Prototype locations with good scenic breaks

[009 micro modeller]

On 20/12/2022 at 15:40, Peter Kazmierczak said:

And if you're really pushed for room, there's about a 30ft gap between the two High Tor Tunnels near Matlock, on the old MR mainline between Derby and Manchester. Comes out at around 3 inches in 00... Ideal to run your Midland Pullman.

On this theme, what are some of the smallest bits of prototype railway between two viable scenic breaks?

[KeithMacdonald]

How about Lansdown Junction and Station?

Could with prototypically accuracy have GWR, LMS and SR all passing through.

 

[6990WitherslackHall]

What about NER stations like Filey and Pickering with the roof?

[ruggedpeak]

Wanted to add some East Anglian examples.

 

The old Maldon West station in Essex is a good candidate, station in a cutting and the building on top of a bridge. Also many of the stations in the Greater London parts of the GEML are similar but with 4 lines, e.g Chadwell Heath, Seven Kings. Goodmayes etc.

 

https://www.itsaboutmaldon.co.uk/railway/ photos from this website

 

 

 

https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/stations/southminster-a-maldon-west-branches

 

Another Essex location is the entrance to the tunnel into Stansted Airport at Tye Green Junction. Straight into a tree covered hill with small NR hardstanding, SPAD indicator, foot crossing and 2 lines into 1. My photos.

 

 

 

And of course Ipswich station is a well documented classic. Image K. Partlow via WNXX

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[johnofwessex]

What about Bath Green Park?

 

Ok the break is the bridge over the Avon but if you replaced it with an overbridge you have a terminus with an overall roof but no goods/loco/carriage sidings

[Artless Bodger]

Crystal Palace High Level, large terminus, turntable outside the terminal end and loads of carriage sidings before the tunnel.

 

I haven't looked it up but possibly pre-group you might get other railway's excursion trains as well as LC&DR?

[2E Sub Shed]

Castlethorpe on WCML  

 

Wikipedia Link

 

[nigb55009]

There are several locations along the North London line that have bridges at either end. Using Highbury and Islington station as a scenic break at one end

to Highbury Grove bridge at the other, would include Canonbury Junction. From Highbury Grove to Canonbury Station. Mildmay Park station, Dalston Western

Junction. Dalston Eastern and coal yard and Graham Road goods yard, which has the Liverpool St to Cambridge main line passing over at its eastern end. 

[john new]

22 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

On this theme, what are some of the smallest bits of prototype railway between two viable scenic breaks?

A close contender must be the S W Mainline around Micheldever. Two tunnels with a short, but deep cutting between them. 

Update: Added a Google Earth Screen grab. The section is immediately north of the A303 dual carriage way. The open section is the length of one field.  I think that is where there was the unfortunate crash involving a class 33.

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by john new

[nigb55009]

Dover Priory is about 868ft between the tunnels. That`s less than twelve feet in OO.

 

I have just realised , I made an error in my original measurement. I measured from Priory Tunnel to the Folkestone Road bridge.

I should nave measured beyond there to Harbour Tunnel, which is more like 1075ft, which is just over fourteen feet in OO.

Edited August 19, 2023 by nigb55009
Correction

[pH]

Glasgow Queen Street low level line, between North Hanover Street and North Frederick Street.

 

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/55.862211,+-4.249009/@55.8622016,-4.2492558,19z/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d55.8622107!4d-4.249009

 

(Edit to add: On the west side of the station, too  - between Dundas Street and Buchanan Street.)

Edited August 19, 2023 by pH

[Wickham Green too]

2 hours ago, john new said:

A close contender must be the S W Mainline around Micheldever. Two tunnels with a short, but deep cutting between them. ...

Not the most exciting model, though .................................. unless you fancy a diorama of a class 33 smash ! ☹️

 

...... but probably more exciting than between North Hanover Street and North Frederick Street.

[The Johnster]

Very much in the Ventnor mould, Barry Harbour, which included a flat 90 degree crossing of the breakwater line just past the tunnel entrance, itself cut through rock tunnels...  Only used to connect with steamers and never saw a regular passenger service, but it lasted until around 1970. 

