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

[Nearholmer]

If “cramped urban” is allowed, then you can certainly increase the track density without it becoming utterly implausible, but I couldn’t think of anywhere aside from perhaps Norwich (where we invented a cramped urban terminus in another thread) that might justify such. Maybe I don’t know E Stanglia as well as is needed.

[Izzy]

There has been a link posted to my 2mm layout, but I also have a P4 layout on a 5’ board with a 30” Fiddle yard, so 3m x 1/2m seems more than enough. I would suggest based on my experiences with small layouts that splitting it into 2m for the station and 1m for the fiddle would be a good balance. Having enough FY space is as important as the station area if you want any worthwhile use out of it, with at least three roads (tracks). Easy access is also best I find. 

 

A factory where covered goods wagons - vans - make daily visits is a good source of traffic. Sugar beet would not really figure in a town station, more very rural ones. Coal would be a staple though. 
 

[Nearholmer]

I just had a look at your 2mm layout; incredible!

 

To me, 2mm finescale is another planet altogether, a place where people manipulate components smaller than the burrs that I file off things.

 

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[DCB]

My thinking is the terminus would have been early railway era and never upgraded, to new fangled facing point locks and semaphore signals and when the through line bypassed it so it became used for goods like Witney or the old York station, then forced back into passenger use after the town had grown up round it and the through line closed,  I reckon sundries in vans and all sorts of oddments in opens would be unloaded and loaded  in chaotic confusion in the platforms between infrequent passenger trains.  The Engine shed would  probably have been used for goods or to store surplus Tram engines or similar,and the turntable left to rot while ancient 6 wheelers creak back and forth towards civilisation behind at best a J15, or occasionally in a burst of generosity a 3 set of short suburbans turns up when one of the six wheelers wheels get worn smooth and the fitters have to file more flats on them. 

[Nick Holliday]

Back in the seventies I found Richard Chown's original Castle Rackrent layout an inspiration, despite being a 7mm Irish layout, whereas I was a 4mm Brighton enthusiast. It seems ideal for the OP's layout. It measured 16' 4" x 3' 0", which reduces to 9' 3" x 1' 8½" in 4mm.

I envisage that this would represent an early Victorian terminal station, many of which were initially provided with turntables, a la Bembridge as they operated using small tender locos as tank engines hadn't really been adopted.  In this scenario, with the alternative passenger station provided, there was no need to upgrade the turntable, although it would limit the use of tender locos, but the GER were noted for their short tenders, and a 40' turntable would accommodate a GER 0-6-0, just!

Richard provided a flour mill as part of the backscene hiding the fiddleyard, in keeping with the rural Irish idyll, but I envisage something a bit more robust, perhaps a two storey goods shed, as the LBSCR liked to build in rather unlikely locations, in line with the dedicated goods usage suggested, or perhaps a suitable industrial building, such as a sugar processing plant (plenty of incoming traffic in season) or an engineering works (Garratts of Leiston); Dursley provides an interesting example of an extensive manufacturing plant in a rural area.

I wonder if the re-opening of the passenger facilities might just be because the town has spread over the years, and the provision of a shuttle passenger service to the main station became worthwhile, or a new town was built for London overspill, as Becontree and Morden, although predating the more likely Stevenage and Harlow new towns, which were post-WW2, or perhaps a third Garden City for the twenties.  The old station buildings would have been used for other purposes in the interim, so perhaps they would be fenced off, and a small ticket office provided instead, on the exit path.

[Nearholmer]

In the proposals that I provided, I kept the kickback in front of the FY short, because I understand the layout will only be accessible from the front, but if the OP is tall, or prepared to invest in a hop-up to allow reaching over foreground scenery, and maybe uses a removable or ‘flying’ back-scene, being able to use that extra length can add considerable interest.

 

If it were mine, I’d use the hop-up and put scenery along the entire front.

 

 

Edited December 28, 2022 by Nearholmer

[NZRedBaron]

To be frank, I have a lot of ideas, and not much space to work with.

 

But if I ever got the big room-space for it, I'd be able to fit in a lot more of the ideas I had; for instance, some of the industries I had in mind for the area around Christchurch Road station were the inevitable coal merchants within the goods yard, a building supplies firm (selling bricks, timber and glass for construction work), a brewery, and a few other bits and bobs of light industry like a cooper's workshop, up to and potentially including a small boat yard- that last one is in part because there's a privately owned tramway (akin to the Wisbech and Upwell) running out to a fishing village a few miles away on the coast, which also connects to some of the local farms, which is where most of the agricultural traffic comes from (wheat, sugar beet, potatoes and other vegetable crops).

Edited December 29, 2022 by NZRedBaron

[DCB]

I like the idea of an early days station down graded to goods and then pressed back into passenger service. However I suspect some modellers don't appreciate just how small some of the old stations from the early days of the railways were.  or how hemmed in they became with the increasing urban spread.   By the 1880s even tiny BLTs had loops holding 40 wagons or more, but back before 1865 or so, incidentally also the date of most of those ubiquitous Church of England Church schools  and the beginning of numeracy and literacy being the norm not the preserve of the middle classes, many termini were short and many had to be rapidly modernised  to cope with modern six wheeled locos and six and even eight wheel coaches.    The NLS OS maps show some of these changes, and I attach two of Cheltenham GWR, both pre Malvern road and the Honeybourne line but they show how much the passenger station was extended towards the town and even more dramatically the goods yard . The early one looks straight out of a Hornby Dublo track plans book of 1955.

 

Edited December 30, 2022 by DCB