Return to Hannet Purney

[Harlequin]

My design for a big OO layout depicting a small fictional junction station on the Berks & Hants, called "Hannet Purney", looked like this:

 

It has a lot of good points:

• The generous scenic run where long mainline trains can stretch their legs - where you can watch a King or a Castle running at speed as God('s wonderful railway) intended.
• The branch line junction gives the possibility of many interesting operations.
• The station is basically quite simple - you imagine a peaceful place with bursts of activity.
• The ability to reverse locos, and possibly whole trains, off-scene without touching them.
• And last but not least, the slip coach launcher!

 

However, it doesn't quite "do it" for me. The problems are:

• While it would physically fit in my living space it wouldn't be easy to live with - I'd have to duck under to get from one side to the other and it wouldn't be easy to see whole of the scenic area.
• The canal is missing! This is a familiar companion of the Berks & Hants along most if it's length - it's one of the reasons why I chose that line in the first place so it's a serious omission.
• The station has no clear relationship with any nearby settlement - that's implied and off-scene.
• The station spans the full width of the scenic area, with just a row of trees and the backscene to place it in the wider landscape.
• The trackwork in the scenic area is a bit clunky because of the use of standard Streamline parts.
• The fiddle yard is a bit inflexible and the extensive pointwork is troubling. The use of so many facing curved points might become a real nightmare.

 

I've been pondering all this for a while, and in the last few days a new idea has started to come together really nicely.

 

More to follow...

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by Harlequin

[clachnaharry]

I'm going to guess something based on Devizes....

[KingEdwardII]

Phil,

 

The layout's entirely yours to design, of course, but one observation I have is that the goods facilities for this junction station seem rather sparse. Even a place like Witham, the junction for the single line to Wells (etc) from the GWR main line between Westbury to Taunton, had considerable sets of sidings - and Witham itself is a complete nowheresville (with apologies to anyone who actually lives there) with a claimed population today of only 400 or so.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Harlequin]

Here's how the first Hannet Purney could have fitted into my living space. There were basically two possible orientations:

 

Daft. Neither could realistically remain in place for more than a day at a time...

 

[Harlequin]

If I made a layout that wasn't too wide it could lie along the south side and still leave space to move around while it was erected:

 

So I could at least leave it in place while I didn't need to open the bifolds onto the Terrace too often - i.e. in Winter. OK, so I still have to duck under to get into the sunspace to water the plants but that's not so bad.

 

But then, if the layout is so thin and almost against a wall, where would the fiddle yard go? And how could it still allow trains to be reversed like the original?

 

(By the way, can you tell that I'm trying to convince myself that this is feasible...???)

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by Harlequin

[Harlequin]

Then I had a thought: What if the fiddle yard was not a set of loops but a set of terminal sidings perpendicular to the main layout, fed by a triangle. The triangle would allow reversing and if the fiddle yard sidings were in the form of a traverser I would save a lot of pointwork. This arrangement would be hugely flexible because any storage siding could accept any train from any direction and send it back out in any direction (after turning the loco and any guard's van).

 

So here's the idea so far:

 

(It's rotated 180 degrees from the floor plans above, sorry.)

• The traverser and it's feed triangle lines sit above where my test layout currently is.
• I've only sketched out the behind-the-scenes track and it is all Peco Streamline Code 75, with the exception of the 90° crossings where the branch crosses the main circuits (C11), which are Code 83. They might have to be hand made.
• There is a 2ft min radius in the off-scene areas.
• The double junction at A12 was very tricky to set out. There might be a better way (and it might involve hand-building again) but using Streamline it was important to keep the radius of the end curve as tight as possible so the long 12° crossing was out of the question. By widening the lines and using a Curved Right I was able to use the short 24° crossing. It looks ugly but it's not on view.
• The loops behind the backscene are really part of the fiddle yard. They perform multiple useful jobs including helping to reverse (turn) Down trains. I don't think it's possible to reverse Up trains without them appearing on scene.
• Even the branch line can connect to any traverser road so branch traffic can re-appear on scene on the branch, or travelling Up or Down the main line - complete freedom to imagine the network topology and the services running on it however you like.
• The baseboard outlines are just indicative at the moment. they need to be adjusted and divided up into more practical shapes and sizes.
• The scenic baseboards at the front carry the railway leaving room for pure scenery behind on lift-out modules.
• There's much more scenic depth behind the station than the original Hannet Purney. Room for part of the village and for some real background landscape.

There are some niggles that need ironing out. For instance, to reverse (turn) a loco using the triangle requires that it runs on and off the traverser. It would be nicer if that could be done entirely on the fixed boards.

