Direction of shunting

[drmditch]

I am just at the point of deciding the layout for a country station on the 'mid-level' of my layout.

It is based on NER prototypes, and will represent a 'preceeding place' on a single line largely used for mineral traffic.

There is platform line and a loop line, both of which are bi-directional although the non-platform line will be freight only.

 

Having looked through my reasonably extensive library for NER country station layouts, it seems that most of them would be best shunted by a train running in a particular direction.

Ie - the layout would permit a locomotive to arrive at the head of a train, and then shunt selected vehicles into selected locations. 

 

 

 

On this rough diagram, to shunt the station yard a train would have to be travelling from left to right.

If it was from the other direction it would have to use the loop to run round with consequent additional time blocking the running lines.

 

Am I correct therefore in thinking that most small station layouts intended to be shunted by the train locomotive (ie not having a resident shunting pilot) would be subject to this limitation?

 

Vehicles intended for the station would have to be despatched from a particular direction, usually from the appropriate major station/marshalling yard. The layouts would be planned accordingly.

[Phil Bullock]

Based on what I have read you surmise correctly....

 

There are always exceptions of course!

 

And in NER days would a shunting horse have been provided?

 

Phil

Edited August 7, 2018 by Phil Bullock

[jim.snowdon]

I would agree with your surmise, and add that the train would be made up with this in mind, with all the wagons destined for that station grouped together in the train, not necessarily at the front, as the make up of the train would also be determined by the other stations to be shunted en route. It was also common, when line occupancy permitted, to leave the part of the train not destined for that station standing on the running line, along with the brake van, whilst the train engine fished out the outgoing wagons and placed the incoming ones. Anything conveying livestock would create a little upset by virtue of requiring to be coupled immediately behind the engine, but nothing insurmountable.

 

Jim

[Nearholmer]

A delve into old working timetables often answers the question, in that on a line served by the typical one up and one down stopping goods each day, it is often possible to see that at a given station the goods in one direction is given ample time to shunt, while in the other it might have a passing time only. 

 

Some places even had both an up and a down yard, or a yard on one side, and a private siding on the other, which were served separately by the train travelling in each direction.

 

Wagons making short trips, a couple of stations along the line, must sometimes have gone round the sun to meet the moon, all the way to the terminating point of the train and most of the way back again, taking the best part of 24hrs in the process.

[Wickham Green]

Based on what I have read you surmise correctly....

 

There are always exceptions of course!

 

And in NER days would a shunting horse have been provided?

 

Phil

The last shunting horse was well into BR days - Newmarket I think, where they knew a thing or two about horses ................ even a guy with a pinchbar could shift a wagon or two - and in some places it MIGHT have been possible to use the assistance of gravity ( though leaving anything without loco or brake van on a gradient would be frowned upon, of course ).

[drmditch]

Not sure about horses, unless they would be used frequently and regularly. Major stations and facilities yes. The NER did use lots of horses. But for a minor country station the problem would be that horses (unlike locomotives) consume fuel whether they work or not!

I suppose the clue would be whether the station buildings/layout contain stables.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Yes, but unlike a locomotive the same horse could then be coupled to a cart and roam the roads delivering loads from wagons it had previously shunted. From reading I believe this was quite a commonplace before the internal combustion engine displaced the horse.

[lanchester]

I am just at the point of deciding the layout for a country station on the 'mid-level' of my layout.

It is based on NER prototypes, and will represent a 'preceeding place' on a single line largely used for mineral traffic.

There is platform line and a loop line, both of which are bi-directional although the non-platform line will be freight only.

 

Having looked through my reasonably extensive library for NER country station layouts, it seems that most of them would be best shunted by a train running in a particular direction.

Ie - the layout would permit a locomotive to arrive at the head of a train, and then shunt selected vehicles into selected locations. 

 

Sidings.jpg

 

 

On this rough diagram, to shunt the station yard a train would have to be travelling from left to right.

If it was from the other direction it would have to use the loop to run round with consequent additional time blocking the running lines.

 

Am I correct therefore in thinking that most small station layouts intended to be shunted by the train locomotive (ie not having a resident shunting pilot) would be subject to this limitation?

 

Vehicles intended for the station would have to be despatched from a particular direction, usually from the appropriate major station/marshalling yard. The layouts would be planned accordingly.

Your diagram looks very like Lanchester, funnily enough. You may be ahead of me here but Lanchester is quite interesting because it looks like a double track line but actually it isn't. The Lanchester Valley was built as single track, and then doubled from Rely Mill to about a mile in the Blackhill direction from Lanchester at Lanchester Colliery - I assume the expense of doubling the timber viaduct at Knitsley was too much. Originally the two lines became one at the Colliery, but I think when that closed the up (as in up the bank to Blackhill) just became a very very long headshunt. I've always thought this would be a fun layout because for exhibition purposes you can play roundy roundy in both directions, and for the purists you can operate as double into single. For shunting, you could get a seriously long train into the headshunt and clear of the running lines.

 

The goods yard really has all the amenities. Two roads set into the platform so one could be endloading (agricultural machinery?) and the other side and end. I assume the latter may have had livestock traffic as there was an auction mart at Lanchester (back of the Kings Head - our tennis court never recovered from an escape of bullocks). Then you have a through goods shed, at least one if not two external cranes, your classic NER coal drops, and a siding into what I think was either a sawmill or a brickworks (or possible both at different times). As the agricultural centre in a predominantly coal and steel area, there is a nice mix of through and pick-up goods and freight available. Sundries also - passenger services ended before WW2 but as late as the early 60s we were still sending our holiday trunks to Scotland Passenger Luggage in Advance.

