oo Planning a Grouping era, station diorama-type layout in OO, would like some advice if possible

[NZRedBaron]

Hello folks; wanted to ask for some thoughts and advice on something that might actually be kind of ambitious.

 

I've been thinking for a while about making my first layout as suggested in the title, and even come up with a short history of the station and the town it serves, but I was also looking for some guidance about the layout of facilities and suchlke.

 

The setting is a fictitious market town in East Anglia during the Grouping Era (mid-1930's to just before the outbreak of WWII) called "Market Trenholme" (named after a friend of mine in the US of States), and the station itself is named "Christ Church Road"; the history is that it was the original station in the town when the railways arrived in the mid-Victorian era, but within a decade or so, it had been downgraded to 'Goods Only' after a new station was built in the middle of the town- and then, ironically, had its' passenger services re-instated (albeit in a more limited capacity) during and after WWI- most passenger traffic taking the form of a rake of Hatton's Genesis six-wheel coaches with the occasional Gresley non-corridors as strengtheners. Goods traffic on the other hand is mostly coal and building materials arriving (timber, bricks and the like), with agricultural products (like sugar-beet, fish and beer) departing out into the wider network.

 

What other things should I consider for it?

[Jeff Smith]

Is it a terminal or through station?  If the latter will it be a roundy layout?

How much space to you have?

If a terminal station will it have loco handling facilities, ie, engine shed, water and coal, turntable, etc?

[AndyID]

Take a look at Stratford St Mary in the latest BRM (FEB 2023). It's early BR. Nothing had changed much by then from the 30's.

[NZRedBaron]

5 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

Is it a terminal or through station?  If the latter will it be a roundy layout?

How much space to you have?

If a terminal station will it have loco handling facilities, ie, engine shed, water and coal, turntable, etc?

My plan is that it's a terminal station on an end-to-end setup- it was built more on the edge of the town, while the 'new' main station is more in the centre of the town, on a new-built 'spur'.

 

It's going to have to be on a fairly small area (long and thin) as I don't have much space to work with here in my bedroom; let's say about 3m long and about 1/2m wide at most.

 

In terms of servicing, it has very limited provisions on the 'public-facing' side, so to speak- one or maybe two platform-side water cranes with underground tanks, and perhaps some coal staiths in the goods yard.

 

I don't want to just copy the "Ashburton" layout plan, for the record.

[MyRule1]

Haverhill South (Colne Valley) would seem to meet some of your criteria, but never had it's passenger service reinstated.

 

I could offer a list of things to consider but at the end of the day this is a hobby to be enjoyed. Build within your skill level,learn as you go along. Continue to ask questions on RMweb.

 

Good luck and successful modeling.

 

 

[Harlequin]

In the topic title you use the word "diorama" so does that mean you don't intend to operate the layout - i.e. more like what some people call a "photo plank"?

 

If you are going to operate it what are you planning to do for a fiddle yard? ("Fiddle yard" in the sense of somewhere for trains to come from and go to at the very minimum.) Does that also have to be accommodated in the 3m length?

 

[NZRedBaron]

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

In the topic title you use the word "diorama" so does that mean you don't intend to operate the layout - i.e. more like what some people call a "photo plank"?

 

If you are going to operate it what are you planning to do for a fiddle yard? ("Fiddle yard" in the sense of somewhere for trains to come from and go to at the very minimum.) Does that also have to be accommodated in the 3m length?

 

It's more that I couldn't think of any word other than 'diorama' for it, to be honest.

 

I figure that a couple of sidings to fit the short trains that I have planned will do; if I had to ballpark an estimate, maybe little less than 1m to fit the passenger train, and the short 'daily pick-up' on the other siding.

[Jeff Smith]

I honestly think that 3m including FY is a bit tight in OO.  Have you already committed to OO by buying stock?  This size would be great for TT:120 but the sort of stock you are thinking of may not be available for many years......

 

I have 2 shelf layouts, a 9' BLT in 4mm (P4) with no FY and a 10' O-16.5 with 3' FY/turntable.  The latter is all tank locos and 4 wheel wagons and coaches so interesting to shunt.  The 4mm has one platform face big enough for a tank and 2 bogie coaches with run around.  A bay platform with end loading ramp.  And a goods siding with shed and water crane.  This is P4 so points are B6 with a 3 way to save space.  The third 3' board is a scenic single line but could be a FY...

