C J Freezer's own layout

[St Enodoc]

I have too, scaling them for 'N' - the result is that the 'N is half of OO' adage is completely incorrect when it comes to Layout Plans - I've never been able to fit a N plan in less than 2/3rds the area of the equivalent OO plan, the main reason being the point geometry and minimum radii of curves...

And, with regard to operating wells, one's waistline. CJF did indeed point this out many times, as well as the fact that a two-foot wide baseboard is the same in any scale (for reaching across) and that such a board will accommodate - just - a 180 degree curve in N. Layout design is very scale-specific.

[talisman56]

And, with regard to operating wells, one's waistline. CJF did indeed point this out many times, as well as the fact that a two-foot wide baseboard is the same in any scale (for reaching across) and that such a board will accommodate - just - a 180 degree curve in N. Layout design is very scale-specific.

 

When it comes down to the operating well, if it gets too small, arrange for access on three sides and fill the now-smaller hole in the middle with scenery...

[Pacific231G]

Yes there are many reports of such in RMweb and other places in the past. Very strange. Although I suppose they would be fine, in a larger location than drawn.

 

Edit to add.

 

You'd expect it to be a minimum requirement, to be able to build it using the then current Peco catalogue range.

A lot of the earlier plans date from well before Peco offered Streamline when Pecoway points were nominal three foot radius (with similar geometry to the current medium radius points). However, other manufacturers such as Wrenn and GF did offer smaller radius points. If you look for example at the plan for Wilbert Awdry's Ffarquhar, which used Wrenn track, it's just as tight as any of CJF's plans are accused of being,  but obviously everything fitted. 

 

We can hardly condemn Cyril Freezer for not including trap points in his plans because, at the time he was drawing them, almost nobody else did so either. There are no trap points on Peter Denny's Buckingham Branch, Berrow was untrapped and on the original Marthwaite even a stickler for accuracy like David Jenkinson failed to include the one at least he would surely have needed to satisfy the Railway Inspectorate. In fact the only person from that era that I can find who did fit them was Frank Dyer on Borchester. However, it's not true to say that CJF never included them. Quite a few of his plans from the 1950s do show them (though not all  the traps that would have been required) indicated as CP, Among these is the original Minories plan which has a "catch point" protecting the loco road.  These tend not to be the "beginner's" layouts which probably makes sense.

 

Going back to the question of CJF's own layouts; I'm just looking at his Model Railway Manual,  published in 1994 after he left Model Railways. Apart from giving a lot of details with photos of his well equipped home workshops, he uses work on at least two of his own layouts in various stages of construction to illustrate particular points. He also talks quite a lot about the techniques he's personally used for everything from hand built track to low relief buildings and, though there are a couple of pictures of Tregunna and one or two of Dugdale Road, most of what he illustrates with his own work seems to be around a small portable BLT based on a Denny/Walkley type folding baseboard called Brill. The track on this is appears to be Peco Streamline Code 100. This was presumably long after he left Peco's employ so he'd have been under no obligation to use their products. .   

[PatB]

I'm sure I've seen mentions of  Brill (the layout, not the prototype) in articles by CJF in old copies of MR. I'm not sure it was ever comprehensively described in its own right though.

[Pacific231G]

On 29/03/2018 at 12:37, PatB said:

Indeed, but I've been surprised to find the problems, on the plans I've tried, to be less with complex main line junctions but in fitting simple fans of sidings into the space allowed. Point ladders seem to take up more space in SCARM than they did on CJF's drawing board . Mind you, I've had the same problems with a couple of S C Jenkins' offerings too, so CJF wasn't alone in suffering a degree of spatial optimism.

 

Of course, one problem with replicating the very small plans of the era is that sectional track points are now R2 rather than the R1 of earlier eras.

 

Hi Pat

 

I was curious about this so looked at a few of the plans in 60 Plans for Small Layouts more closely. In some of the earlier ones you can make out the mark showing the end of each point, so making it easy to measure the length of say a crossover, while in others a series of points directly connected to one another make it possible to calculate the length of each. The result in those I've looked at,  including Minories, have a consistent length of around seven and a quarter inches which is the same length as a Streamline small radius point so no need to go down to Hornby Dublo or even Setrack.

 

At the time when most of these plans were drawn for RM , Streamline was still in the future but I have a couple of Pecoway fibre based pointsand Peco point templates with a nominal radius of three feet from that era; they are about eight inches long. In those days a nominal three foot radius seems to have been the norm for most modellers building their own track  for 00. However, manufacturers of RTL points such as GF and Peco when the Streamline points appeared do seem to have regarded two foot as the basic radius though in the mid 1950s Wrenn were offering points with fifteen, twenty four and thirty six inch radii.  I suspect that for siding fans a certain amount of trimming was expected but someone building a half-way serious layout would be assumed to know how to do that and wouldn't expect to simply shove rail joiners on each rail and plonk it on the layout. 

