Jump to content
 

Theory of General Minories


Mike W2
 Share

Recommended Posts

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I've just remembered another terminus with Seironim's track plan: Sheerness on Sea.

 

Sheerness actually had an even more interesting earlier terminus, about which relatively little seems to be recorded and, for about twenty years I think, the new terminus was a branch from the old one, so the old one would make a great model, with all that "in and out". The 1896 25" OS shows the strange arrangement, and the 1931 25" OS shows the track plan with centre-release road with three-way point at the new station, as I remember it from the 1970s.

 

The old station is here http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/s/sheerness_dockyard/

 

It had a positively insane track plan, and what isn't mentioned in that write-up is that the overall roof was destroyed during WW1 when a battleship blew-up  nearby  https://www.historicmedway.co.uk/localdisasters/hms_bulwark.htm . 

 

It gets better actually. Old timetables suggest that trains from Sittingbourne and beyond ran into the Dockyard station and then reversed out to run the little bit to Sheerness on Sea. Certainly the 1887 and 1910 Bradshaws have them doing that. (As an aside the 1887 Bradshaw decided to squeeze in the Isle of Man railways on a bit of space in the middle of the LDCR stuff ..... ) The 1921 Bradshaw however still lists the Dockyard station but it has no trains going to it. Whether that was because of the roof having been blown off or simply because the craziness of this operation finally got through to HQ is something I don't know.

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

*(Grand Vitesse was an interesting name for a London goods depot because Grand Vitesse (GV)  was the official French designation for the type of fast priority goods the Ewer St. depot handled including fruit and veg. for Covent Garden and Borough Markets along with wine, silks and even bullion as opposed to Petit Vitesse (PV)  which included all the coal, timber, stone and everything else that trundled around on ordinary goods trains at normal shipping rates)    

 

Might have something to with the fact that to the South Eastern (and later SECR) their most glamorous destination out of Charing Cross was Paris and the top link trains were always the Dover and Folkestone Boat Trains. Ordinary trundling goods would go to Bricklayers Arms, but the top link goods may well have come from France.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, whart57 said:

1921 Bradshaw however still lists the Dockyard station but it has no trains going to it. Whether that was because of the roof having been blown off or simply because the craziness of this operation finally got through to HQ is something I don't know.


The service to dockyard was suspended for the war because the station was right where hoods went in and out of the military area. It never reopened.

  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 20/06/2020 at 21:02, Nearholmer said:

I've just remembered another terminus with Seironim's track plan: Sheerness on Sea.

 

Sheerness actually had an even more interesting earlier terminus, about which relatively little seems to be recorded and, for about twenty years I think, the new terminus was a branch from the old one, so the old one would make a great model, with all that "in and out". The 1896 25" OS shows the strange arrangement, and the 1931 25" OS shows the track plan with centre-release road with three-way point at the new station, as I remember it from the 1970s.

 

The old station is here http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/s/sheerness_dockyard/

 

It had a positively insane track plan, and what isn't mentioned in that write-up is that the overall roof was destroyed during WW1 when a battleship blew-up  nearby  https://www.historicmedway.co.uk/localdisasters/hms_bulwark.htm . 

The arrangement at the terminus end looks insane but you weren't allowed to end a running (passenger) line with a void nor, at a terminus, to bring multiple platform roads down to a single line. So, if a turntable release was shared by two platforms each road had to have its own set of buffer stops. The points would normally be straight ahead and only reversed for the loco  to access the turntable (Would points an turntable have been interlocked?)  You can also see two buffer stops beyond the turntable pit though it's odd that they'd removed the turntable but not the associated points. The same arrangement could be found at Ramsgate Beach though there the turntable was used by two platform tracks and two release/storage roads but only the platform roads needed their own buffers. This wouldn''t apply at somewhere like Bembridge because the turntable could normally be locked in position for the single running line.  

