N exchange sidings

[martinapsid]

looking to build small colliery exchange sidings in n gauge mid/late 60s so i can  run steam and diesel locos and 16/20 ton and brake vans any ideas where i can get photos track plans etc i have started to look on line.thank Martin

[stivesnick]

Hi Martin 

 

I have considerd doing something similar in the past so good luck with this project. 

 

My thought process would be as follows:

 

1. Decide which part of the country you want to model as there were coal mines all over the country from Kent to the Forest of Dean and up to Scotland.

2. Decide if you want to include part of a main line/ branch line with your layout or have your facility at the end of a dedicated branch line.

3. Check a rail atlas for suitable sites in your chosen area - If you don't have an atlas ask the question on thois forum and someone can check a map for you. 

4. The national library of scotland has an extensive map collection covering various dates including the 1960s that you can view on line . The 1.2500 maps will allow you to see the track plan at a particular location.

5. Once you have decided on a likley location then worth checking for photos on line or if there are specialist railway books that cover that route/location. Middleton Press and Oakwood Press have ranges of several hundred books that cover many of routes in the country.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Nick 

[martinapsid]

Hi Nick thanks for your through's about the exchange sidings.My thoughts are the Welsh valleys as i live in South Wales and from photos i have seen some of the sidings are away from the colliery and can by just a run round loop with a few sidings which from a cost point of view is good as ive got a oo gauge lay out as well!Martin

[swampy]

1 hour ago, martinapsid said:

Hi Nick thanks for your through's about the exchange sidings.My thoughts are the Welsh valleys as i live in South Wales and from photos i have seen some of the sidings are away from the colliery and can by just a run round loop with a few sidings which from a cost point of view is good as ive got a oo gauge lay out as well!Martin

In his book "Model Railway Layout Design", Iain Rice showed a multi-level plan for a South Wales based pit, "Deep Navigation Colliery".

 

Pete

[sir douglas]

Industrial steam could still be found in many places in the late 60'S even into the 70's

 

A thread which you might like

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by sir douglas

[Pacific231G]

57 minutes ago, swampy said:

In his book "Model Railway Layout Design", Iain Rice showed a multi-level plan for a South Wales based pit, "Deep Navigation Colliery".

 

Pete

That's interesting as Deep Navigation was a real colliery in the Treharris district. I wonder if Ian Rice's plan was based on it or if he just liked the name but the real pit was quite a large one . This map is from 1915

I assume that it was this section on two levels that Ian Rice was inspired by

 

I'm conscious of Deep Navigation because in 1991 I made a film for the BBC's "Careering Ahead" programme about the employment prospects of the miners at the nearby Penallta Colliery which was due to close that November (several months later). Potential employers were being taken down on visits to see the range of high level and transferable skills of the miners and I remember walking about a mile from the shaft to the coalface clutching three headlamps (plus my own) to give us light to film by (with a clockwork camera) and they were heavy!

 

I was told (rightly or wrongly) by the miners themselves that Penallta, which was a very profitable pit, was only closing because of the closure of Deep Navigation Colliery that Easter. Deep Nav. only had about three more years of production but, its closure made the still very profitable Penallta Colliery uneconomic because of the resultant extra costs of pumping but, taken together, the two pits would have been profitable for years and they thought the closure decision was political.

 

When Michael Hesseltine announced further pit closures in October 1992, I went back to make a second film to see how the Penallta miners were getting on. It wasn't a happy story as their skills were largely ignored by employers. The quote from one of them, who I took with my film crew to look over the now closed pit was telling "I'd go back down there tomorrow...and what have I lost: I've lost a secure job, a secure future and the comradeship of the finest group of men you could ever hope to work with". Graham was by then working in a small factory making Christmas decorations! To say that the Penallta miners were bitter is putting it mildly and I couldnt blame them.

 

The curious thing was that, though Penallta had been closed and capped for a year, there were still trains (daily I think) taking coal out from there. I assume the stockpiles had been deliberately built up against a possible future NUM strike.     

Edited October 3, 2023 by Pacific231G
additon of OS maps

[swampy]

11 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

That's interesting as Deep Navigation was a real colliery in the Treharris district. I wonder if Ian Rice's plan was based on it or if he just liked the name.

 

Based on Maritime Pit at Pontypridd ( he writes )

[Pacific231G]

34 minutes ago, swampy said:

Based on Maritime Pit at Pontypridd ( he writes )

Yes, I can see the two levels there with the Barry Railway at high level but the actual pit connected to the Taff Vale. I woder if Ian Rice was aware that there was another colliery called Deep Navigation- it seems unlikely that he wasn't.