 

In pre-grouping days, practice at Cardiff (General) station booking office for anyone booking through to Paris was to route them via the soonest available arrival in Paris, which depended on the time of day and the state of the tide.  Obvious alternatives to Dover or Boulogne were Newhaven-Dieppe and Portsmouth-Cherbourg, but if you turned up at the ticket office window at certain times of day and tide on certain dates, you'd be shown to the Riverside platforms and routed via Barry Harbour, Barry Railway steamer to Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset & Dorset Joint to Bournemouth where you changed to the LSWR for a few miles to Poole, steamer to St Malo, and thence to Montparnasse.  I doubt if anyone ever undertook this ordeal, certainly nobody who knew what they were in for ever would have, but it was possible...

 

Utter insanity.

Edited August 20, 2023 by The Johnster

[johnofwessex]

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Very much in the Ventnor mould, Barry Harbour, which included a flat 90 degree crossing of the breakwater line just past the tunnel entrance, itself cut through rock tunnels...  Only used to connect with steamers and never saw a regular passenger service, but it lasted until around 1970. 

 

In pre-grouping days, practice at Cardiff (General) station booking office for anyone booking through to Paris was to route them via the soonest available arrival in Paris, which depended on the time of day and the state of the tide.  Obvious alternatives to Dover or Boulogne were Newhaven-Dieppe and Portsmouth-Cherbourg, but if you turned up at the ticket office window at certain times of day and tide on certain dates, you'd be shown to the Riverside platforms and routed via Barry Harbour, Barry Railway steamer to Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset & Dorset Joint to Bournemouth where you changed to the LSWR for a few miles to Poole, steamer to St Malo, and thence to Montparnasse.  I doubt if anyone ever undertook this ordeal, certainly nobody who knew what they were in for ever would have, but it was possible...

 

Utter insanity.

 

It is suggested that the Barry Railway steamer Barry was intended for a year round Barry to Burnham on Sea service BUT I am not aware that Barry Railway ships ever called at the pier at Burnham on Sea, that was the province of S&DJR ships.

 

I have seen a photo of P&A Campbells Waverley alongside Burnham on Sea & another of one of the bigger Barry Railway steamers doing what looks like unloading passengers into small boats at Burnham.

 

I suspect that by the time PS Barry was built the idea of a Barry to Burnham on Sea service was obviously bonkers, especially with the opening of the Severn Tunnel 

[009 micro modeller]

16 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Not the most exciting model, though .................................. unless you fancy a diorama of a class 33 smash ! ☹️

 

...... but probably more exciting than between North Hanover Street and North Frederick Street.

Also, railways with walls/cuttings on all four sides are not necessarily ideal for models unless you want to look down onto the layout (although there was once a very effective diorama at Swanley that did this, as part of the Dave Brewer ‘bridge’ challenge).

 

Barbican in London might be quite good, especially if modelled before the withdrawal of Thameslink services and their predecessors.

Edited August 20, 2023 by 009 micro modeller

[The Johnster]

As I understand it, the pontoon at Barry and pier at Burnham were to be available at all states of the tide, the perennial problem facing anyone who attempts to institute a timetabled passenger ferry service in the Bristol Channel.  On spring tides, the tide goes out further as well as comes in further, and the timing of the high water points advances by around 30-40 minutes per tide, there are two a day, so a pier where there was twenty feet of water under your keel today may well be a hundred yards from the shoreline the same time next week.  Only one pier was avaiable at all time, Ilfracombe.  Burnham silted up quite rapidly after it's building and failed to meet low-tide expectations.  The S&DJ promoted it hopefully as a resort to rival Weston-Super-Mare, but the truth is that it is a bleak and exposed outpost even compared to Weston (which is no fun on a wet day), and a failure in that respect; anyone going to the seaside on the S&DJ was heading for Bournemouth!  The Barry was of course phenomenally successful at promoting Barry Island in this respect though, a barren lump of sand dunes and a rabbit warren.  It was always a daytrip destination, though, even from the Midlands, with few of the seafront hotels, guest houses, and, later, caravans of other resorts, at least until Butlitz set up there...

 

The S&DJ steamers were cargo vessels that could 'take the hard', happily sitting on mud or sand in dried-out harbours.

 

The Barry was certainly enterprising, and fiercely competitive, and was regarded by the existing established South Wales railway companies, the Bute docks, and the passenger pleasure cruise operators as something of a pirate, siphoning off traffic that they thought was rightfully theirs by hopping valleys with bridges and tunnels.  The Taff Vale, Rhymney, and Brecon & Merthyr were it's victims, and to an extent the GW's Tondu network after the building of the Vale of Glamorgan line, though that enterprise failed to provide the levels of traffic hoped for until the building of Aberthaw power station, and the LNW via Pontllanfraith.  It's coal traffic was immense, but it served not a single colliery and it's main line ran through sparsely populated rural countryside.  Happy to tap off other railways' traffic, it strenuoulsy resisted the Taff Vale's intended connection from Swanbridge to Barry Docks.  In the light of this, is is perhaps not surprising that it promoted such a bonkers Cardiff-Paris service! 