 

If you can can point to a specfic plan that seems undoable I'd be interested to look at it.

[PatB]

Hi Pat

 

I was curious about this so looked at a few of the plans in 60 Plans for Small Layouts more closely. In some of the earlier ones you can make out the mark showing the end of each point, so making it easy to measure the length of say a crossover, while in others a series of points directly connected to one another make it possible to calculate the length of each. The result in those I've looked at including Minoroes is a consistent length of between seven and a quarter inches which is the same length as a Streamline small radius point so no need to go down to Hornby Dublo or even Setrack.

 

At the time when most of these plans were drawn for RM , Streamline was still in the future but I have a couple of Pecoway fibre based pointsand Peco point templates with a nominal radius of three feet from that era; they are about eight inches long. In those days a nominal three foot radius seems to have been the norm for most modellers building their own track for 00. However, manufacturers of RTL points seem though to have regarded two foot as the basic radius though in the mid 1950s Wrenn were offering points with fifteen, twenty four and thirty six inch radii. I suspect that for fans of sidings a certain amount of trimming was expected but someone building a half-way serious layout would be assumed to know how to do that and wouldn't expect to simply shove rail joiners on each rail and plonk it on the layout.

 

If you can can point to a specfic plan that seems undoable I'd be interested to look at it.

I've just sent you a Pm with (I hope) a c1970 Plan of the Month attached. It's an exercise in getting a main line into a small space. As noted up thread, most of it can be built with standard small radius Streamline components, even the (relatively) complex tangle at the branch junction. However, that goods yard seems rather optimistic. Yes, trimming might get it all in, but using standard bits (SCARM doesn't seem to offer the facility to cut up points) limits it to two rather truncated roads.

[rockershovel]

Special interest and hobby magazines which include fairly heavy promotion of particular manufacturers, sometimes (but not usually) to the extent of bearing their names on the cover, and content largely produced by a single editor under various names or none, are as old as the genre and continue to the present.

 

No surprises there.

 

The main question is, whether a readable magazine with realistic and/or entertaining content results..

[Devo63]

In CJF's first editorial (Aug-Sept 1950) he talked about the types of modelling he had experienced up until that time. He mentioned starting on a GWR layout a few years previously which was still only half completed.

 

Dave R.

[t-b-g]

Who said there were no trap points on Buckingham?

 

 

To be fair, it is the only one but many of the places where one would be needed have a protection from a second point forming a crossover.

[5050]

Looking at track plans designed and published in the 50' and 60's by some well-known 'names' I have serious doubts that many of them will actually work in practice.  John Ahern's offerings often have points that are far to short (especially crossovers) and there were others who regularly had designs featured in RM that are similar.

 

Regarding the 'Areteare' layout, did Cyril do any work on it or was it all done by others as stated above?

[Pacific231G]

Who said there were no trap points on Buckingham?

 

IMG_20180401_155103.jpg

 

To be fair, it is the only one but many of the places where one would be needed have a protection from a second point forming a crossover.

Hi Tom

I did because I couldn't see a single trap point on any of the photos or plans in any of Peter Denny's articles or books and I did check very carefully; yours is the first photo I've ever seen of this one- do you think he put it there to confound anyone who said "there are no trap points on Buckingham" . I'll now revise that to "there were almost no trap points on Buckingham" (as in "The Earth- mostly harmless)  

 

Using a trap siding or a blind shunting neck did seem to be a common way of avoiding the need for them amongst many modellers and presumably by many if not most railway companies wherever possible- a derailed wagon is going to foul things up a lot more than one that's just hit a buffer stop at very low speed. The one missing trap on the original Marthwaite was in  the exit from the loco shed I think all the other protection was by pointwork. Though there were exceptions such as Frank Dyer and probably others, actual trap points invariably referred to as catch points, seem to have simply never been considered by the overwhelming majority of modellers until fairly recently.

 

I have a far worse dilemma modelling French railways where, although trap points were ocasionally used, the vast majority of sidings, yards and goods only branches that running lines needed to be protected from were fitted with derailers. Building a working derailer would be more than a challenge to my modelling skills. Fortunately they don't seem to have been used on light railways unlike here where I've seen photos of them on the W&L. 

[Pacific231G]

Looking at track plans designed and published in the 50' and 60's by some well-known 'names' I have serious doubts that many of them will actually work in practice.  John Ahern's offerings often have points that are far to short (especially crossovers) and there were others who regularly had designs featured in RM that are similar.

 

 

 

Too short even when your own pointwork looks like this?

