Swan) clearly shows a complete "storage sidings or marshalling yard" ending in a turntable and hidden under the hill behind Tingewick which can be clearly seen in Michale Longridge's two photos of Tingewick on p49. There's also a reference in the electrical description to the lights for the marshalling yard under the hill behind Tingewick "which would otherwise have been in semi-darkness". There's no indication whether the tray included the turntable or simply fitted between the marshalling yard points and the turntable. In either event it looks as though it was brought in and out with the stock as part of the erection and strike down of the layout rather than being used operationally during a session. The turntable storage sidings came after that but there's a rather terrifying description of using it at home "In order to turn the tray round when the unit was up against the wall in the passage-way, it was necessary to lift the tray off its pivot, rest one end on the next section, raise the four guides, change hands and replace the other way round." all with most of his hand made stock on it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buckingham was in a great stage of change around that time. There were several different versions in a short period of time and not all of them were fully written up. I have found several conflicting dates mentioned in articles and even the Wild Swan books that simply cannot be all correct. The rebuilding dates for Buckingham and Leighton Buzzard are an example. If the dates given are correct, the station building now at LB was there before Buckingham was rebuilt. I have not worked out how the dates could overlap for it to be at the old Buckingham and the new Leighton Buzzard at the same time.

 

Picking the bones out of the history of the layout is almost a hobby in itself and the detective work tracking down mentions of alterations and finding dates is good fun.

 

The lift out tray may only have existed for a few months and with the time lag from an article being written to being published may mean that both versions existed but maybe only for a short while.

[Ian_H]

Does anybody have a copy of the Minories track plan?

[t-b-g]

24 minutes ago, Ian_H said:

Does anybody have a copy of the Minories track plan?

 

If you go to the first page of the thread, there are links to the original plan plus a few slight variations.

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, Ian_H said:

Does anybody have a copy of the Minories track plan?

The original article and plans are still Railway Modeller's copyright but I've PMd them to you which is legit.

The Link on the first page of this threadto the late Carl Arendt's site , now being kept in being by others, takes you to a home page but the main reference to Minories  is

https://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-61a-may-2007/

I wouldn't bother though as it's a shortish reference in my own article  on the history of Microlayouts in Britain and I can certainly improve now on what I wrote about Minories then.

This is the basic Minories plan (without the double curve through the platforms)  and its straight crossover equivalent. Both throats are just the length of four points but you should be able to see that instead of at least half the routes through it involving an immediate S bend with consequent buffer locking and coaches wildly out of alignment (even with three foot radius points) Cyril Freezer's ingenious arrangement of the four points that form the crossovers avoids that for all but one route. Nobody has ever been able to better it for an arrangement built up from simple points (no single or double slips) and boy have we all tried !

Edited June 4, 2020 by Pacific231G

[Dagworth]

The one thing that is missing in the published versions is trap points on the loco spur and siding. If they were added would it still count as Minories?

 

Andi

[Pacific231G]

22 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

The one thing that is missing in the published versions is trap points on the loco spur and siding. If they were added would it still count as Minories?

 

Andi

I'd say definitely yes as it's the arrangenment of the two crossovers that makes it Minories. I don't think even turning the loco spur into a parcels siding and adding a carriage siding changes that.

(My photo of Brian Thomas' O gauge "Newford" at Watford Fine Scale in 2003 when I spent several happy hours operating it) 

 

 

[JohnR]

On 04/06/2020 at 00:26, RJS1977 said:

 

Weren't many of Cyril's earlier plans designed for Triang track?

 

The original Minories, of course, was designed for TT in 1957, using Triang TT track. While I think that the "scaled up" versions for OO just literally altered the scale lengths, rather than were re-drawn for the then current pointwork in OO/HO.

 

Earlier in the thread, I think someone showed a version that Cyril redrew in the 80s (for Model Railways?) which included various other components. 

[Keith Addenbrooke]

On 02/06/2020 at 23:15, roythebus said:

 

His layout with loads of loops and a central terminus I tried to build about 15 years ago. That didn't work because the radii were far too sharp and the pointwork didn't fit, no matter how i tried. the gradients were horrendous as well. The concept was goo, but not in such a small space.