 

This is the same reason why the traverser between platforms 1&2  at Birmingham Moor St. had three sets of rails. Whatever position they were in (obviously not when they were moving)  there would still be a continuous set of rails to the buffer stops beyond. The traverser for platform 3 also had three sets of rails but it served platform 3 and two other tracks. The third track (from the goods shed) could have been left exposed but not the platform track

 

Two of the three traversers at Bastille serving pairs of platforms so 2-3 & 4-5 also had the same three sets of rails as Moor St. but the third, between platform 1 and its releasing road 1 bis, only had two as it wasn't a problem for the releasing road to be left exposed and there was a solid structural wall beyond 1bis

 

I have no idea how the GWR got away with a single sector plate between two of the bay platforms 3&4 at Birmingham Snow Hill (Just by being the GWR?) .

Edited by Pacific231G
  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

it's odd that they'd removed the turntable but not the associated points


I read the photo as showing a fan-table in situ, rather than the remnants of a turntable.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

The turntable is, I believe, still in situ in the photo of Sheerness. You can see a pivot casting and the lines on the turntable lined up with the crossing nose of the part point for the entry exit on the LH side. What looks like a pit is the platform wall.

 

If you zoom in, you will see what I mean.

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
9 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

I don't know how aware Cyril Freezer would have  was aware of Ewer Street itself.

He certainly was. His layout plan book for PSL has a terminus inspired by Charing Cross, called Hungerford Bridge, and a small loco depot called Basin Street, inspired by Ewer Street.

  • Like 2
  • Agree 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 21/06/2020 at 10:56, Nearholmer said:


I’m not totally sure I’ve got the name right, but:

 

1E833D17-C963-4394-B8F8-34F7C0EECCE4.jpeg.5a4b3607ce1627d747e3f169ace2604a.jpeg

 

It’s better than a sector plate, because the weight of the loco is balanced across the pivot.

 

Ive seen one in Spain, where the mid-C19th railways were engineered by Brits, and I think that some of the UK examples that we think of as small turntables were actually like this, with limited arc of movement. Vent or and Bembridge original versions?

Hi Kevin

Looking at a larger version of that photo in an ebay description I'm pretty certain that you're right.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xskAAOSwv9hW1vpJ/s-l1600.jpg

You can see the pivot and also the breaks in the rails before the end of platform buffer stops. This is a fascinating object that I'd simply never heard of before so thanks . One detail, the buffer stops at the ends of the platform roads carry red lamps as required on passenger lines. Those beyond the  fan table didn't so, as far as the BoT was concerned if not in practice,  the points would have to be set straight for an arriving train even if the loco were going on to use the table.

 

I've also found a photo of the sector plate at Snow Hill

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/birmingham-snowhill/structures/gwrbsh1679.jpg

and a diagram

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrbsh1680.htm

though the link to the GW Magazine article seems to be dead.

Like the traversers at Moor St. it had three sets of rails so there was always  continuity to the buffers. It doesn't explain how they got round the normal rule aboutrunning lines at a terminus with multiple platforms  not converging.  That rule didn't apply elsewhere. 

 

  • Like 2
  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

Bit of a Super-Minories this, but as a bit of fun with Anyrail I've drawn out the throat to St Pauls (aka Blackfriars). Like the present day Blackfriars, a lot of it is on a bridge over the Thames, only the platforms were over terra firma. I've simplified it a bit by leaving out the two through platforms as well as the through lines to Ludgate Hill and Moorgate.

 

622040917_StPauls.jpg.d8bd2254d4cf760a94b4197e291e10a6.jpg

 

Squares are 50cm

Edited by whart57
  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

"Error - The specified model could not be loaded"!

 

I'm fascinated by the Sheerness "fan-table", but not sure that the balance issue is fully sorted, as by my estimation the centre of rotation is only about a 1/4 - 1/3 long the table and more-or-less in line with the running line buffer stops - but it might depend on which way round the tank loco is running "Chimney-first or Bunker-first"?

 

Regards

Chris H

Link to post
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Metropolitan H said:

"Error - The specified model could not be loaded"!

 

I'm fascinated by the Sheerness "fan-table", but not sure that the balance issue is fully sorted, as by my estimation the centre of rotation is only about a 1/4 - 1/3 long the table and more-or-less in line with the running line buffer stops - but it might depend on which way round the tank loco is running "Chimney-first or Bunker-first"?

