May 2023 Railway Modeller railway of the month can it be operated? Is the plan wrong?

[DCB]

There is a layout based around Camden  WCML as the Railway of the Month.  It represents the approaches to Euston without modelling Euston. A great concept .  Highly scenic very impressive visually but the text says the storage sidings are not finished and from the plan I cannot see how it can be operated,   I can see how a down train can terminate in the storage sidings and reverse still in correct order with a new loco as an Up service  but the Up service does not appear to be able to access the storage sidings except by reversing.

Likewise posed shots of a freight in a cutting suggest that would have to run wrong road further round the layout.

It may be a drawing error, but what does anyone else think?

I tend to out ability to operate prototypically  towards the top of my layout criteria and my loft layout had a very similar design objective.

Have I read the plan wrong?

[ardbealach]

May I am also being a pedant on this layout?   The cover image on the RM shows telegraph poles on both sides of the tracks with different numbers of arms on the poles.   It is unlikely that the wires would cross the tracks.  There is a pole up on the bank over the tunnel mouth.  Would the wires not have been gathered together into a cable tray / conduit and then fixed to the tunnel for the length of the tunnel?  (Alisdair) 

[Wheatley]

As drawn there's no way of getting out of the FY onto the Up Main without running wrong line all the way to Welton Hampstead. I suspect the hidden bits have been simplified on the drawing and there are a couple of crossovers not shown. 

 

Oh for that much space ! "In 2009 I found an unusual house offering a room 51 feet long ...". I don't think any part of my entire house and garden is 51 feet long !

 

Kilsby Tunnel's telegraph poles appear to be correct - https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrkt3555.htm

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Wheatley

[t-b-g]

I don't purchase RM very often and don't have this edition so I don't know whose model appears but I am aware of at least three layouts which portray the Camden Bank/Camden Shed/Goods yard area of the approaches to Euston, so it is actually quite a common prototype for a layout. There is a thread on RMWeb on one of them, that I have been lucky enough to visit and see in the flesh. So that makes four models now, that is unless the layout in the magazine is one of the ones I know about.

 

 

[Foulounoux]

Up trains can access the fiddle yard via the facing crossover before the tunnel on the lhs of the plan 

[Foulounoux]

The author also indicates in the final section The Future that there is further work to do in order to operate it fully as desired 

[Hibelroad]

I haven’t followed the layout plan, I’m not a fan of large meandering layouts, but I was also struck by the immensity of the room. Searching online failed to find houses costing millions which actually have a 51 foot long room. 

[Wheatley]

I suspect it is a large attic or similar. Although it sounds more like a ropewalk !

[DCB]

Anticlockwise ( Down) trains can reverse but not clockwise (Up) trains the way I read it

 

8 hours ago, Foulounoux said:

Up trains can access the fiddle yard via the facing crossover before the tunnel on the lhs of the plan 

By reversing?

 

[Harlequin]

To get from from Up to Storage without reversing, looks pretty simple (like @Foulounoux says):

 

From Clockwise Up Main, take the facing crossover at the far left of the plan just before diving into the tunnel, then cross onto the hidden upper balloon loop inside the tunnel and you are then directly into any of the 16 fiddle yard roads you choose. So there's the no real wrong road running, it just briefly crosses the Down main outside the tunnel mouth.

 

The same train (with new loco at the other end) can be brought out running Down by leaving the left hand end of the FY, taking the same upper balloon loop line and joining the Down main just inside the tunnel mouth.

 

So far so good but if you wanted the train to leave the FY running Up, I can't see how that would be done without lengthy wrong road running. Ideally you'd expect there to be a crossover in the hidden low level tracks at the top right of the plan but it's very congested there and it may have got lost when the drawing was tidied up for publishing.

 

Or have I missed something?

 

[Flying Pig]

18 hours ago, DCB said:

Anticlockwise ( Down) trains can reverse but not clockwise (Up) trains the way I read it

 

By reversing?

 

 

We're tripping over different uses of tbe word "reverse" in this thread. 

 

Down trains can indeed run through the storage roads and round the balloon loop to change direction.  Up trains can use part of the loop to reach the storage roads, but cannot run right round it to change direction, except by going backwards.

 

But I'm not really sure why the balloon loop is there at all.  Trains from Euston don't get turned end for end by the layout of the WCML in normal working, so all you really need to do is stop in the storage roads and put a fresh loco on the other end to represent what would be seen from the lineside.

[Joseph_Pestell]

It's really quite common to see errors in the trackplans shown in the magazines. A recent report on Pete Waterman's Leamington was particularly poor in this regard.

 

The plan for this version of Camden was not the clearest and the fiddleyard an unusual design which does limit the operating potential.

 

As Flying Pig notes, many trains to and from Euston can not simply be turned end to end. There was a lot of remarshalling - either at the sidings on Camden Bank or further out at Willesden Stonebridge Park.

 

I think that Kilsby may be one of the WCML locations that had separate intermediate block boxes on Fast and Slow lines. I will check on SRS.

[The Stationmaster]

I only had a good look at the plan today and the first thing I wondered about it was if a crossover had been omitted at the hidden sidings exit/entrances at the left hand end?   The balloon loop also puzzled me and left me wondering if that is in fact how it is worked with the loop part simply being put in to join the two accesses at that end of the fiddle yard plus making it easy to turn train engines as needed?  Don't forget that trains entering from one direction have to leave in the other direction so engines need to be turned somehow.

 

[Flying Pig]

50 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I only had a good look at the plan today and the first thing I wondered about it was if a crossover had been omitted at the hidden sidings exit/entrances at the left hand end?   The balloon loop also puzzled me and left me wondering if that is in fact how it is worked with the loop part simply being put in to join the two accesses at that end of the fiddle yard plus making it easy to turn train engines as needed?  Don't forget that trains entering from one direction have to leave in the other direction so engines need to be turned somehow.

 

 

The back road of the storage yard is connected to a turntable and loco shed.

[The Stationmaster]

10 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

The back road of the storage yard is connected to a turntable and loco shed.

I agree - but would every engine be sent light back to 'Camden' for turning?   There are sidings off the balloon loop for some purpose.   Overall however adding one crossover makes the left hand end woirk so I suspect the plan rather than the layout design.

Edited April 29, 2023 by The Stationmaster

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

I agree - but would every engine be sent light back to 'Camden' for turning?   There are sidings off the balloon loop for some purpose.   Overall however adding one crossover makes the left hand end woirk so I suspect the plan rather than the layout design.

 

Camden is represented on the other side of the layout.  I suspect the other turntable and sidings are a scenic part of the fiddle yard, rather like the balloon loop itself.