 

One of his 6x4 starter plans was built in the early 1960 and just about worked. Cyril admitted himself that a lot of his plans were unbuildable or unworkable. I suspect they were designed to maximise Peco's profits by including as many points in as small a space as possible. 

A phrase I’ve come across in this respect refers to the Layout Designer’s “Optimistic Pencil.”  I know I’ve worn my way through many packets of them over the years.
 

With the ‘classic’ Minories I guess it shouldn’t be such a problem (clearances for the short engine stabling siding are perhaps the tightest pinch)?

[t-b-g]

9 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

The original article and plans are still Railway Modeller's copyright but I've PMd them to you which is legit.

The Link on the first page of this threadto the late Carl Arendt's site , now being kept in being by others, takes you to a home page but the main reference to Minories  is

https://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-61a-may-2007/

I wouldn't bother though as it's a shortish reference in my own article  on the history of Microlayouts in Britain and I can certainly improve now on what I wrote about Minories then.

This is the basic Minories plan (without the double curve through the platforms)  and its straight crossover equivalent. Both throats are just the length of four points but you should be able to see that instead of at least half the routes through it involving an immediate S bend with consequent buffer locking and coaches wildly out of alignment (even with three foot radius points) Cyril Freezer's ingenious arrangement of the four points that form the crossovers avoids that for all but one route. Nobody has ever been able to better it for an arrangement built up from simple points (no single or double slips) and boy have we all tried !

 

Seeing your plans like that, it makes me think back to when I designed Mansfield Market Place and I can see now how I could have improved it! The small loop gives room for two points within the loop without extending the length. So where the loco spur point is could have been my parcels dock and the loco spur could have gone off from that bit of track behind it. I could still have my centre carriage road by moving the lower platform to the outside. Drat! Does that mean I have to build another one!

 

I have often wondered if CJF got his ideas about avoiding reverse curves from Peter Denny. He was a master at arranging a station throat so that buffer locking is minimised. He was building crossovers like that very early in the Buckingham story and Cyril would have been very familiar with them. He even built a scissors crossover on a curve because that gives no reverse curves, just continuous curves of various radii. The very first version of Buckingham, from 1948, has several examples in the throat and also at Stony Stratford for the goods yard.  

Edited June 5, 2020 by t-b-g
To add content

[Harlequin]

50 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

The original Minories, of course, was designed for TT in 1957, using Triang TT track. While I think that the "scaled up" versions for OO just literally altered the scale lengths, rather than were re-drawn for the then current pointwork in OO/HO.

 

Earlier in the thread, I think someone showed a version that Cyril redrew in the 80s (for Model Railways?) which included various other components. 

 

Yes, in the second edition of 60 Plans for Small Railways the axonometric drawing shows two scale bars alongside it, one for TT-3 and one for OO. The TT-3 scale indicates the layout is 5ft long and the OO scale indicates 6ft 8in by only 9in! In this book it is simply referred to as "Plan 49s" - not yet referred to as Minories.

 

In 60 Plans for Small Locations (first published in 1989, my edition from 1996) it has become Plan SP35 and has the Minories name. A new axonometric drawing shows it as 7ft by 1ft and the loco spur is around 12in long. It quotes a minimum radius of 3ft but I take that with a huge pinch of salt because I know it's not possible using Streamline parts - the point ladder simply won't fit into 3ft 6in.

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by Harlequin

[t-b-g]

7 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

 

Yes, in the second edition of 60 Plans for Small Railways the axonometric drawing shows two scale bars alongside it, one for TT-3 and one for OO. The TT-3 scale indicate the layout is 5ft long and the OO scale indicates 6ft 8in by 9in! In this book it is simply referred to as "Plan 49s" - not yet referred to as Minories.

 

In 60 Plans for Small Locations (1996) it has become Plan SP35 and has the Minories name. A new axonometric drawing shows it as 7ft by 1ft and the loco spur is around 12in long. It quotes a minimum radius of 3ft but I take that with a huge pinch of salt because I know it's not possible using Streamline parts - the point ladder simply won't fit into 3ft 6in.

 

 

You have puzzled me there. The Peco Medium Radius point, which is a nominal 3ft radius, is 219mm long. The station throat is 4 points long. I am struggling to see why it wouldn't fit on a 3ft 6ins board.