 

Regards

Chris H

Hi Chris

It occurs to me that there might have been a bit of extra length beyond the balance point to allow for slight overruns. It would be interesting to know the construction of this device. I'm guessing that each end ran on an arc of rails much like a turntable as that seems to have been the norm for sector plates though (as at Snow Hill) they often had more than one support rail presumably to allow for the full weight resting on them with none on the pivot. Actually, does anyone know how much (if any) of the weight on a normal locomotive turntable is supported by the central bearing and how much by the circular rails.

The largest rail mounted turntable I know is the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank and I think the entire weight of the dish itself and its support towers is supported by the circular rails.  

Edited by Pacific231G
  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Actually, does anyone know how much (if any) of the weight on a normal locomotive turntable is supported by the central bearing and how much by the circular rails.

 
Good question. My gut says that the answer ought to be little or none.

 

I’ve not got a locomotive turntable catalogue, but have about six that contain a lot of detail of wagon turntables, and only in the very lightest is any load taken at the centre (through balls in a race-track), all the rest have various forms of balls, rollers, or wheels further out, including in most cases at the perimeter. Heavy duty lazy-Susan arrangements.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Thanks 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
59 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 
Good question. My gut says that the answer ought to be little or none.

 

I’ve not got a locomotive turntable catalogue, but have about six that contain a lot of detail of wagon turntables, and only in the very lightest is any load taken at the centre (through balls in a race-track), all the rest have various forms of balls, rollers, or wheels further out, including in most cases at the perimeter. Heavy duty lazy-Susan arrangements.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

The largest rail mounted turntable I know is the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank and I think the entire weight of the dish itself and its support towers is supported by the circular rails.  


For some strange reason the first thing I thought of when I read this was also Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope.  I think it does have a central pivot so may not need to carry all the weight through the perimeter rails.  I wouldn’t know the physics / maths / mechanics behind this - but I guess they would!

 

[NB: One for the “not Minories” pile.]

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

I was once told that  turntables for locos were designed so that the outer ends actually "floated" in the air (only by an inch or two), when at rest, rather than the ends resting on the wheels. The wheels at the end only took some weight as the loco passed on and off the table when the weight of the loco pushed them down. The end wheels only came into play if a loco was slightly out of balance. If it was a manual turntable, not having the loco balanced and relying on the outer wheels could make it very hard work to get moving.

  • Like 1
  • Agree 3
  • Informative/Useful 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 23/06/2020 at 14:34, Keith Addenbrooke said:

 


For some strange reason the first thing I thought of when I read this was also Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope.  I think it does have a central pivot so may not need to carry all the weight through the perimeter rails.  I wouldn’t know the physics / maths / mechanics behind this - but I guess they would!

 

[NB: One for the “not Minories” pile.]

:offtopic:

Looking at the design, the weight of the dish appears to be born by the two towers though the elevation (azimuth?) drive seems to be in the structure sitting over the pivot point. Looking at some of the photos I think the central pivot, which would at least be carrying the weight of that azimuth drive,   is a very small radius circle of rails with four wheels in a cruciform formation. The  girder between the two towers doesn't look asif it would take a large part of the total weight.

In any case it looks as though this is a totally different set up from a locomotive turntable- interesting nonetheless.

Edited by Pacific231G
clarity
  • Informative/Useful 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Nile said:

An answer here:

http://www.frht.org.uk/Ferryhill Turntable Load Test Summary-March2019.pdf

 

extract:

"If the locomotive is perfectly balanced there is very little weight on any of the wheels as most of it is on the centre bearing."

 

Hi Nile

 I can see that working for a manually operated turntable that's simply pushed round but most larger turntables and those at busier depots also needed a drive mechanism. manually cranked handles, pneumatic (vacuum or air) or electric drive acting on the outer wheels at one or both ends. These would have to carry enough weight to provide adhesion for the wheels to drive the table round and would need to do so even when the table was unladen. They'd also have to be strong enough to take much larger loads, both a  lot of the weight and, for steam locos, their pounding loads as they were being driven on or off the table.