 

It overreached itself with the passenger steamers, Llanbradach Viaduct, and the Vale of Glamorgan, but what it indubitably got right was dock capacity, at a time when the existing ports were jammed with ships and more anchored in the Roads waiting for berths.  New docks were built at Cardiff and Newport to cope with exponentially increasing traffic, but were at capacity as soon as they opened, such was the continual increase in the demand for export coal wharfage.  The Barry built longer, wider, and deeper, sea locks that could handle the bigger ships that were going to be common once the century turned, and provided sufficient hydraulic power on it's docks for operating coal hoists, somthing that had proved a problem at the older ports.  What survives of the railway is the Cogan branch, a vital part of the 'Valley Lines' commuter network, and the VoG, on the strength of the increase in population at Llantwit Major.  The main line is gone, utterly, except as a ghost on OS maps and part of the A4232 link road.

 

The tunnel between Barry Island and Barry Pier stations was on a gradient but dead straight, and after closure was used by the local gun club as an indoor firing range, a brilliant idea I thought, fun for the gun people and very effective noise suppression!

[Wickham Green too]

3 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

... Barbican in London might be quite good, ... if modelled before the withdrawal of Thameslink services and their predecessors.

Indeed - there's a bit more width there ........ Farringdon would be even better with multiple levels and a junction - though the roof would be problematic.

[Rugd1022]

The former West London Line station at Chelsea & Fulham had (has) overbridges at each end, the remains of the platforms are still extant today...

 

 

It's a fascinating line that was once packed with railway infrastructure and as hinted at in a few other threads would make for some wonderful layouts.

[009 micro modeller]

23 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Indeed - there's a bit more width there ........ Farringdon would be even better with multiple levels and a junction - though the roof would be problematic.

The roof might help to create an interesting scenic break though.

[Michael Hodgson]

Or the bottom of one of the two 20 yard diameter ventilation shafts for Kilsby tunnel ... OO layout in a large plant pot perhaps ?

There's also several ventilation shafts of even smaller diameter.

 

 

[melmerby]

Birmingham Central Goods station

Double track line from tunnel straight into yard:

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrcgy912.htm

 

Even a couple of glimpses of the West Suburban line as it flits between tunnels.

 

The trackwork would be a good excuse to learn Templot!

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On 31/12/2022 at 21:57, Michael Hodgson said:

Welwyn North Tunnel to Welwyn South Tunnel on the ECML.

Wonderful location to spend a summer's day with friends in my youth.

 

But for operational interest a little further South, Hatfield. A quarter mile from the ECML appearing around the curve to the South to the St Albans road bridge garnished with hoardings (not a bus to be seen) to the North. In that you can pack in an eccentrically offset platform layout, three branchlines, busy goods yards, loco shed with turntable and a Prime Minister's waiting room.

[luckymucklebackit]

On 19/08/2023 at 21:02, pH said:

Glasgow Queen Street low level line, between North Hanover Street and North Frederick Street.

 

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/55.862211,+-4.249009/@55.8622016,-4.2492558,19z/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d55.8622107!4d-4.249009

 

(Edit to add: On the west side of the station, too  - between Dundas Street and Buchanan Street.)

 

Given the popularity of the High Level Station as a model, I am surprised that the addition of the low level platforms hasn't been tried.

 

Talking of Queen Street High Level, there is the somewhat similar Liverpool Central as an option, http://disused-stations.org.uk/l/liverpool_central_hl/index.shtml.

 

A very compact layout for a city centre.

 

Jim

[Dagworth]

On 19/08/2023 at 09:25, ruggedpeak said:

And of course Ipswich station is a well documented classic. Image K. Partlow via WNXX

 

 

 

 

Not too sure that the other scenic break at London Road makes for a particularly easy model, it's 60 feet away  in 4mm scale. Didn't stop me though 

 

[dpgibbons]

Some fascinating locations here. I particularly liked Liverpool Central, with its turntable in a nook. But those that give you just a glimpse of the tracks would not be practical as layouts, unless you were happy to have most of the trackwork offstage.