Theory of General Minories

[Nearholmer]

Up timetable for a weekday morning in 1910. Pretty intense.

 

 

The station is busking under the name of ‘Croydon’ here.

 

If things were anything like later years, the real traffic wasn’t from here, because for many people it was quicker to go to East Croydon, but from all the intermediate stations on the way, which each tapped their own bit of urban sprawl. The Hayes (pop. <1000 pre-WW1) line was different, and still a bit rural and posh at this time, an area of villas, rather than terraces, and a lot of market garden traffic. It didn’t have an Up train until 6:43, and it’s only through train to London was a to suit gentlemen’s hours, leaving at 8:37, and running semi-fast.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Lacathedrale]

Addiscombe, Hayes, Bromley North? Be Still My Beating Heart.

 

Though the branch line station designs are fuel for track plans, I wonder how appropriate they are with regard to the unprototypically-busy-BLT paradigm for layouts given the short length of the branches, the termini's proximity to larger mainline through stations, etc. ?

 

As an aside I've wondered since the debut of Minories how little of the early RM's focus on urban layouts, let alone double-track ones. However, my Modeller readathon is now at 1963 and it’s got such a plaintive note, many : “last chance to see…” and then very long lists of branch line closures, and even the layouts have this sad undertone of “set in 1947 before it all went wrong…”. It is no wonder that people of the time wished to capture that before it all disappeared.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Lacathedrale

[Nearholmer]

1963 is my favourite RM year, and the only one for which I’ve hung onto a full set of the printed magazines. IMO, it was a high water point in terms of r-t-r 00, as HD and Triang fought for custom, and possibly also the peak of model railways as every boys’, and most of their dads’, hobby, with there being a perfect balance between achievable craft and finesse, all against that background of radical change in the real railway. 
 

Apologies for obsessing about these suburban branches, they’d really be better as a system layout than T-to-FY, given the insane complexity of the operating patterns pre-electrification.

[Ian_H]

22 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Apologies for obsessing about these suburban branches, they’d really be better as a system layout than T-to-FY, given the insane complexity of the operating patterns pre-electrification.

Sorry, I'm lost, what do you mean by "a system layout".

[Nearholmer]

A layout incorporating several stations, and some intervening track, arranged to allow the train service of an entire area to be represented, a small railway system in short. Rev Denny’s Buckingham Branch is probably the best known example, but there have been many, and even now people occasionally build them. In the US, thanks to Some people having more spacious homes, they are quite normal.

 

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Pacific231G]

On 06/07/2022 at 08:37, Nearholmer said:

Up timetable for a weekday morning in 1910. Pretty intense.

 

 

The station is busking under the name of ‘Croydon’ here.

 

If things were anything like later years, the real traffic wasn’t from here, because for many people it was quicker to go to East Croydon, but from all the intermediate stations on the way, which each tapped their own bit of urban sprawl. The Hayes (pop. <1000 pre-WW1) line was different, and still a bit rural and posh at this time, an area of villas, rather than terraces, and a lot of market garden traffic. It didn’t have an Up train until 6:43, and it’s only through train to London was a to suit gentlemen’s hours, leaving at 8:37, and running semi-fast.

 

 

Hi Nearholmer

There seems to be something wrong with the way the image of the timetable is being displayed. I'm just seeing the first line for Beckenham Jn.

 

On 06/07/2022 at 09:31, Lacathedrale said:

Addiscombe, Hayes, Bromley North? Be Still My Beating Heart.

 

Though the branch line station designs are fuel for track plans, I wonder how appropriate they are with regard to the unprototypically-busy-BLT paradigm for layouts given the short length of the branches, the termini's proximity to larger mainline through stations, etc. ?

 

As an aside I've wondered since the debut of Minories how little of the early RM's focus on urban layouts, let alone double-track ones. However, my Modeller readathon is now at 1963 and it’s got such a plaintive note, many : “last chance to see…” and then very long lists of branch line closures, and even the layouts have this sad undertone of “set in 1947 before it all went wrong…”. It is no wonder that people of the time wished to capture that before it all disappeared.

 

 

Hi William

In the 1950s and 60s who would have modelled Britain's grey, polluted, and run-down cities? 