Going a bit off-topic for the general theory of Minories but I hope interesting,

there's a good account of the different types by the electrical engineer Jan Ford in her blog here

https://janfordsworld.blogspot.com/2015/09/railway-turntables.html

 

I couldn't actually find a lot more detailed UK information on turntable design that wasn't behind a paywall but I did find this

https://core.ac.uk/reader/29155274

Should you be moved to design your own turntable on sound engineering principles rather than just trying to copy an existing one. Fred Drinkwater Yeaton's thesis for his 1914 Professional Civil Engineering Degree at the University of illlinois will provide all the information you could possibly need, from proper drainage of the well and the metals to be used in the central bearing to the bending moments and shearing forces your turntable will need to handle.

He was clearly already a very experienced railroad engineer (as in professional engineer not engine driver!) so it's actually a very interesting read.  and he does say that very little work had actually been done on turntable design.

 

911070991_Yeatonturntableintro.jpg.147798ee45f3ac82cc92eba60238df05.jpg

 

 

 

Edited by Pacific231G
  • Like 2
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

During some current building works, I have been stripping out some shelving. Well, it's been used as shelving but is really an L-shaped plastic foam product for fascia boards on buildings.

 

It takes screws very well and no doubt glues well although I will need to experiment as to which glues/solvents work well with it. There is a foam core with a smooth plastic (uPVC???) coating. It is very light but reasonably rigid.

 

So how does this relate to Minories?

 

It comes in rather narrow widths, max about 9". So I am thinking of building a Minories type layout in N to utilise the stock that I was accumulating for Dewsbury before I decided that should be a 4mm project.

 

It will be Minories on a viaduct with a 9" base and probably a 7" wide upper level. The offcuts to hand are, conveniently, 4' long so this will be quite a big Minories (8' in N) with platforms capable of 8 carriage trains. 

  • Like 9
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

I realise there's not much to be added, so I'm only submitting these as an Appendix for reference, not a conversation starter:

 

Leafing through a couple of books on my shelf earlier, I came across two designs of relevance.  The first is a later CJF drawing from his 1993 PSL book "Model Railway Operation" which I have redrawn in Anyrail.  It shows an extended Minories in a form I've not seen elsewhere (apologies if I've missed it and it has been covered). 

 

This one uses a more generous 8'6" x 18", but I was more interested in how CJF himself enhanced the Goods facilities with a sector plate and double track kickback goods shed (which would also be a view blocker at the tunnel):

 

(Sorry, photos no longer available)

 

Platforms are longer and wider, but the Station building is now shown as added to the rear of the boards, not at high level (the straight engine siding has been seen before).

 

The second drawing is not a Minories, but caught my attention because it requires the same 7' length, showing once again just how effective Minories is in the space.  By itself it's not a sophisticated design, but I quote it for the source, as it's from no lesser volume than Norman Simmons "Railway Modelling (Eighth Ed. 1998)", seen as a 'go to' reference by many of my age:

 

(Sorry, photos no longer available)

 

Simmons used this diagram in explaining how to design a branch terminus, and for showing how much space it takes up (as noted throughout this thread).  Fiddle Yard to the right.

Edited by Keith Addenbrooke
Edited for text only as photo no longer available
  • Like 3
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 12/08/2012 at 16:28, AngusDe said:

I personally have no problem with the bottom platform being no more than a platform edge, as it helps protect stock from being knocked off the layout when the track is so close to the edge, but many folk would prefer a real rather than a imaginary platform!

 

Horsham Station has a similar arrangement on platform One to stop the unobservant from getting off onto the the wrong side of the train and dropping onto the conductor rail or the narrow parapet with the archtypal Exmouth Concrete wall topper...

 

So might it be feasible to form the edge of the baseboard facia as the security ledge for the rolling stock?

 

It needs to be more robust than a bit of plasticard.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 28/06/2020 at 19:41, Sturminster_Newton said:

 

Horsham Station has a similar arrangement on platform One to stop the unobservant from getting off onto the the wrong side of the train and dropping onto the conductor rail or the narrow parapet with the archtypal Exmouth Concrete wall topper...

 

 

 

But there isn't a similar thing on platform Four, which is where you'd expect to find it given that platforms three and four are both used for trains from London and when there is disruption the other one from the one normally used is pressed into service. Platform One is only used for services from Dorking and Epsom so regular travellers would know that.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...