 

 

They do work, as you could have seen on Friday and can again on the 17th June and 20th October at Pendon. .

[5050]

I agree with those points but many of his plans were for 'mainline' railway stations.

 

I've got some like that in P4 - but only 0-4-0 industrials use them

[Pacific231G]

I agree with those points but many of his plans were for 'mainline' railway stations.

 

I've got some like that in P4 - but only 0-4-0 industrials use them

Perhaps a case of "The past is a foreign country- they do things differently there", but the point is that, within  those constraints, such plans were not impossible to build even if few of us nowadays would choose to make quite so many compromises.

 

I'm looking at one of Cyril Freezer's designs "Multum in Parvo" from the July 1959 RM (also in the second edition of 60 Plans for Small Railways) described as "possibly the ultimate in 6x4" . It certainly lives up to its name with a double track main line junction station complete with loco shed and goods yard serving a high level branch line terminus and all crammed  into 6x4 with a central operating well. I don't think many serious modellers would contemplate such a plan now with its 18 inch curves (15 inch according to 60 plans) , sharp points and, apart from one corner, pretty well filled with track, but this was no glorifed train set. It provides as much railway operation as possible in the space and it is clear that the design had been worked up properly with maximum train lengths (two coaches or five wagons on the branch), the gradient (1in 25) of the branch and even the correct signalling shown. I'm not sure how many of us would care to operate their layout from a three foot by slightly under two foot operating that involved crawling under the layout but most of use were rather slimmer in the 1950s (the layout was also suggested as a 12ft x 8ft O gauge project and that may have been its real aim)

 

Several people have claimed that many of these plans were pipe dreams that could never have been built in reality, but I think they could, with the materials available then if not with the more true scale products around now.    

[Giggle pin]

Mr Freezer to a small boy looking up was a magnificent person. How could someone design all those layouts? I looked at his books with wide eyes and wonder.

I only occasionally look at model rail (oo) size and play with it coming up to christmas and through the dark month of January. So every now and again i look at his publishings and dream of making a layout that is practicable and simple in operation. I must be the person with more bits of track that have never been laid than anyone.

 

Usually by the time i start playing with the stuff the winter is over and i am playing with live steam again.

 

This year i bought a load of DCC stuff, and again its now in the spare bed room!!

 

Maybe later this year i will make his small shunting puzzle which is L shaped?

 

Happy modelling

[Robin Brasher]

I built a double track N gauge layout with a cross over and two stations inside the loops based on a Peco track plan. In the plan it was 4' x 2' but I found that I needed to build a 4'6" x 2'6" baseboard to fit the track in.

 

It is a clever design which is small enough to fit in the back of my car and provides a lot of entertainment at exhibitions.

 

I am not sure if C.J Freezer designed it but I am sure that he could have made a similar layout based on the plan.

[PatB]

I'm perhaps being uncharitable when I use the term "unbuildable". In some cases it should, perhaps be "unbuildable without access to 15" radius r-t-r points" and in others "unbuildable with unmodified Streamline components". I also haven't SCARMed some of the more ambitious formations such as a curving double Y-junction that appears in Plans for Larger Layouts .

 

I did, however, have the opportunity to compare Huntshire (RotM c1970) with the CJF plan it was based upon. Huntshire was built in a larger area than was shown for the original plan and it still looked pretty tight. That's not to say that the original could not have been built as drawn but I think it would have been quite a squeeze and without much room for error wrt clearances and curve radii. Still loved it as both a plan and a layout though, as I do most of CJF's "busy" designs from the days when operation was at least as important as photorealism.

[Pacific231G]

Mr Freezer to a small boy looking up was a magnificent person. How could someone design all those layouts? I looked at his books with wide eyes and wonder.

I only occasionally look at model rail (oo) size and play with it coming up to christmas and through the dark month of January. So every now and again i look at his publishings and dream of making a layout that is practicable and simple in operation. I must be the person with more bits of track that have never been laid than anyone.

Don't bet on it!! An awful lot of us have both track and stock for the layout we've been just about to built for years.

[The Johnster]

CJF was a seminal influence on modellers of my generation, as was Iain Rice on myself a decade or so later.  These maestros, who have given the hobby so much and had little back, came at it from totally different perspectives.  Freezer is in many ways a hangover from the 50s, his plans attempts to squeeze as much as possible into the limited. space that was, in the 50s and 60s, the result of smaller homes and rooms for middle class families with the sort of disposable income pertinent to the creation of model railways (I am talking in very general terms here, bear with me); it is the same thing that drove the development of TT and then N gauge.  The hobby was still coming to terms with the loss of the big houses that it's participants would have lived in a few decades before, with servants, their own grounds, and such.  The concept was that 'you can have a model railway despite your limited space'.