This is a bit tighter

 

It's interesting, given the miners' remarks about Penallta and Deep Nav. that Maritime Colliery closed in 1961 but it contined to be pumped out  for many years after. 

For a more compact arrangement the Pen-y-Rhiw colliery a bit further down the colliery line from Maritime also looks promising. It closed in 1922 but again was kept open for pumping (to protect the nearby Cwm Colliery) until the late 1960s.

 

 

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Pacific231G

[The Johnster]

How about Merthyr Vale?  Here the exchange sidings were about half a mile south of the colliery and Merthyr Vale station and a hundred yards or so north of Black Lion, which was the junction with the TVR.  The layout was simple run-around loops and where BR locos detached and rescued their brake vans while the NCB's locos worked the empties down to the pit, and brought the loadeds back up.  NCB here had an Austerity, and outside cylindered Avonside side tank, and BR-built 8750 9600.  The site lends itself to shelf baseboards, with the railways here constructed themselves on shelves in the mountainside at different levels, the main A470 (as it was then) Cardiff-Merthyr road at the top, also shelved into the mountain. The trackbed of the Penydarren Tramroad was at the bottom of the pile, still a little above the river, distinguished by stone sleepers. The gradient was downhill from Black Lion to the colliery, so loaded wagons had to be brought uphill to the exchange sidings from the colliery, good place to see steam engines working hard.  The TVR main line behind the sidings was of course uphill in the opposite direction.  Lots of Valleys atmosphere!

Edited October 3, 2023 by The Johnster

[Pacific231G]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

How about Merthyr Vale?  Here the exchange sidings were about half a mile south of the colliery and Merthyr Vale station and a hundred yards or so north of Black Lion, which was the junction with the TVR.  The layout was simple run-around loops and where BR locos detached and rescued their brake vans while the NCB's locos worked the empties down to the pit, and brought the loadeds back up.  NCB here had an Austerity, and outside cylindered Avonside side tank, and BR-built 8750 9600.  The site lends itself to shelf baseboards, with the railways here constructed themselves on shelves in the mountainside at different levels, the main A470 (as it was then) Cardiff-Merthyr road at the top, also shelved into the mountain. The trackbed of the Penydarren Tramroad was at the bottom of the pile, still a little above the river, distinguished by stone sleepers. The gradient was downhill from Black Lion to the colliery, so loaded wagons had to be brought uphill to the exchange sidings from the colliery, good place to see steam engines working hard.  The TVR main line behind the sidings was of course uphill in the opposite direction.  Lots of Valleys atmosphere!

I don't think I could ever feel comfortable about modelling Merthyr Vale Colliery or even its sidings. It was that mine's active spoil heap above the opposite side of the valley that collapsed onto the Pantglas school in Aberfan in 1966 (Three years after concerns about the tips raised by the local authority were basically ignored by the NCB) .

https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/letters.htm

Edited October 3, 2023 by Pacific231G

[The Johnster]

Something I was all too aware of when I first visited the place only eighteen months or so after the tragedy, but it wasn't the colliery's fault and the pit was emptied within minutes of the collapse as the faces were abandoned and the men started digging at the school.  It was the NCB's 'go away, we know best' attitude to good advice recieved before the tips collapsed and their appalling behaviour after the disaster.  The tip had been placed over a freshwater spring that the managers refused to admit existed.  A model would be viewed from the western side of the railway looking eastwards, so Aberfan and the dreadful black scar that was there for so long and is horribly visible even now in my mind, despite the sympathetic landscaping, would not feature, the backdrop would be the mountainside leading to Cefn Merthyr ridge, with Bedlinog in the Bargoed Taff valley behind it.

 

I remember the morning of the disaster very well; I was a 14-year-old pupil at Cathays High School on North Road in Cardiff at the time, and the ambulance station is about a quarter of a mile south of the school.  A succession of ambulances, bells ringing (this was before sirens and two-tones were introduced, just) passing the school throughout the morning, and none coming back down the road, alerted us to the fact that something serious had happened north of Cardiff somewhere.  Rumours were rife, plane crash, big fire, anything, but none of us guessed what had really happened.  Those who went home for lunch came back with the news, and the atmosphere was very odd.  Our art class could not be continued as the teacher was in tears and incapable of functioning, and at about half three we were called in to an assembly and told that it had been decided that there would be no more lessons that day as teaching was not feasible in the circumstances, and that anyone who wanted to stay for quiet contemplation could for an hour, or go home.  The 'authorities' were already putting out the message that they could not handle the volunteers they already had, and we were told not to go up the valley; I didn't, instead spending the evening sorting at a blanket/clothing/equipment reception centre in St James' church on Newport Road, but some of us did, and saw things they never got over.  There was a call for buckets to remove the slurry in by human chains, and we took in several thousand of them over the course of the evening!