 

As to how the yard was worked though (and I recognise that is actually what you were asking), sorry I haven't a clue.

 

You can even have a 1920s rail replacement bus service - the NER put buses on Consett/Blackhill to Durham. Not sure if they actually turned into the station yard or just went through the village.

 

As I say, I suspect you know all this, but others may not. 

[Joseph_Pestell]

We had a similar debate recently on another thread.

 

Most railway companies seemed quite happy for stations to be shunted by trains running in one direction only. One can usually spot that by the fact that there is only one crossover on a double track, so no possibility of running round. As others have noted, a train running in the other direction might set down a wagon or two to then be moved by horse or man power - but that is difficult to replicate on a model.

 

Don't worry unduly about a goods train blocking the running lines for a while. Passenger trains were fairly infrequent on most lines until recently. And the timetablers were pretty good at fitting them round the freight.

 

I don't know the NER very well but will take a look at some old OS maps to get a feel for it. Apart from my interests in overseas railways,, I am mostly a Midland man. The typical Midland station allowed shunting by trains running in either direction. Only a few, very small stations were equipped to be shunted only in one direction.

[Fat Controller]

I have known instances where a loco on a pick-up freight has run part of its journey propelling some wagons and hauling others; this was the Tyne Yard- Blaydon working that set down and picked up at a scrapyard in Dunston, before arriving at Blaydon Yard. It meant that the train only called at the yard once. This was as late as the early 1980s. The Morriston branch freight operated in similar fashion, as one scrapyard had a facing connection, whilst the next had a trailing one.

[john new]

This is a guess - wouldn't it be variable? Ideally on one line you would want them all the same way round but there would be variations from station to station, partly dependent on the prime expectation of traffic flow and local gradients and other factors, the side used would be influenced by issues like, for example, where was the mill? Prioritise the fulls, no revenue in an empty, and load weight.  Also where gradients were steep there would possibly be only one end you could realistically shunt in from, I guess Goathland is a classic example of that factor (Accessed both sides from the Pickering end as also is/was Levisham) and the opposite way around to Grosmont where access to the small station goods yard was from the junction/Whitby end. At Whitby, it is a terminus so everything accessed from the arrival/departure end, and the dockside location determining which side of the running line.

Edited August 8, 2018 by john new

[Jeff Smith]

I believe I read somewhere that sometimes trains ran straight through to the terminus when intermediate stations had facing sidings. These were then shunted on the way back.

[john new]

I believe I read somewhere that sometimes trains ran straight through to the terminus when intermediate stations had facing sidings. These were then shunted on the way back.

The common sense and sensible way to do it.

[The Johnster]

The common sense and sensible way to do it.

 

And the normal way, though there were exceptions.  Very few of these sorts of locations required more than one clearance a day, and the usual time for the pickup to visit would be in the mid morning or mid afternoon lulls in the service.  A pickup might traverse a branch or a section of main line in one direction in the morning, shunting out all the yards that were conveniently laid out for that direction, and do the rest on the way back in the afternoon.  We tend to associate pickups with branch lines but most stations on main lines had goods yards that were serviced in this way as well.  Nearly all of these did not survive the Beeching rationalisations, unless there was a specific reason to keep them.

[LMS2968]

Shunting across the opposite running line into the sidings was not uncommon. Not all the pick ups would be going back to the starting point but might themselves be dropped off further along the route, or bound for the terminal point.

 

Such a move brought Compound 1010 to grief at Little Salkeld 0n 10 July 1933. The bobby switched in his box without checking with the boxes to either side, and set the crossover for a goods to drop off a wagon from a Down goods. The other two boxes had already accepted and cleared the signals for an Up express headed by 1010, with the inevitable consequences.

[Pacific231G]

I believe I read somewhere that sometimes trains ran straight through to the terminus when intermediate stations had facing sidings. These were then shunted on the way back.

I suspect that a trick we may miss with a typical BLT layout is the scope for remarshalling goods trains at the terminus to service intermediate goods yards. A typical BLT (including mine!) has the minimum track layout needed to service its own goods yard and run round trains but no provision for making up a return working with some wagons that have arrived from the junction destined for yards further up the line and others brought in from other stations running through to the junction. How common this was I couldn't say but it must offer possibilities.

 

I've also come across through stations that had goods facilities on both sides of a main line and were clearly laid out for each side to be serviced separately as trailing yards by different trains. This might be a local goods yard on one side and something like silos on the other.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Ken.W]

I have known instances where a loco on a pick-up freight has run part of its journey propelling some wagons and hauling others; this was the Tyne Yard- Blaydon working that set down and picked up at a scrapyard in Dunston, before arriving at Blaydon Yard. It meant that the train only called at the yard once. This was as late as the early 1980s. The Morriston branch freight operated in similar fashion, as one scrapyard had a facing connection, whilst the next had a trailing one.

 

I worked that turn an odd time in early to mid 80s, (it was, maybe bazarrly, a Gateshead turn rather than Tyne Yard) and don't recall it ever propelling anything on the running lines, certainly not down the bank from Low Fell Station Jcn to Low Fell Sidings Jcn! I do however, recall the poor 03's fluid flywheel smoking rather well on the way back up that bank with it's four or five 16 tonners of scrap! 08s weren't permitted on that job as they couldn't negotiate the Blaydon coal yard