 

Rice came at it from the opposite viewpoint; if you don't have much room, build a small model of a small prototype and cram as much fine detail cameo as you can in to draw the eye away from the tiny proportions, then present it in a proscenium at eye level to further hide the lack of space.  Both approaches have things to impart to modern modellers, but I would criticise some of Freezer's more complex 8x4s as unbuildable, and Rice's minimalism as requiring too much scratchbuilding for many modellers (not a bad thing in itself but we can't all manage it).  The concept was 'you can have a model railway because of your limited space'.

 

The modern scene shows the influence of both these master craftsmen, and this is as it should be IMHO.  

 

And, also IMHO, Freezer's greatest gift to us was and is the seminal Minories, a work of genius status that can be adapted to so many genres, or expanded into greater things.  There are elements of both men's concepts on Cwmdimbath, but I think I have come down a little more on into the Rice camp; space and minimalism as far as I have been able to manage.  This is not intuitive; I am by nature an operator more than a modeller, but scale length short trains inform my actual practice and I would rather run a pannier and B set with plenty of room for it than try to cram in 3 coach expresses behind pacifics; despite my 50s/60s upbringing I am fundamentally an early 80s modeller, and happy with it.

 

But Freezer is a huge influence on the modern hobby, and I for one am grateful to the way he showed us what might be done even if we didn't have the carpentry to do it!

[LBRJ]

CJF was of his time, and drew plans to give people ideas to maybe go out and do something within the constraints of space/time/money available then.

 

It should not be forgotten that he gave impetus and "encouragement" towards the creation of Heckmondwicke, which showed that P4 was a viable option for mainline running at an exhibition.

 

Most of IARs early writings were in the Model Railways (news) much of it under CJF's editorship, and the Peco finescale thing was brought about when PECO (!) had considered EM track and suddenly P4 appeared...."They cant even decide themselves what they want" or similar was Mr Pritchards comment......

[Jol Wilkinson]

CJF was of his time, and drew plans to give people ideas to maybe go out and do something within the constraints of space/time/money available then.

 

It should not be forgotten that he gave impetus and "encouragement" towards the creation of Heckmondwicke, which showed that P4 was a viable option for mainline running at an exhibition.

 

Most of IARs early writings were in the Model Railways (news) much of it under CJF's editorship, and the Peco finescale thing was brought about when PECO (!) had considered EM track and suddenly P4 appeared...."They cant even decide themselves what they want" or similar was Mr Pritchards comment......

 

Except that they knew they wanted something better than he offered and it has taken until recently for Peco to start producing much more realistic looking track.

[ejstubbs]

they knew they wanted something better than he offered and it has taken until recently for Peco to start producing much more realistic looking track.

 

And yet that "much more realistic looking track" is still 16.5mm gauge.  It also has to be said that in the intervening 50-odd years since Mr Prichard made the alleged remark, he seems to have managed to stay in business despite apparently not offering what 'they' wanted.

[bécasse]

Remember that even 60 plus years ago, Peco made Individualay track components with rail, fibre sleepers and spikes which enabled one to build one's own track which may not have been finescale to P4 standards but still looked good - and the components certainly enabled one to build EM track as well as OO. Don't forget that one of Peco's favourite authors was Peter Denny who worked exclusively in EM.

 

Peco's bits and pieces were readily available in many model shops too.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

When I were but a young lad, I always wondered why people would put catch points (as they were then generally referred to as) on a layout to deliberately derail stock.

I had enough derailments as it was.....  

[kevinlms]

And yet that "much more realistic looking track" is still 16.5mm gauge.  It also has to be said that in the intervening 50-odd years since Mr Prichard made the alleged remark, he seems to have managed to stay in business despite apparently not offering what 'they' wanted.

The whole idea behind Peco track, is that it was something vastly superior, to ANY of the various forms of set track, that was available from toy manufacturers. Tri-ang was a major competitor and their Standard track with the grey bases was horrible and even less like 'proper track'. There was also Wrenn, GEM and of course Hornby Dublo. Realistically, they could not all survive, especially since they weren't 'universal' in many cases. Peco was the winner, no doubt because they produced a larger range of points & crossings.

 

 

It needs to be remembered that the whole point of the track plans, that appeared in the RM and the various booklets, was to provide some basic ideas, especially to beginners. So many Tri-ang track plans of the time, were a basic oval, with the addition of passing loops & packs to make a simple oval into double track. 

CJF's plans on the other hand, usually showed compact stations, in a simplistic, but prototypical version. I agree that many were rather cramped and perhaps impractical to actually build, but the idea was there.

 

There was no internet back then, obviously, and also books on model railways were rather thin on the ground, so a monthly Railway Modeller, was the easiest way modellers could access information, to their new and not so new hobby.