 

There was an editorial in one of the broadsheets the following day, probably the Telegraph because that's what dad took, which commented that the Welsh Valleys were accustomed to the terrible 'price of coal', paid in blood, shattered limbs, ruined lungs, and lives, but were not accustomed to paying it with their children.  I remember that.

 

I fully understand your feelings on the subject, though, Pacific.  An ex-girlfriend lodged in Aberfan many years later and I used to go up there visiting, and was impressed by her landlady, who had lost an 11-year old neice in the disaster, saying that, while it was right and a good thing that people remembered and respected, the villagers did not want any special treatment or to be handled with kids gloves.  They don't need reminding, it is on the insides of their eyelids, and they want to be treated as ordinary people.  It is in this spirit that I made the suggestion of a Merthyr Vale/Black Lion-based layout; a modeller might want to call it something else and use the place as inspiration, which I think would be acceptable.

 

Aberfan as a village is probably doomed.  It's residents will never recover from the trauma, and more and more are moving out as time passes.  The pit, the only reason for the village's existence, closed years ago and the rain and bus services are on the other side of the valley. 

[DCB]

13 hours ago, martinapsid said:

looking to build small colliery exchange sidings in n gauge mid/late 60s so i can  run steam and diesel locos and 16/20 ton and brake vans any ideas where i can get photos track plans etc i have started to look on line.thank Martin

The National  Library of Scotland  maps are a good start but they don't differentiate between colliery and main line railway metals.  Some of the Forest of Dean track layouts defy all model railway norms and have a logic peculiar to the Forest Dwellers  (My ancestors on my mothers side are from the depths of the Forest)     

There are some interesting modellable exchange sidings in the Mendips, Norton Hill Colliery for instance, a siding with a trap point to the main line,  a Gate marking the limit of colliery property and a simple loop for exchanges,  equally though some Mendip collieries are so close to the main lines it looks unlikely that private locos were employed and probably main line locos shunted the screens.  

There are also exchange sidings between different main line  companies Savernake,   Andoversford for two where wagons as opposed to trains were exchanged between different lines

[stivesnick]

Martin

 

Another question. What sort of space do you have for your layout? 

 

With loaded and unloaded wagons moving across the layout in different directions, it is worth thinking about how the layout will operate, especially if you are thinking of taking it to an exhibition.  So, do you empty and load the wagons by hand in an end to end layout or have some continious run where the loaded wagons run in one direction and the empties in the other and are exchanged back in the fiddle yard. 

 

The later approach would also work on a shelf layout with some sidings behind the backscene.

 

Regards 

 

Nick  

[Flying Pig]

This is a plan I drew years ago, which places the colliery and the exchange sidings side by side.  That's very much a modelling dodge but it folds what might be a very long installation into a compact layout which doesn't require fiddle yards both ends.  It also means you can swap full and empty wagons in the fiddle yard without messing about with loads.

 

The fiddle yard is a short cassette deck meant to accommodate nothing more than a colliery shunter with a short cut of wagons, or a main line loco and brake van.  There's no need for full trains which saves on wagon stock.

 

 

 

[The Johnster]

South Wales collieries, which is what the OP seems most interested in, varied considerably because of the restrictions imposed by narrow valley floor or mountainside sites (if you want to see how restricted they could be, check out South Rhondda and North Rhondda, named for the coal seam not the valley, actually in the top end of Glyncorrwg.  The track is almost in the river, and the buildings hang off the sides of the ravine.  These were shunted by main line locos).  There was no standard pattern to model from.

 

At Cwmdimbath, where the colliery evolved to it's current state rather than being planned and may be more reaslistic for it (or not), the exchange is a simple loop feeding into a short NCB branch to the actual colliery sidings and the screens/tippler.  The main building is a Wather's 'Diamond Coal' tippler, modified slightly to make it more South Walian and less Appalachian.  The pit head is up the mountain a bit; see real life Crumlin, Cwm (Ebbw Vale0 Wattstown, and many others).  This arrangement saved precious space on the narrow valley floor and meant that the coal emerged at a higher level than the wagons, which meant it could be processed (screened for spoil & size, then washed, then dropped to the loader hoppers) with the aid of gravity. 

