AngusDe Posted July 16, 2011 Share Posted July 16, 2011 Hi All, Another day dream sketch in AnyRail.... as I free-wheel to redundancy/early retirement I keep wondering if there will be any money left over for a shed in the garden..... Last night on my nightshift I sketched out a scheme for a representation of Stranraer in the 70s/80s in the nominal big shed/garage 16'x8', so when I woke this afternoon and found I had the house to myself I've been doodling on AnyRail. 80s Stranraer always struck me as very much a old school railway set up, lots of mixed freight, loco hauled London trains, sleepers, lots of van traffic etc etc. In my early teens (early 70s) we had a family holiday in a caravan park at Stranraer, partly as my dad was working on the SeaLink ferries in those days and my brother and I explored the trackbed of the Cairnryan Mil Rly extensivly as well as the station areas. In the late 90s I was at Aldergrove for a while and passed through Stranraer and Cairnryan often. Playing with the plan it slipped back in time slightly to the 50s/60s so as to keep more of the lines open. As a layout I think it would be great fun, lots of scope for multi operator timetable operation or single handed train playing. In reality there isn't as much room for the harbour station as my initial sketches suggested and to my mind the fiddleyard somewhat dominates the room. In reality trains were often too long and needed a pilot to release the locos etc, although the trains were longer than the 3/4/5 coaches this version would allow. The town station could be compressed slightly and put more on the curve (in a mirror of the prototype) to allow a slight lengthening of the harbour branch/station and the Cairnryan Jct yard needs more tweaking, as it was just a last minute addition, in a 80s scenario you could imagine Cairnryan as a deep water container terminal?... Anyway I hope some of you find it of interest and it inspires someone somewhere! As always any thoughts or observations are welcome, Angus PS I wouldn't really build such a thing from scratch with so much setrack! It is just a doodle! PPS Even if there was money for a 16x8 shed I doubt the wife would allow it, lol! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
seahorse Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Try moving the junction for the harbour to the right towards Cairnryan jct, and have a headshunt for the Town goods yard and loco depot, because shunting blocks the whole main line. Similarly try to link the habour to the loco yard without blocking the main line. Also a headshunt for spare locos in the fiddle yard. This doesn't matter with single-handed operation, but with multiple operators, I think you would find youself doubling some of the single track sections. An interesting attempt to fit a quart into a pint pot! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngusDe Posted July 24, 2011 Author Share Posted July 24, 2011 Thanks for the reply seahorse. There never was a headshunt between the harbour branch/mainline, or a link between the harbour branch and loco yard, but the real uncompressed layout would have a bit more room for shunting inside the trap points! The station yard arrangement is only a few points less than the actual 80s layout. The carriage sidings is where the Stockton Haulage yard was built in the 80s. The loco yard is a bit simplified, but in the 80s was essentially the one 2 road shed, previously there were 3 sheds there, the remaining one, then one of the turntable and a third 2 road shed, representing the Caley, the G&SWR and the Portpatrick Joint, presumable they all started talking to each other and sharing tools in LMS days.... I read there were still over 200 railway staff employed in Stranraer in the 80s, nowadays it's just a long siding with both harbour and station signal boxes locked out of use. The original sketch had the reverse loop fiddleyard to facilitate the single handed operation I was envisaging, I pushed the entry back to include Challoch Jnct as my sketch slipped back in time. The Cairnryan Jct layout is pretty sketchy as I haven't seen any good photos or plans, but it did have 10 sidings/loops. I still find the harbour station to be too compressed/shortened to even offer a flavour of the prototype, but to faithfully model the stretch from where it emerges under the roadbridge to the buffer stops you'd need a straight 36ft run, and the garden isn't big enough for several garages end to end, lol! Just a day dream though, as I say it's just in the hope the sketch helps or inspires anyone else! Cheers, Angus Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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