Marshalling yard incline

[Phil Buz]

Hi All,

Does anyone know what the incline was on the old marshalling yards used for sorting trucks, please? I am attempting to build an in view fiddle yard but I would like to have a go at sorting trucks as well. Has anyone else tried this and what was the result?

[griffgriff]

Are you referring to 'hump' yards?

 

If you are it's going to be quite tricky because you have to ensure all your stock runs consistently down the grade (i.e. same speed) - and there are several variables that you need to contend with (friction - in the bearings/wheel on rail / weight of vehicle / centre of gravity - lateral forces as they run through bends??? - / and I'm sure some others too)...

 

 

Here's a suggestion - maybe you could conduct some experiments with some of your stock on some track laid on a plank of wood??Adjusting the grade and seeing how your wagons roll - adding weight to see if that improves things.

 

Best of luck.

[Coombe Barton]

These article are quite good - http://www.gcr-rollingstocktrust.co.uk/articles_output.asp?id=8&checkSource=sitemap - http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/8-yards/y-marsh.htm

 

In modelling terms you'd have to look at uncoupling reliability as well as gradients. The prototype had arrester mechanisms as well so that things didn't get out of hand with speed.

[griffgriff]

These article are quite good - http://www.gcr-rollingstocktrust.co.uk/articles_output.asp?id=8&checkSource=sitemap - http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/8-yards/y-marsh.htm

 

In modelling terms you'd have to look at uncoupling reliability as well as gradients. The prototype had arrester mechanisms as well so that things didn't get out of hand with speed.

 

And mechanisms to speed them up too... I 'Dowty' could be done

[Phil Buz]

And mechanisms to speed them up too... I 'Dowty' could be done

 

Thanks guys,

 

I do realise that the project is not an easy one but I have never seen it done at an exhibition so it will be a bit of a challenge.

 

I will do some experimentation with a plank and a bit of track. Thats a good idea. The speed is a problem but I don't intend to have it to be miles long and I could control the slow down by altering the gauge of the tracks or even magnets. You are both quite right that coupling is another variable, so the type of coupling is in question.

 

I did find an article on hump yard marshalling in the Hornby mag but it was a bit vague. I will try the links you have given me and see what that produces.

 

Thanks again for the advice.

Phil

[thnksno]

I fiddled with a classification hump a number of years ago, a lot of broken couplers and consistency of cars running through turnouts under gravity was kind of sketchy... I was able to obtain a sequence of cars and with a little knowledge as to what to 'kick' and what didn't need help and was able to get some success. Also this was a small yard, larger expanses will need either more gravity (height), weight, speed to get the cars to end up where they should... Again a bit of fiddling and I also learned that basically I had to sequence the yard sorting so that common cars ended up where they were to begin with. In other words cars that lost speed rapidly negotiating turnouts, never negotiated turnouts again! lol!

 

Anyway, I think when using 'gravity,' it's best to have consistent results all the time, i.e. use the same cars, tracks etc. Check out this short clip of a coal dump, the empty cars are sent on their way down a pretty steep incline where they reverse direction and pickup speed again... A LOT of speed! Excellent modeling nonetheless, but kinda wonky to see rail cars fly off at like 70MPH.

 

 

Today, I run all Kadee couplers and I do the back-n-forth shuffle, which isn't bad using DCC at slooooowww speed... Then I just 'kick' the cars onto the yard track of choice. I'm thinking of changing the under track magnet to an electromagnet, this will stop the shuffle sort of... It would be nice though to have a couple of HO scale dudes running around yanking cut levers for me in the yard. lol!

[James Hilton]

Great book on the subject:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Marshalling-Yards-FOULIS-OPC-railway/dp/0860933679/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273156901&sr=1-1

 

If you can get hold of a copy. I've got one and it describes the history of the yards in the UK with tons of prototype photos for inspiration.

There was an article in Railway Modeller in the late 90s, a plan of the month, on how you could build one IIRC. I'd love one - great excuse for tons of wagons and Kadee couplers would be the way I'd go, with electromagnets. I think the issue would be though the hump itself, as most uncoupling magnets need the couplings to be relaxed, or not under tension - yet a hump would pull some of the stock down the hill so to speak, no doubt putting the coupling you wanted to dis-engage in tension, locking it solid.

 

Hmm interesting project Good luck!

[shortliner]

Someone in USA built one with airjets for accellerators to make the wagons move further, and for the retarders to slow the wagons. You would probably need some sort of diode matrix to switch the turnouts, or use computer control. Don't forget that the loco NEVER goes over the hump, there is always an avoiding line. Some vehicles should never be hump-shunted either. They do take up an awful lot of room since you need a long lead track, the hump itself, and then all the turnouts to feed the sidings - in OO about a minimum of 20', and probably a lot more.