 

I mention these just to give you an idea of what is possible in 3m.

[Harlequin]

5 hours ago, NZRedBaron said:

It's more that I couldn't think of any word other than 'diorama' for it, to be honest.

 

I figure that a couple of sidings to fit the short trains that I have planned will do; if I had to ballpark an estimate, maybe little less than 1m to fit the passenger train, and the short 'daily pick-up' on the other siding.

 

Sounds like you might use a back corner of your 3m for a hidden fiddle yard with the backscene in front of it and some further scenery in front of that. The entrance/exit to the FY would be disguised by some buildings or an overbridge. That is a well-known formula but if the layout fills one side of the room with walls behind and bounding the ends then it makes the FY difficult to access.

 

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

I honestly think that 3m including FY is a bit tight in OO

 

Really?   A smallish 0-6-0 plus two 52' carriages and a van is less than 700mm in 4mm scale.  I've just sketched a single platform terminus for such a train easily in 3m, including an 800mm sector plate and an ample runround.  Not worth posting, but that wasn't because it was excessively cramped (it just wasn't very good!).  I hid the exit behind a kickback loco shed but left most of the FY exposed for access.

 

[Jeff Smith]

19 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Really?   A smallish 0-6-0 plus two 52' carriages and a van is less than 700mm in 4mm scale.  I've just sketched a single platform terminus for such a train easily in 3m, including an 800mm sector plate and an ample runround.  Not worth posting, but that wasn't because it was excessively cramped (it just wasn't very good!).  I hid the exit behind a kickback loco shed but left most of the FY exposed for access.

 

It's not so much the size of the stock but the track formation.  Unless maybe you are using Setrack or Hornby, three turnouts in a row soon uses up space.  The escape for the loop should probably be long enough for a small tender engine and the loop long enough to be useful.  It all depends how cramped you want the layout to look.

[The Johnster]

A 700mm long train needs something like another 350-400mm (depending on the size of the loco) at the buffers (town) end of the station so that the train can be set back clear enough for the loco to be uncoupled, draw forward into the loco release headshunt and set back through the runaround turnouts with enough room to clear the stock it has left in the platform, and while it doesn’t need quite as much at the ‘country’ end because the loco headshunts out onto the running line you still need to allow about 200mm for the turnouts assuming Peco Streamline medium.  1,400mm in all, more or less half the total length and we haven’t allowed for the goods yard or any loco facilities, all of which need to be added on somewhere, and then you need to allow for your longest trains in the fiddle yard, and 2 52’ and a van isn’t very long; if that’s the longest it equates to about six 9’ or 10’  wheelbase wagons including the brake van.  And if there isn’t enough room for your longest trains to shunt clear of the first turnout, you’ll need to keep a sector plate road empty as a headshunt to be able to shunt the station.  
 

3m length soon gets eaten up if you don’t want the thing to look excessively cramped.  I think it’s possible in 4mm with the train lengths you suggest, but only just and then only by use of a sector plate fy; a conventional one would be too cramped because you’d have to sacrifice layout space to the fy.  My own layout is 6m long and accommodates 3-coach trains behind large tank engines and 9-wagon freights, the best compromise I can manage, but has a bit of space to avoid looking cramped and some 1.5m plain scenic running line in front of a colliery.  
 

A good scenic tip is to make the platform appreciably longer than the minimum needed to accommodate your longest train.  This is a common feature of real stations, evokes a feeling of space, and, in conjunction with a loco release headshunt long enough to accommodate a couple of vans as well as the loco, allows the vans to be left for unloading and trains to be called into the platform by shunting signals after they’ve been stopped at the inner home without trailing off the platform end so long as the country end loop turnouts are not fouled.  It  makes for varied and interesting operation, a tail traffic element, but you may not have room for this in 3m. 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Well, if you don’t try to ram too much in, a 00 layout of the given dimensions needn’t look cramped.