 

The next step is to lay out the scenic area and I'm going to tighten up the double track spacing to a more correct 45mm and try to use more prototypical turnouts and crossings to OO-SF standards.

 

Will Hannet Purney station will still fit? I have no idea!

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Harlequin

[mdvle]

The obvious first question is are you up to automating the traverser?  Because a manual traverser is going to be problematic when it is behind the layout.

 

 

[Harlequin]

9 hours ago, mdvle said:

The obvious first question is are you up to automating the traverser?  Because a manual traverser is going to be problematic when it is behind the layout.

 

 

I think it's workable manually: The layout would be mounted quite high to get a good eyeline into the scene so ducking under would not be too problematic.

 

The traverser can be set up and trains can be positioned in the passing loops to allow for a decent running session "out front" before having to reset things behind the scenes.

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Harlequin

[Harlequin]

17 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Phil,

 

The layout's entirely yours to design, of course, but one observation I have is that the goods facilities for this junction station seem rather sparse. Even a place like Witham, the junction for the single line to Wells (etc) from the GWR main line between Westbury to Taunton, had considerable sets of sidings - and Witham itself is a complete nowheresville (with apologies to anyone who actually lives there) with a claimed population today of only 400 or so.

 

Yours,  Mike.

 

Hannet Purney is fairly typical of the smaller stations on the Berks & Hants (except that it's a junction), many of which had only a simple goods loop with end loading spur off one end and possibly a long siding off the other. Even Patney & Chirton (similar junction station) had that basic plan before it was enlarged during the first world war to handle military traffic.

 

In my universe Hannet Purney has not been enlarged for military purposes and my time period is inter-war so any possible second WW modifications have not yet happened either.

 

A simple goods yard suits me very well. Keeps the station simple, focussing more on through services with the occasional stopper and some light shunting every now and then resulting in a few vans and wagons scattered artfully around the yard.

 

BTW: Did you spot the extra little bit of goods infrastructure on the down side? The small siding behind the signal box allows Down tail traffic destined for the branch to be dropped off.

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Harlequin

[Chimer]

Hi Phil

 

I've played with the idea of a single-ended FY fed by a triangle off a roundy-roundy a few times and acknowledge all your pros.  The cons I see in this version are operational practicalities.  While you can load the traverser up so that you can have a lot of movements before you need to "hand fiddle" to move guards vans etc, you will still have to move the traverser for pretty much every movement.  I'm sure I would enjoy watching exhibition-style if I was in your living room and you were operating from your sunspace, but I'm not at all sure you'll find the limbo dancing involved in operating from the living room much fun.

 

Now this is the point where I should offer something positive - the best I can come up with offhand is a balloon reversing loop, with storage loops, in the sunspace?  But your previous reservations about curved points would apply in spades ......  Sticking with your basic idea, some stub roads off the traverser to hold locos awaiting their next duty might be a useful thought?

 

Cheers, Chris

[Zomboid]

I think you really need to be able to operate the layout and storage sidings without ducking/ crawling between the two. And will the layout impinge on your lifestyle all the time you're not using it?

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Phil,

 

The layout's entirely yours to design, of course, but one observation I have is that the goods facilities for this junction station seem rather sparse. Even a place like Witham, the junction for the single line to Wells (etc) from the GWR main line between Westbury to Taunton, had considerable sets of sidings - and Witham itself is a complete nowheresville (with apologies to anyone who actually lives there) with a claimed population today of only 400 or so.

 

Yours,  Mike.

Witham had 4 short sidings in the goods yard although quite how they were used would puzzle me because there wasn't much space there when the yard had been reduced to only a couple of sidings.  I reckon it would have been nigh on impossible to turn a 4 wheeled cart between the original sidings.  Possibly they were in part used  also used for traffic exchange with the East Somerset line because of the restriction on detaching freight vehicles on the running line?   The long sidings were of course refuge sidings and nothing to do with local freight traffic facilities.

 

As already noted Hannet Purney is pretty representative of freight facilities at a number of places on the B&H Extension

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, Zomboid said:

And will the layout impinge on your lifestyle all the time you're not using it?

 

This is the key point.  I recall news stories about houses that were completely filled by model railways being a bit of a trope in the 1970s, but I doubt you want to live like that.  Dismantling and storing it between operating sessions doesn't sound appealing either - it's a very big job for one person and where would you put it?  Sorry, Phil, but in my view this is simply too large a plan for your living space. 

[Harlequin]

40 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

This is the key point.  I recall news stories about houses that were completely filled by model railways being a bit of a trope in the 1970s, but I doubt you want to live like that.  Dismantling and storing it between operating sessions doesn't sound appealing either - it's a very big job for one person and where would you put it?  Sorry, Phil, but in my view this is simply too large a plan for your living space. 

