Mode of access to / from Dallam Branch and sidings?

[LongfordLad]

Apologies if this question is very naive - I'm discovering just how little I know and how much jargon I don't understand.

I'm returning to a childhood passion, now that I have retired. 

I'm in the early stages of planning a project including Dallam sheds and branch in the mid fifties, to match my earliest trainspotting memories.

Having poured over old maps and a 1937 Signal box track layout diagram (https://signalbox.org/diagrams.php?id=749); I am left stymied on how trains would move between the four West Coats Main Line tracks and the branch line and sidings.

What would be the process for up and down trains to get in or out of the branch? At present, I have an uncomfortable vision of a train heading north on the down goods line having to come to a halt and then push back across 3 mainlines into the branch. That feels unworkable...

Similarly, it appears that a goods train on the WCML Up Goods would have to enter the branch by pushing back into the sidings before running forward down the branch.

I haven't pasted a track layout image into into this topic to respect John Hinson's copyright but I hope that you can see what I mean from the link above.

 

Any advice will be gratefully received.

John

 

 

Edited May 31, 2018 by LongfordLad

[LMS2968]

Looking at the signal diagram, for a train on the Down Slow, it would use the ladder crossing which began at the shed shunting neck to the west and ran right across the layout to the connection into the sidings. There were trailing connections into the ladder from both Up and Down running lines. There are many examples of such an arrangement across the system, and yes, it could be very inconvenient.

 

For Up trains on the Goods lines, there seems to have been no alternative other than to set back into the North Sidings and access the Dallam Branch from there.

[LongfordLad]

Looking at the signal diagram, for a train on the Down Slow, it would use the ladder crossing which began at the shed shunting neck to the west and ran right across the layout to the connection into the sidings. There were trailing connections into the ladder from both Up and Down running lines. There are many examples of such an arrangement across the system, and yes, it could be very inconvenient.

 

For Up trains on the Goods lines, there seems to have been no alternative other than to set back into the North Sidings and access the Dallam Branch from there.

Many thanks for the reassurance that I'm not completely daft.

You can't tell from the signal diagram, but from OS maps of the period, the "neck" is only about a quarter of the length of the sidings on the other side of the mainline, so I think that it must have been intended for locos running light in & out of the sheds. 

Consequently, goods trains for the branch would presumably block the down running line until they could push back across and in?

The Dallam "Branch" provided access to various industrial sites and coal yards but was less than a mile long down any of its branchings. Would that be too far to push a train?