 

Have you seen “Old Parrock”? A very evocative layout in less than half the stated length and slightly less width, excluding FY.

 

What about the archetypal vicarage study layout in the form of Rev Denny’s ‘Stony Stratford’, wasn’t that three boards each 2ft 9in, one of which was the FY? In fact, I’d recommend anyone to look at his articles about building that layout in back numbers of RM, because the whole thing is so well thought through and described, and it didn’t look cramped. [I went back and checked, and the best version of this concept, which he used multiple times with different names, that he built was ‘Leighton Buzzard Mark I’, which he described in articles in RM in 1959 and 1960, and it still looks good today!]

 

See if you can get Harlequin involved in this discussion, he has a genius for layout design.

 

Doh! He’s involved already!

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Bembridge IoW has been modelled several times, and it makes a good example of small, but not cramped.

 

The platform, between the two red lines, scales out at 880mm in 00 scale. 
 

The real thing hosted trains up to three  bogie coaches.

 

 

Some other really tiny termini that have inspired layouts:

 

Loch Tay

Holywell Town 

Dyserth

Heath Park Halt

St Combs

Tollesbury Pier

Hemyock

Brill

 

In his book “An approach to model railway layout design” Iain Rice gives a couple of BLT layouts that look operationally worthwhile in well under 3 metres, and in his various works CJF gives many, although most could do with being de-cluttered. SP25 in the most recent “60 Plans” is good as it stands though, being a slight development of Denny’s ‘Stony Stratford’. He gives exactly the same, but stretched to be too long for these purposes in the PSL track plans book.

 

The recent build (2018?) based on Roy Link’s “The Art of Compromise” is a good one to look at too.

 

Apologies for rattling on, but I find the assertion that 3m is somehow not sufficient to be so at odds with what has been achieved by others in the past that I feel compelled to counter it!

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Jeff Smith]

Yes, I have to agree that Iain Rice's book is very good and inspirational, and covers construction methods too.

[Nearholmer]

Not to be taken too seriously, this unfinished essay is 2.2 metres long by 0.42 metres wide, and the three road traverser fiddle-yard that goes with it is 1.04 metres long. The train of three six-wheelers and a Terrier fits the FY deck (0.94 metres) like a glove. The layout can accommodate bigger tank engines, but anything larger than an 0-4-4T or an 0-6-0T makes it’s small size a bit too obvious.

 

This is 0 gauge, not 00, and if directly copied into 00, using the same 38” radius for the points, shortened to within the OP’s available 3.0 metres, it would be a nicely spacious layout.

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[RobinofLoxley]

48 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Not to be taken too seriously, this unfinished essay is 2.2 metres long by 0.42 metres wide, and the three road traverser fiddle-yard that goes with it is 1.04 metres long. The train of three six-wheelers and a Terrier fits the FY deck (0.94 metres) like a glove. The layout can accommodate bigger tank engines, but anything larger than an 0-4-4T or an 0-6-0T makes it’s small size a bit too obvious.

 

This is 0 gauge, not 00, and if directly copied into 00, using the same 38” radius for the points, shortened to within the OP’s available 3.0 metres, it would be a nicely spacious layout.

 

 

 

That may be so but doesn't get very close to the original brief.

 

[Nearholmer]

Given that the original brief appears to be “00 BLT including FY in 3m x 0.5m”, if rendered in 00 it would.

 

But, my main reason for showing it was to counter the suggestion that 3m is too short to allow the brief to be met.

 

Anyway, here’s a nice little East Anglian BLT that I snapped at an exhibition back in the summer. I’ve unfortunately lost my note of who built it.

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Here’s a bash, inspired by elements of Hadleigh. I like the ancient wooden overall roof, and I imagine that it was retained as the goods shed during the non-passenger years, and that the whole place now looks distinctly tired and worn out. http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/hadleigh/index.shtml
 

 

 

 

 

[Flying Pig]

60" in 2mm scale:

 

 

[NZRedBaron]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Here’s a bash, inspired by elements of Hadleigh. I like the ancient wooden overall roof, and I imagine that it was retained as the goods shed during the non-passenger years, and that the whole place now looks distinctly tired and worn out. http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/hadleigh/index.shtml
 

 

 

 

 

You know what? I think this one will work quite nicely.