[Coombe Barton]

Edward Beal - West Midland - he built one in the 1920's-1930s.

 

(and just found the book that it's in - no mechanical detail though - http://uk.ebid.net/for-sale/beal-west-midland-a-railway-in-miniature-1st-1952-23856565.htm)

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I have the gradient profiles for the LNER's Whitemoor (March) yard before me as reproduced in 'LNER 150' (pub. David and Charles), and the up and down gradient profiles are fairly similar. 1 in 300ish up leading to the hump through the reception sidings, 1 in 80 up the hump, about 20 yards transition over the hump (the vertical curve radius is shown as 20 chain = 440yds) then 1 in 20 down for 2 chains, followed by about 1 in 60 down for a similar distance, and this is the section on which the retarders were located, then 1 in 200 for 300 yards into the marshalling sidings, then level for the remainder of the marshalling sidings. The gradients on the hump descent should be enough to get model wagons going fairly well. A gradient of 1 in 100 for the marshalling sidings should keep a moving wagon going until it meets standing vehicles. I don't think most eyes would detect the difference between 1 in 100 and level, let alone 1 in 200, so this subterfuge should be safe enough.

 

Incidentally the tiscali link suggests for hump yard arrangements: "The approach to the hump might be as steep as 1:30 whilst the tracks leading down into the sidings was more gentle, perhaps 1:60 at the hump end". That's the reverse of how Whitemoor was laid out immediately around the hump...

[Flying Pig]

It's clearly possible as

shows and very entertaining it is too, despite the exaggerated gradients and speeds and slightly simplified operation. As far as I can see, that layout is using tension lock coulings, which may be what limits it to the single wagons shown being detached. Since they have no delay facility, the couplings need to be disengaged when the wagon begins to roll away, so presumably there's an uncoupling ramp spanning the hump summit.

 

More prototypical working would be to uncouple cuts of varying length on the rising gradient of the hump. To do this would require scale couplings or auto-couplings with a delay facility that can be invoked without additional movements of the loco: Alex Jackson or one of the falling latch types like DG/B&B or Dinghams.

[BTC]

The prototype had arrester mechanisms as well so that things didn't get out of hand with speed.

 

No, only the later ones. Wath yard (described in the linked-to articles) did not have retarders - instead they employed human runners to pin down the brakes. Not a nice occupation no doubt.

 

Someone well come up with the actually facts, but I believe that automatic retarders were an inter-war development - possibly from Germany or the US.

 

Then in the 1950s came the British-designed Dowty wagon control system installed at Tinsley amongst others, which could speed wagons up as well as retard them (as mentioned above). This system was also installed widely in the US - in fact I believe that Dowty still make the parts for this to support US yards, twenty-five years after the last UK installation closed.

[The Stationmaster]

No, only the later ones. Wath yard (described in the linked-to articles) did not have retarders - instead they employed human runners to pin down the brakes. Not a nice occupation no doubt.

 

Someone well come up with the actually facts, but I believe that automatic retarders were an inter-war development - possibly from Germany or the US.

 

Then in the 1950s came the British-designed Dowty wagon control system installed at Tinsley amongst others, which could speed wagons up as well as retard them (as mentioned above). This system was also installed widely in the US - in fact I believe that Dowty still make the parts for this to support US yards, twenty-five years after the last UK installation closed.

 

 

I would think that the majority of British hump yards didn't have 'mechanical' retarders but used 'chasers' instead and I've an idea that possibly only one of the British gravity yards had mechanical retarders although in several cases they included a rising gradient in the sorting roads to help slow down wagons.

 

And of course all British flat yards used humans when it was necessary to get brakes down after a wagon had been loose shunted. The only difference was that at some hump and gravity yards specially strengthened shunting poles were in use and Shunters/chasers were allowed to ride on them - which would no doubt produce some eye-popping reaction from today's H&S legal eagles .

 

Apart from earlier experimentation I think Tinsley was probably the only British hump yard to use the Dowty system and was definitely the only one to have its design influenced by it. By the time the Dowty units were sufficiently developed to come into general use BR was fast realising that building fancy great hump marshalling yards was not the way forward in freight operation in the light of the increasingly rapid changes in the business and hump marshalling yard schemes were quietly being shelved all over the network.

[BTC]

My memory could be unreliable here, but I believe that Scunthorpe had the Dowty system and it outlasted Tinsley by a year or two - Tinsley's was decommissioned in 1985.

 

Out of interest I've read that the Tinsley system involved approximately 10,000 compressed air-driven actuators requiring the constant attention of a gang of fitters. I'm not sure if it was completely life-expired in 1985 but I would expect that it would have needed a serious refit to keep going as it was based around early-1960s computer technology - punched paper tapes etc. In any case the death of wagon-load killed it.

