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Welsh Narrow Gauge Railway


Clock O' The North

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Hello All, 

For a while now I have been modelling in OO gauge. I have a fascination with narrow gauge. So I decided to bite the bullet and try to come up with a track plan for a 4x6 baseboard that I have sitting at home. This is the result. The track plan was designed using Rail modeller Pro which is a program for Macbooks. The passing loops on the layout are designed for 30 inch trains. The curves vary between 9 inch and 12 inches in radius. The large industry is meant to be a small coal or slate quarry however it can be another industry. The layout is going to be cut into 2 3x4 parts so it can be transported. The 3 way point is an n gauge one to save room.

Comments are very welcome!

Thanks, Lachlan

P.S: The 3 loops at the back are raised 2 inches from the station and are a fiddle yard

Thanks to DavidCBroad for spotting this

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The obvious question would be, if the loop at one end is intended to provide an acceptable gradient to a raised fiddle yard, where is the return gradient back down to the station?

 

Re the industrial facility, a North Wales quarry would be slate. Coal mining in Wales took place in the South and was associated with standard gauge lines, it is a bulk cargo not generally associated with 2' gauge lines (pace the fictional Craigcorrie, and real Campbeltown lines).

 

If you wanted something a little different, and assuming that "4mm narrow gauge" means OO9 representing a 2' to 2'6" gauge prototype) the South Crofty tin mining sett in Cornwall had a short 2' gauge tramway handling concentrate, the Pentewan railway was another such. There were sand extraction lines in Bedfordshire, clay and ironstone lines in the South West, lead mining lines in Shropshire and Derbyshire and (although the line was fictional, the industry existed) oil shale mining in the North of England and SE Scotland.

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I think you need to balance the spiral at one end with some form of helix at the other or you will have steeply inclined loops which will make "fiddling" rather difficult.   It does look a bit odd with a turntable which was rare apart from the Glyn Valley possibly and no loco depot.  Personally I would have the main loco shed at the station I model, it does not have to be at the terminus, Boston Lodge on the Ffestiniog is not at the terminus, and would let most of your locos be on view most of the time.   Very few narrow gauge lines were / are busy except in high summer on preserved lines the Lynton and Barnstaple being an exception.    I did have a plan to model the Isle of Skye in 00 standard gauge with a line from Kyleakin to Portree with branches to Uig and Armadale which would work even better with narrow gauge.  

Personally if I were modelling welsh slate lines I would go with an end to end if restricted to a 6X4 board, the same basic track layout you have but with one set of three loops directly above the other. you could have a steeply inclined link track for testing as long as you only ran down the steep gradient.  The pecorama spiral layout had the same problem as trains only ran down the spiral.

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My thoughts on where railways might have gone on Skye.  There were various proposals around 1900 for std gauge and narrow gauge lines but only a short industrial line was built.  (Yes I know it is not Wales)

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The obvious question would be, if the loop at one end is intended to provide an acceptable gradient to a raised fiddle yard, where is the return gradient back down to the station?

 

Re the industrial facility, a North Wales quarry would be slate. Coal mining in Wales took place in the South and was associated with standard gauge lines, it is a bulk cargo not generally associated with 2' gauge lines (pace the fictional Craigcorrie, and real Campbeltown lines).

 

If you wanted something a little different, and assuming that "4mm narrow gauge" means OO9 representing a 2' to 2'6" gauge prototype) the South Crofty tin mining sett in Cornwall had a short 2' gauge tramway handling concentrate, the Pentewan railway was another such. There were sand extraction lines in Bedfordshire, clay and ironstone lines in the South West, lead mining lines in Shropshire and Derbyshire and (although the line was fictional, the industry existed) oil shale mining in the North of England and SE Scotland.

 

Not entirely true. There was coalmine at the northernmost tip of Wales. But I agree that it is more of a standard-gauge commodity and slate is more likely.

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Thanks for the all the replies. This is what I am now thinking. A narrow gauge railway from mineral mines inland to a port(maybe located in the north east of England, as this works with my Northeastern layout). This is a model of the port. The loop is a station. The large gap in the middle was going to be an inlet at low tide. The town might go to the right of the station. The black piece of track at the top of the layout could be a causeway or a bridge(maybe a swing bridge?) And the colour coding? Blue=Fiddle Yard. Red=Mainline. Yellow=Station. Black=Causeway or Bridge. Green=Docks. White=Goods Yard. Pink=Engine Shed.

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I think you're getting rather a bit ambitious here.

 

Narrow gauge railways were generally built where a stnadard gauge line was uneconomical.

 

They were built on an absolute shoestring budget, so a "major station" would consist of a run-round loop and maybe a siding or two.  Often it would be run on a one-engine-in-steam principle, which meant no signalling.  Two locomotives would allow one to be overhauled while the other worked.  Buildings were considered luxuries and were often lean-to sheds made of corrugated iron.

 

Passengers were scarce in rural areas and would prefer to take a bus most of the time, which actually took them to the village where they wanted to go and not dropped off at a level crossing 2 miles away from the village that the "station" (actually just a level crossing) served.  As a result, often lines ceased to run passenger trains, doing jsust freight.  There might however be a main freight flow of stone, plus maybe.  At least the earlier you go, the more traffic there would be (most of these lines closed and the second war put paid to most of the few that remained).

 

Each had its own character.as well.  Festiniog doesn't naturally mesh with Talyllyn, or VoRR or GVT.

 

So for authenticity at least, keep it simple and scenery before tracks.

 

That said, see Ted Polet's well-documented OO9 layout for possible inspiration?

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Sorry for the absence. I have today been notified that I have access to a space 4x9 which gives me an extra 3 feet of length. this is the 12th version of this track plan and the third to go up. Here it is. The colour coding is: 

Dark Blue=Fiddle Yard

Red=Mainline

Light Blue=Brewery

Yellow=Station

Black=Causeway

Green=Docks

Purple=Engine Shed

Please ignore the gaps between the pictures. This is because the file was too big for one image. The layout would be in 3 3x4 modules

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post-22433-0-10961700-1448319225.png

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Looking at the track plans, what library are you using for 9mm track? I went through a phase of designing track plans for On30 and I quickly realised that using HO/OO track libraries gave various problems with track centres and track work at points.

 

The Penryn and Portmadoc slate termini were large affairs, very different from the isolated loop-and-siding affairs at places like Towyn.

 

If you are thinking of an inlet and swing bridge, how about a harbour railway?

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  • 1 month later...

Personally I would have made the visible passing loop longer towards the right hand side.

 

Also shunting the sidings might be difficult with such a sharp curve on the left hand end, maybe use a left hand instead of a right hand point

 

A big loco depot is always fun, most welsh lines seem to have loco depots away from the terminus, Ffestiniog, Vale of Rheidol, Tallylyn, Welsh Highland for instance.

 

See my drawing.  

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