 

It's interesting that before the war very few people modelled branchlines- or if they did their efforts didn't reach the pages of MRN and MRC. To a far larger extent than today, railway modelling was an engineering rather than an artistic hobby.  Most modellers were interested in exciting main line steam locos and tended to cram as much railway as possible into every corner so leaving little or no room for scenery- especially in 0 gauge which was still the dominant scale. There was for example no scenery on the  Maybank Railway- the first pure terminus to fiddle yard layout, though an MLT not a BLT.

I think the post war popularity of the BLT-fiddle yard layout came from both the influence of John Ahern and the lack of space or materials during the years of austerity. Ahern, who had been inspired in turn by the artist Aldo Cosomati's 1933 "Alheeba State Railway" , was about the only person building a layout and writing about it during the war and that led to the idea of a railway in a scene becoming fashionable, especially in the smaller scales. Materials, even timber for baseboards, were very limited. If you had a couple of small locos and a few items of rolling stock  you were doing well and, if you weren't using HD or Trix, you were also likely to have to build your own track. On the other hand, materials that could be used for scenery- card, paper, sawdust, pipe-cleaners, clothes dye, scraps of fabric- were readily available . Given all that, what, apart from a BLT, were you going to build (Despite Reg Walker's "portable  00 gauge goods yard" ,  shunting layouts hadn't yet caught on).

When Peter Denny, Max Pyrke and John Charman wrote about their BLTs they looked both attractive and achievable whereas something like Edward Beal's West Midland railway was simply out of reach.

The earliest articles I can find that actually described branch lines were John Ahern's surveys of the Watlington Branch in MRN and  Maurice Dean's of the Culm Valley in a very early Railway Modeller - followed a month later by his layout based on it* 

I think there was also considerable nostalgia in the 1950s for what felt like a lost pre-war world, especially amongst the comfortably off who tended to have model railways,  even while greater car ownership meant that more people were actually experiencing the countryside and wanting to recreate it.

The Beeching plan in March 1963 accompanied by the end of steam brought that to fever pitch.

 

*The Culm Valley Branch is interesting because Deane managed to include models of all three stations on the branch and a scenically finished "junction yard" (rather than a hidden fiddle yard) on a 6ft x 6ft 6in hollow baseboard with a four foot six by eighteeen inch extenion so it was a "system" layout. 

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Regularity]

There was a model of the GNR Horncastle branch in the MRC in the early 50s. This was cited as being unusual in being a model of a real prototype terminus (as well as being pregrouping and a BLT), IIRC.

 

Not sure if there was much room on Maybank for scenery!

[Nearholmer]

6 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

There seems to be something wrong with the way the image of the timetable is being displayed.

Sorry about that; I seem to have cut the station name off.

 

The second line is ‘Croydon’.

 

The Beckenham Junction thing is one of the many quirks of this complex of branches. At one stage, carriages were propelled from BJ to be tacked onto the back of an ex-Addiscombe or Hayes train at New Beckenham, not push-pull, simply pushed, with passengers aboard. Whether that still applied in 1910, I don’t know, but given the sparse track layout, I think it must have.

[t-b-g]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

A layout incorporating several stations, and some intervening track, arranged to allow the train service of an entire area to be represented, a small railway system in short. Rev Denny’s Buckingham Branch is probably the best known example, but there have been many, and even now people occasionally build them. In the US, thanks to Some people having more spacious homes, they are quite normal.

 

 

 

Apart from having Buckingham now, I am also heavily involved with helping a friend build an EM gauge layout with 5 stations in a big shed in his garden. The total scenic run from one end to the other is around 150ft as the trains go up and down a 40ft shed three times and across the end twice I also operated this layout for a few years, before the builder sadly passed away. That had, from memory, 12 stations.

 

 

I do find such layouts great fun to operate as you don't have to imagine the destination or origin of the trains like you do with a layout that is based on a single location. Being able to run connecting trains, dropping wagons or vehicles off to be worked to another location and then back again adds a dimension that the single station layout just doesn't ever get.

 

I think that is why layouts like Marthwaite and Berrow appealed as they had that second station, even though it was tiny and took up very little room.

 

My new layout is being planned in a modular form so that there will be the opportunity to have a second station in front of the fiddle yard, very much inspired by such layouts.

 

[SZ]

On a more general point, a two-track approach to a terminus generally has both trailing and facing crossovers, but does the order matter? Is it relative priority of arrivals and departures that sets the order, clearance of signalling blocks, minimising facing point moves, or nothing in particular just site constraints?