 

For those that are interested here is the web-site of the descendent of Dowty http://www.dowties.com/

[andyrush]

The first yard in the UK with retarders was indeed Whitemoor (Up Yard 1929, Down Yard 1931), followed by Hull Inwards (1935) and Toton Down (1939). Toton Up Yard followed in 1950, but all the remaining mechanised yards in the UK came about as a result of the 1955 Modernisation Plan.

 

As far as I know, these were:

Temple Mills

Ripple Lane

Tinsley (Dowty)

Healey Mills

Tees

Tyne

Carlisle Kingmoor

Bescot Down (Dowty)

Margam

Thornton

Perth

Millerhill

 

Scunthorpe New Yard (Dowty) opened in 1971

 

Incidentally, it appears that a yard near Vienna is stilly using Dowty equipment (or was until recently), as there is a video of it on UTube

 

Regards

 

Andy

[BTC]

Getting back to modelling, how about fudging a gravity yard by using motorised wagons under DCC? You could even emulate the Dowty system then!

 

It wouldn't be cheap and could be a pain to get it all to work, but it would be possible. You could keep the costs down by using fairly large cuts of wagons.

[The Stationmaster]

The first yard in the UK with retarders was indeed Whitemoor (Up Yard 1929, Down Yard 1931), followed by Hull Inwards (1935) and Toton Down (1939). Toton Up Yard followed in 1950, but all the remaining mechanised yards in the UK came about as a result of the 1955 Modernisation Plan.

 

As far as I know, these were:

Temple Mills

Ripple Lane

Tinsley (Dowty)

Healey Mills

Tees

Tyne

Carlisle Kingmoor

Bescot Down (Dowty)

Margam

Thornton

Perth

Millerhill

 

Scunthorpe New Yard (Dowty) opened in 1971

 

Incidentally, it appears that a yard near Vienna is stilly using Dowty equipment (or was until recently), as there is a video of it on UTube

 

Regards

 

Andy

 

I stand corrected on Dowty equipped yards Mr Rush (and trust you had a nice hols). Of your above list I can't think of any variants - except of course the ones which were cancelled

[Flying Pig]

The only difference was that at some hump and gravity yards specially strengthened shunting poles were in use and Shunters/chasers were allowed to ride on them - which would no doubt produce some eye-popping reaction from today's H&S legal eagles .

There's film of a man doing just that to control wagons on the Bowes Railway in (I *think*) a BBC programme made by John Peel a long time ago. The chap's got his brake stick wedged twixt solebar and brake lever and has hooked one thigh over it, leaving the free end in a position to do serious damage

[Phil Buz]

Sorry about the delay in my reply but its been a bit hectic here looking after grand children and keeping up gardening demands this time of year.

 

Thanks guys for all the really good advice and information. I'll make a start on some tests using a adjustable incline and a couple of sidings. I have a gronk to do some marshalling with and I think I have enough length along one side of my double garage. (The garage is not for keeping cars in a must quickly add. It will be full of railway layout if I have my way.) The video of the model shows it should be possible in a resticted way so I have a target in mind anyway.

 

I have only just moved into this house so I only have a OO gauge test track set up at present but I'm adding a three rail upper level. My dad bought me my first railway set so I still have a love for three rail stuff as he is not around anymore.

Good luck to all you modellers.

Phil

[Jenny Emily]

I think that you would have to have a hand-picked set of wagons that uncoupled reliably and free wheeled at a consistant speed. You would also need to weight them down with ballast as much as you could - the ehavier the wagons are, the more they would be likely to react like a real wagon on a hump yard would. Motorised wagons on DCC would be a good option in larger scales. In 00 though, given that most wagons that were hump shunted were short, lots of lead would be the only option.

 

Gradients wouldn't need to be precise in model form; just use what works best. The eye wouldn't notice the difference in subtle grade changes anyway. With heavy weighted wagons, a lesser gradient would work fine and give a more prototypical speed. As for Dowty retarders, could electromagnets be used? Having brakes that could be activated physically against the wagon's wheels would be more likely to derail them than stop them, and you still have the issue that if you retard it too much, you have to deploy a gronk into the yard to retrieve it.

[Oldddudders]

Someone in USA built one with airjets for accellerators to make the wagons move further, and for the retarders to slow the wagons.

Was this the late Don Santel in the '80s? I seem to recall he said that the baseboard supports under his hump were like Swiss cheese where the screws had been put in, taken out and a new height tried to get the cars to roll realistically. He also had a problem that time has eroded - getting a shunting loco to operate sufficiently slowly. Few modern OO locos have such a problem, and I guess even N gauge is pretty good in that respect.

 

I think this is a brave project, and look forward to more progress reports in due course!