 

Empties arrive and are left in the loop while the BR loco retrieves the van, and a colliery loco positioned in the headshunt propels them to the reception/weighbridge road.  The BR loco runs around it's van, takes water, and in the meantime the colliery loco brings the loadeds up, and resumes it's place on the headshunt.  The BR loco attaches the van and runs aound to the front of the train, the guard examines and gives the driver the load, and the train is ready for the off.  When it gets the road, the colliery loco is released to continue it's work down in the colliery yard.  This entrapment of the NCB loco provides the excuse for a second NCB loco in steam, which is a help working the weighbridge.

 

Colliery loco has to be certificated to work over the loop and headshunt, which are BR metals, but is not allowed on to BR running lines.  This was pretty much the default arrangement in South Wales, unlike the north-east of England where NCB locos ran considerable distances over BR running lines, and hauled passenger trains.  BR locos are not allowed on to the NCB branch.

 

The colliery was not part of the original layout plan, but I always planned an exchange facility, perhaps with the NCB loco shed off it.  It's all The Squeeze's fault.  I was in town one day and saw a Dapol Austerity in an antiques emporium window for a price that meant that I couldn't allow it to stay in the shop.  'What you buy that for' she asked, and I replied 'to shunt the colliery'.  Her father is retired miner in Silesia, Poland, and her eyes widened a little.  'What colliery, where is colliery?'.  'Off-stage, you can't see it, but it's there and colliery lokomotiwa go to it with empty wagons and come back with loaded ones, then the big locomotiwa takes them away wherevery they are going (I gibbed at the idea of trying to explain the concept of Ogmore Jc Yard to her).  'Build colliery', she says (this sort of thing is why this one's a keeper, she approves of my hobby and is a skilled driver; it's the time I waste on this site she complains about).  'I can't, it would have to go in this space and you need that to get at your wardrobe (the layout is in the bedroom).  'How big you think my dupa is, build colliery!!!'.

 

Having the hard-acquired wisdom to decline the invitation to express any view whatsoever on the matter of her dupa (bum) as a certified hiding to nothing, and to do what I am told, I promptly agreed to build the colliery, which I why I say it sort of evolved, as a tag on addition to the layout.  It is a major part of operation and the challenge of keeping the screen/washery loader supplied with empties and clearing loadeds, while working the weighbridge as well (the weighbridge is arguably the most important part of a colliery, after the headframe & winding house, as it is the basis of invoicing customers) and having a full train of loadeds ready for the next clearance in the timetable, which I work to real time, is very satisfying.  It gives you an insight into the world of the surface manager, constantly being harrassed by the underground manager to keep the coal cleared away from the pithead so that there is no logjam at pit bottom and the men can work productively, and his constant worry about the supply of empty wagons when he has limited siding space to put them and relies on the next working up from Ogmore Jc.

[martinapsid]

thanks all for your answers

[DCB]

My spare bedroom line approx 1985-96 was as always never finished, and was later ruined by a continuous run link line but as designed had exchange sidings as a feature.
It was somewhere between a shunting puzzle and a shunting nightmare.   The terminus was above the hidden siding and the line ran round all 4 walls plus an additional 2 walls.
The line climbed continuously from hidden sidings and both main and exchange sidings were on a slope, not a problem with Hornby Dublo wagons.   Main line trains only served the sidings in a clockwise direction and reversed in, proceeding to the BLT to run round.   Colliery trains ran without brake vans and were usually 1/2 of the incoming main line rakes  may have been 6 and 12 or 10 and 20, no digital phots back then and it's a long time ago.   It was great if you liked shunting,  I had a Triang 3F (Wrenn wheels) Jinty (Wrenn wheels) and a Wrenn 8F,a Hornby Dublo N2 (later fitted with a taper boiler) a Crab under construction  (Still not finished (on eBay £40)  several Triang X04 powered "Pollys" and the like Romford wheeled etc   60;1 geared Wrenn 08, and 4MT and 3MT tanks.   and just a few general wagons and a pair of brake composites with a couple of strengthening coaches all 60" above floor level.  Fulls went round 5 sides of the room empties only 3,  trying to get the 8f out of the sidings up the grade over the points was a challenge, and it passed the controller at eye level standing up.   BUT I  never finished it as son and heir "Needed " the room for his cot.  Anyway doodle of the concept design appended