 

You might be right but it's worth exploring the possibilities a bit further. If I draw it up then I can understand the pros and cons better. Some new idea might jump out to make it more workable. It might be possible to reduce the size somehow. Or I might see a neat way to make some or all of it quickly demountable. Or it might grab my imagination enough to accept the compromises and go for it.

 

[TomJ]

I can honestly say that if I tried a plan like that I’d soon be looking at micro layouts that could fit in my post divorce bedsit!

[Graham108]

24 minutes ago, TomJ said:

I can honestly say that if I tried a plan like that I’d soon be looking at micro layouts that could fit in my post divorce bedsit!

The OP may have the advantage of bachelorhood.

 

Dependent on layout weight and size of joists could you not build it with some sort of pulley arrangement so that it could be raised or lowered?

 

Graham

Edited February 7, 2021 by bartram108
Add name

[AndyB]

Phil.

Accepting that you most likely want a through station...and this has led to the design you've come up with for Hannet Purney, would it be worth exploring a layout for the area you've marked up as "test" in the sun room? 

That looks like an area which would allow a more permanent setup? I'd perhaps think about an L-shaped design. 

Or could it be a rectangular shape and fold up against a wall?

Andy

 

 

[Harlequin]

This is what the sunspace looks like currently...

 

 

(Minories on the dining table in the foreground.)

 

Edit: That space used to house a huge specimen Strelitzia every winter but it grew too big and I gave it away last year so that I could keep the railway set up. Priorities, you know...

 

Edited February 7, 2021 by Harlequin

[RobinofLoxley]

That sunspace shows that you already have a lot of OO stock otherwise with space constraints lacking an obvious solution, I would ask why not N-gauge.  If you are roughly halving the layout area it alters the game completely. But I sympathize, N does feel small, as in not quite right.

[Harlequin]

4 hours ago, RobinofLoxley said:

That sunspace shows that you already have a lot of OO stock otherwise with space constraints lacking an obvious solution, I would ask why not N-gauge.  If you are roughly halving the layout area it alters the game completely. But I sympathize, N does feel small, as in not quite right.

Yes, N is too small for me and I don't think it has the "critical mass" of products to support the sort of railway I want to create. And sound is even more difficult in 2mm than it is in 4mm.

 

So the scale and the wish to do something with mainline traffic at mainline speeds through both countryside and station (if at all possible) are what make this such a challenge.

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Harlequin

[mdvle]

So, I'm guessing you would need to shorten it a bit, but what if you put your layout into the middle of the sunspace, and had the return loop at the one end of the layout up near the kitchen - making the return loop either moveable or fold down so that you can have full access to the kitchen/walkway area when not running the layout.

[Zomboid]

I don't know what else you have to deal with, but my solution would be to take over the TV alcove. It looks to be about 8*12 or so, which is big enough for a nice model railway, which wouldn't get in the way of the doors to the terrace or your day to day life (other than what you do in there of course, but you could then reclaim the sun space from the trains, so perhaps not such a huge sacrifice).

[Chimer]

 

12 hours ago, Harlequin said:

So the scale and the wish to do something with mainline traffic at mainline speeds through both countryside and station (if at all possible) are what make this such a challenge.

 

 

4 hours ago, Zomboid said:

I don't know what else you have to deal with, but my solution would be to take over the TV alcove. It looks to be about 8*12 or so, which is big enough for a nice model railway, which wouldn't get in the way of the doors to the terrace or your day to day life (other than what you do in there of course, but you could then reclaim the sun space from the trains, so perhaps not such a huge sacrifice).

 

My wants are pretty close to Phil's, and my most likely available space is 12'3" x 8'.  I know it's a lot more than many people have available, but it's ever so difficult to squeeze in even most of what I would like to achieve, without significant compromise.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Chimer
typo

[Denbridge]

Having 'lived with' a layout that dominated a living room to a similar degree to your proposals, i can only advise caution. You'll soon find it becomes annoyingly intrusive. I personally would never put myself through the anguish it caused until i saw sense and scrapped it. 

[Harlequin]

5 hours ago, Zomboid said:

I don't know what else you have to deal with, but my solution would be to take over the TV alcove. It looks to be about 8*12 or so, which is big enough for a nice model railway, which wouldn't get in the way of the doors to the terrace or your day to day life (other than what you do in there of course, but you could then reclaim the sun space from the trains, so perhaps not such a huge sacrifice).

 

Unfortunately the TV alcove is not up for grabs because it's designed for the ideal TV watching experience and it works well.