Edited June 5, 2020 by t-b-g
Spelling

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

You have puzzled me there. The Peco Medium Radius point, which is a nominal 3ft radius, is 219mm long. The station throat is 4 points long. I am struggling to see why it wouldn't fit on a 3ft 6ins board.

 

If one nibbles away at the heel end to reduce the track centres to a more prototypical 45 mm, the total length of the pair of crossovers is just over 2 ft 8 in (measuring over the full length of the point units, not tiebar-to-tiebar). That leaves 10 in of plain track, enough for an extra medium radius point although I think it would be put to better use between the two crossovers, representing the space needed for the facing point locking bars and also eliminating the reverse curve for arrivals into platform 1.

[Harlequin]

17 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

 

You have puzzled me there. The Peco Medium Radius point, which is a nominal 3ft radius, is 219mm long. The station throat is 4 points long. I am struggling to see why it wouldn't fit on a 3ft 6ins board.

 

The version of Minories in 60 Plans for Small Locations has the kick-back "parcels siding" or "storage road" and so needs 5 turnouts, and yet is quoted as Minimum radius 3ft.

 

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

With regard to train lengths, I don't think anyone has mentioned this, (I have been trying to keep up, especially when serial track doodler Gee is involved!), But in the period when CJF designed minories there weren't many, if any at all, ,"long" coaches available rtr. Coaches of the period would be pre/post grouping short stock, and even the readily available BR Mk1's were shorties, so he was getting more of his quart into a pint pot.

 

Mike.

[RJS1977]

30 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

 

The version of Minories in 60 Plans for Small Locations has the kick-back "parcels siding" or "storage road" and so needs 5 turnouts, and yet is quoted as Minimum radius 3ft.

 

 

Just playing in SCARM, five medium radius points won't quite fit into 3'6", but the difference is less than half an inch. 

 

Certainly these days with Xuron track cutters, it wouldn't be impossible to trim the points slightly to make them fit.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, RJS1977 said:

 

Just playing in SCARM, five medium radius points won't quite fit into 3'6", but the difference is less than half an inch. 

 

Certainly these days with Xuron track cutters, it wouldn't be impossible to trim the points slightly to make them fit.

 

My point (so to speak) is that by reducing the track centres, one gains (or loses, depending on one's point of view) 28 mm per crossover.

[St Enodoc]

56 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

 

Yes, in the second edition of 60 Plans for Small Railways the axonometric drawing shows two scale bars alongside it, one for TT-3 and one for OO. The TT-3 scale indicates the layout is 5ft long and the OO scale indicates 6ft 8in by only 9in! In this book it is simply referred to as "Plan 49s" - not yet referred to as Minories.

 

In 60 Plans for Small Locations (first published in 1989, my edition from 1996) it has become Plan SP35 and has the Minories name. A new axonometric drawing shows it as 7ft by 1ft and the loco spur is around 12in long. It quotes a minimum radius of 3ft but I take that with a huge pinch of salt because I know it's not possible using Streamline parts - the point ladder simply won't fit into 3ft 6in.

 

Phil, 49s and 50s in the second edition are identical to 51 and 52 in the first. In the third edition the plan is named as Minories and both the earlier versions are shown as S53 and S54. By the 4th edition the original (but redrawn in what CJF calls a "Quasi-isometric" projection) is SP35 and the new version with the kick-back to the parcels area is SP36. SP37 incorporates Minories in an 8ft x 5ft out-and-back layout with a large loco depot within the reverse loop.

[Ian_H]

11 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

The original article and plans are still Railway Modeller's copyright but I've PMd them to you which is legit.

 

Hi David, thank you for the PM. The scan has a lot of information, not just the track plan but also the design infrastructure, an "How to" it you want which is very interesting. The design instantly made me think of "The Laird's - Bradfield Gloucester Square" albeit at double the length.

 

Once again thanks for the scan

Ian

Edited June 5, 2020 by Ian_H
Spelling problems due to a dyslexic keyboard!

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

One thing I'm not clear about is why?  Why have two reverse curves when the straight run in is more prototypical, less prone to buffer locking and not any longer?

 

Is it just the aesthetic appeal?  I find it a bit contrived, and I have a dislike of the main route being through the diverging route of a turnout, but I'm funny that way