 

The top would seem to prioritise departures in terms of track occupancy, the bottom to prioritise arrivals.

 

The top has two facing moves per arrival/departure, the bottom has three facing moves.

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by SZ

[Compound2632]

49 minutes ago, SZ said:

The top has two facing moves per arrival/departure, the bottom has three facing moves.

 

I was puzzling over that but I see you mean the whole sequence of arrival and departure. Calling the platform on the departure side 1 and that on the arrival side 2, then for the top version with the facing crossover innermost:

• arrival into 1 - 1 facing 
• departure from 1 - 1 facing
• arrival into 2 - 1 facing
• departure from 2 - 1 facing

while for the bottom version with the facing crossover outermost:

• arrival into 1 - 2 facing
• departure from 1 - 1 facing
• arrival into 2 - 1 facing
• departure from 2 - 2 facing

Therefore the top version, with facing crossover innermost, is to be preferred - and is the Minories topology.

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, SZ said:

On a more general point, a two-track approach to a terminus generally has both trailing and facing crossovers, but does the order matter? Is it relative priority of arrivals and departures that sets the order, clearance of signalling blocks, minimising facing point moves, or nothing in particular just site constraints?

 

The top would seem to prioritise departures in terms of track occupancy, the bottom to prioritise arrivals.

 

The top has two facing moves per arrival/departure, the bottom has three facing moves.

 

 

 

It seems to be the most common arrangement but it's not a hard and fast move, in any case scissors crossovers were quite common.

The original single crossover at the Ramsgate Beach tunnel mouth was trailing but when they added another, deeper in the tunnel, it was facing.

 

If two platforms are being used bi-directionally then both arriving and departing trains will run over a facing crossover but if they are being used as separate arrivals and departures platforms, as was  earl;y practice, then trains carrying passengers should, in theory, only meet a trailing crossover. for three platfoms that migh still appy if one is for arrivals and the other two for departures.

I think that having the final crossover trailing may also make it wasier for shunting moves to use the departure line so with less wrong line working but I don't know how important that is

If ypu look at the basic three platform throat (straight  crossover equivalent of Minories) and its mirror image 

 

.you'll see that, if the final corssover is trailing, then light engine movements between platforms and the "loco spur" involve less wrong line working and stock movements between platfoms will normally block the inbound line less than if you reverse the plan with a final facing crossover.

The same topology for a basic  CJF Minories below.

 

In both cased the reverse plans just seem to look wrong.

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Compound2632]

A scissors crossover is topologically equivalent to the facing crossover innermost layout - all arrivals and departures involve one facing point.

[Pacific231G]

21 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

A scissors crossover is topologically equivalent to the facing crossover innermost layout - all arrivals and departures involve one facing point.

Indeed,  but that's equally true if they are separate crossovers. For any layout where plaforms are used for both arrivals and departures trains will encounter at least one facing point - even if it takes the sttaight route through it.  The only way to avoid that is to have a separate arrival and departure platfom with a single trailing crossover, then only empty stock will take it in a facing direction. As soon as you add an additional  platform on the arrivals side, you add a facing point for incoming passenger trains. 

That of course takes us back to Ramsgate.

Looking at early photos of it again, I think the original layout at Ramsgate Beach, before the down bay was added, may have actually avoided any facing points for trains carrying passengers. On the up side there was a platform and a bay for departures and a couple of goods sidings- one of which was also used as a carriage siding . On the down (arrivals) side there was originally just one platform, kickback carriage sidings and a side and end loading dock. That though looks as though it was only accessed from the carriage sidings so no facing points there. The centre loco release/carriage siding between the platforms was only connected to the up (departures) side. (The layout of that long lost terminus just keeps on giving! )

Edited July 7, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Compound2632]

There is the further point (so to speak) that the scissors or facing crossover innermost layout only requires facing point locks on three of the four points, whereas the facing crossover outermost needs them on all four.

[Nearholmer]

Not often that a double slip is an important part of a work of art.

 

https://www.railart.co.uk/print-shop/ramsgate-harbour-station

[RobinofLoxley]

11 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

It seems to be the most common arrangement but it's not a hard and fast move, in any case scissors crossovers were quite common.

The original single crossover at the Ramsgate Beach tunnel mouth was trailing but when they added another, deeper in the tunnel, it was facing.