[RobinofLoxley]

That layout is a very well proportioned piece, although a passenger train leaving the station may be already in the fiddle yard before the last carriage has crosssed the turnout? (Referring to the O gauge layout photos not the plan above).

 

I can imagine a totally rundown scene but also something where, since passenger services have been reinstated, and the site had enough freight to keep it going in hard times, there is also activity aplenty. The OP talks about a variety of freight types. To catch that a decent yard is needed.

 

I have sketched out a bit more detail than usual. My thinking is that the original station had a runaround loop and a single siding, maybe the freight followed a bit later or was extended - first a single siding, then the kickback came later. The station may have had a goods section at one time, but its no longer there. Then the new line, single track, was added, bypassing the old station. It wasn't specific in the brief that the new line was on-scene but it can be, and I thought that it might be operated on the layout as a shuttle; it can just hide in the tunnel and scoot back to the yard every few hours. The same train could visit the old station as the reinstated service. In the meantime freight can come and go, using the loop to access the sidings.

 

At first it seemed a challenge to fit everything in; taking up one complete section of the 3M with a yard uses up a lot of space. However, provided everything works well I can see three loco operation, one for the passenger services, one on-scene  all the time and the third briging stock on and off, so that locos stop on the turnouts and the full length of yard siding is available for stock.

Edited December 27, 2022 by RobinofLoxley
addition

[Nearholmer]

54 minutes ago, RobinofLoxley said:

although a passenger train leaving the station may be already in the fiddle yard before the last carriage has crosssed the turnout?

That’s the real problem/limitation/challenge with only 3 metres. It is possible to get free space between the first/last turnout and the FY, but only by making the trains really short, I think.

 

I’ve now devised a reason for the WW1 reinstatement of passenger services: the county agricultural engineering firm took on munitions work, so a simple platform was erected for workers’ trains. In this version, the original terminus serves only as a goods shed, rather than coming back into passenger use.

 

Having a wagon turntable in the scene seems important to me, they were very common in East Anglian yards, and they suggest the ancientness of the old terminus.

 

 

 

The old building could be based heavily on the station at Aldeburgh, and the engineering works on bits of Garretts at Leiston, which had its own internal railway, justifying a “works shunting engine” popping on scene.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/a/aldeburgh/

 

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

Aside from discussion of track plan and space, there's the question of authenticity of atmosphere. I'd start by not thinking "grouping-era station" or "LNER in East Anglia" but instead thinking "Great Eastern Railway in the 1930s". You already have a good backstory for the location; build on that. You've got an original GE terminus of the 1850s or 60s, maybe. What would the GE have added during the period it was a goods station only? Finally, what would the GE have added in WWI to reinstate passenger services - and why? Munitions factory?

 

I'd bet my bottom dollar that the only thing LNER in the picture would be a handful of group standard wagons. You've mentioned the Genesis 6-wheelers, standing for GER 6-wheelers - which fits with the workmen's trains scenario. 

[DCB]

How about the original station built by the Lynn and Trenholme c1852 was just west of the River Trent which itself was west of the New Cut dug in the late 18th century c 1790 to  1815 to drain the adjacent marsh land.  By the 1880s the reclaimed land east of the Trent was crying out for a  rail line  so the Trentham and Norf**k extension railway was incorporated and proceeded to lay its line with the utmost economy, leaving the L&T just  short of Trentham terminus crossing the Trent on a swing bridge and the new cut on one of the last timber trestles constructed in the UK.   A Passenger platform was erected East of the Trent as trains now ran through between Norwich and Lynn the old station became the goods station.   Fast forward the swing bridge subsided the trestle rotted and the LNER Chucked in the towel and closed the line to through traffic so all traffic reverted to the old cramped unmodernised Trentham Market station which had even had it's original double track approach from the west singled. The track was in bad shape so only the lightest locos  could be used.    My adaptation of Nearholmer's  plan,  Over line signal box to hide FY entry,  Dyer style kick back FY fed by sector plate.   primitive signalling, singled approach...  For a cramped urban setting.

Edited December 27, 2022 by DCB