Quail/Trackmaps

[Peter Kazmierczak]

How accurate are the former Quail (now Trackmaps) series of prototype track layout diagrams?

 

I know trap/catch points are often omitted, but have noticed siding layouts don't always reflect reality either.

 

Do they put in deliberate errors so they can enforce copyright, rather like A-Z and the OS do?

 

Thanks,

Peter

[The Stationmaster]

I would be very surprised to find inaccuracies in them although they do date of course. The first issue of the Western one was very carefully checked and in fact was more accurate than BR records to the extent that Civil Engineering staff were buying copies and using them at work which led to the Regional CCE seeing one in use and demanding to know why. In one of my offices we used the Western one with confidence when we had any worries about length issues and were never caught out and when my career took me onto Southern (as one was) I found that Quail was an essential aid and both then, and later when working with a signal engineering company, I never came across an error apart from a couple of obvious misprints on point toe positions when compared with 40 foot plans.

[beast66606]

The first issue of the LM was drawn based on "planned" plans and therefore has a lot of mistakes as the schemes never happened !

 

The later editions seem very good, certainly the most up to date ones are.

[Rugd1022]

If I'm on a Crewe job I'll usually bung my LM one in the bag, as we don't do some of the moves in and around Basford Hall Yard that often. It's a good reminder for the names / numbers of the roads there too, if the Shunter calls you down but has to go off and attend to something else.