 

If two platforms are being used bi-directionally then both arriving and departing trains will run over a facing crossover but if they are being used as separate arrivals and departures platforms, as was  earl;y practice, then trains carrying passengers should, in theory, only meet a trailing crossover. for three platfoms that migh still appy if one is for arrivals and the other two for departures.

I think that having the final crossover trailing may also make it wasier for shunting moves to use the departure line so with less wrong line working but I don't know how important that is

If ypu look at the basic three platform throat (straight  crossover equivalent of Minories) and its mirror image 

 

.you'll see that, if the final corssover is trailing, then light engine movements between platforms and the "loco spur" involve less wrong line working and stock movements between platfoms will normally block the inbound line less than if you reverse the plan with a final facing crossover.

The same topology for a basic  CJF Minories below.

 

In both cased the reverse plans just seem to look wrong.

 

This was all explored in this thread about 40 pages ago. Risk of endless repetition alert...

[Nearholmer]

I’ve been following this thread on and off for a long while, and despite it being nominally terminus to fiddleyard, it is in fact very much a roundy-roundy.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 it is in fact very much a roundy-roundy.

 

Perhaps in heading for Moorgate a wrong turn has been taken and we're stuck on the Inner Circle. See Dante, Inferno Canto XXa where railway enthusiasts are condemned to debate the same topics over and over again for eternity.

[Regularity]

These are very circular arguments.

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Perhaps in heading for Moorgate a wrong turn has been taken and we're stuck on the Inner Circle. See Dante, Inferno Canto XXa where railway enthusiasts are condemned to debate the same topics over and over again for eternity.

See also "A Subway Named Mobius", a short story by A J Deutsch.

[Nearholmer]

16 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

where railway enthusiasts are condemned to debate the same topics over and over again for eternity.

I’m not sure that “condemned” is quite the right word. I’ve noticed that we railway enthusiasts seem to derive a certain comfort from going over the same ground time and again, with minor variations and additions on each circuit, and people joining and leaving the train at intermediate stops, often going for a coffee or something, then re-boarding for a couple more goes round later. It’s very similar to the reassuring constancy of The Archers.

 

The other forum I sometimes participate in is a cycling one, and on that the same happens on certain subjects, but with a quite tense, sometimes even mildly aggressive, undertone, not comforting at all, because some people hold some very unshakeable beliefs about some things ……. Whether cycling helmets and/or high-visibility clothing are a good idea or not; the type of gearing suitable for given types of cycling; all car drivers are evil; all dog walkers are evil; tubeless vs tubed tyres; etc.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Nearholmer

[St Enodoc]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m not sure that “condemned” is quite the right word. I’ve noticed that we railway enthusiasts seem to derive a certain comfort from going over the same ground time and again, with minor variations and additions on each circuit, and people joining and leaving the train at intermediate stops, often going for a coffee or something, then re-boarding for a couple more goes round later.

 

The other forum I sometimes participate in is a cycling one, and on that the same happens on certain subjects, but with a quite tense, sometimes even mildly aggressive, undertone, because some people hold some very unshakeable beliefs about some things ……. Whether cycling helmets and/or high-visibility clothing are a good idea or not; the type of gearing suitable for given types of cycling; all car drivers are evil; all dog walkers are evil; tubeless vs tubed tyres; etc.

Not too different from 00 vs EM vs P4, or DC vs DCC, (or, dare I say, fine vs coarse scale) then.

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve noticed that we railway enthusiasts seem to derive a certain comfort from going over the same ground time and again, with minor variations and additions on each circuit, and people joining and leaving the train at intermediate stops, often going for a coffee or something, then re-boarding for a couple more goes round later.

 

Here we are, then:

 

 

[Embedded link.]

 

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The other forum I sometimes participate in is a cycling one

 

Well, one would expect...

 

6 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

but with a quite tense, sometimes even mildly aggressive, undertone, not comforting at all, because some people hold some very unshakeable beliefs about some things ……. 

 

Have you followed the posts on Edward Thompson's reputation?

[Tankerman]

51 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Not too different from 00 vs EM vs P4, or DC vs DCC, (or, dare I say, fine vs coarse scale) then.

 

Or those on photo forums on format size or, much more dogmatic, on Canon v Nikon v Sony. Nearly all of the discussions on here are much more civilised than that one.