Theory of General Minories

[tom s]

8 hours ago, Annie said:

The nice thing about Minories is that it can be made to be just about any kind of terminus station you might want with the right sort of dressing up to set the scene.  I don't think it suits the BR diesel era all that well though.

One thing it has going for it is the line it is based on saw a large variety of type 2 diesels in their early years, TOPS classes 21, 23 (can't find a photograph but people have attested to them making it down the Widened Lines), 24, 26, 28, 31 plus the Cravens DMUs. 
If you're approaching the layout as a fictional addition to an existing line it seems like a great place if Pilot Scheme traction is your cup of tea!

Edited March 31, 2023 by tom s

[D9020 Nimbus]

I've seen it written that the class 23 Baby Deltics were originally intended for the cross-London freight traffic to the Southern Region via the Snow Hill tunnel (now Thameslink) but were banned due to their exhaust emissions. The class 24s finally arrived as a loco that the SR would accept. Source: David Percival Kings Cross Lineside 1958-1984.

 

AFAIK the only photos of class 21s on the GN I've seen have been of them in store awaiting transfer to Scotland …

[tom s]

18 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

AFAIK the only photos of class 21s on the GN I've seen have been of them in store awaiting transfer to Scotland …

https://www.rail-online.co.uk/p285352531/h1cfb3c5#h1cfb3c5
http://www.krm.org.uk/18572.jpg
I found two photos of them at Moorgate!
Heard the Baby Deltics were also restricted on weight issues too.

[Flying Pig]

On 31/03/2023 at 15:37, t-b-g said:

I would disagree about it not working in BR diesel period though. Have you seen the 2mm finescale version "Hallam Town"?  It has since been time travelled back a few years but when first built was exhibited in the BR blue period and it looked and worked just fine.

 

What a cop out!  All they needed to do was build a few more DMUs to keep up the interest.

[PMP]

54 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

What a cop out!  All they needed to do was build a few more DMUs to keep up the interest.

Not a cop out at all.
 

The layout was sold and the new owner models a different era.

All the times I operated it, it was utterly engaging and demonstrated the beauty of the design. I never heard anyone complaining about the lack of interest, it actually had additional DMU moves with a parcels dock not in the original plan, that allowed DMU tail traffic to run.

 

 

[D9020 Nimbus]

6 hours ago, tom s said:

https://www.rail-online.co.uk/p285352531/h1cfb3c5#h1cfb3c5
http://www.krm.org.uk/18572.jpg
I found two photos of them at Moorgate!
Heard the Baby Deltics were also restricted on weight issues too.

I read that they actually cut away parts of the underframe to lighten them, but it was the exhaust smoke which finally killed off the idea.

[tom s]

26 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I read that they actually cut away parts of the underframe to lighten them, but it was the exhaust smoke which finally killed off the idea.

You can also see material was bored out of the bogies bottom arms compared to the class 20 bogies too.

[TravisM]

12 hours ago, tom s said:

Heard the Baby Deltics were also restricted on weight issues too.

And smoke

[TravisM]

As a pure whimsy, my small section Liverpool St Minories layout is planned to have one of the platforms with a tunnel opening at the opposite end to the fiddle yard, so my Rapido models L44 can run in with some vans to interchange.  

In my wonderful world, there was a single line connection between Liverpool St (Met) and Liverpool St (BR) with only 4 wheel vans being allowed over it because of the tight curves, but it was closed in the early 60’s when some remodelling was done at Liverpool St (BR).

 

All pure fantasy, but done well, it could be a plausible ‘what if’.

Edited April 2, 2023 by jools1959

[Clive Mortimore]

3 minutes ago, jools1959 said:

As a pure whimsy, my small section Liverpool St Minories layout is planned to have one of the platforms with a tunnel opening at the opposite end to the fiddle yard, so my Rapido models L44 can run with some vans to interchange.  

In my wonderful world, there was a single line connection between Liverpool St (Met) and Liverpool St (BR) with only 4 wheel vans being allowed over it because of the tight curves, but it was closed in the early 60’s when some remodelling was done at Liverpool St (BR).

 

All pure fantasy, but done well, it could be a plausible ‘what if’.

Platform 1 and 2 at Liverpool Street were connected with the Met at the western end of the Met's station, the same end as inspired Cyril Freezer's Minories layout plan.

[TravisM]

1 minute ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Platform 1 and 2 at Liverpool Street were connected with the Met at the western end of the Met's station, the same end as inspired Cyril Freezer's Minories layout plan.

Thanks for that @Clive Mortimore, so not so much of a whimsy after all 😝.  I’m going to have to set the layout at the same side my J69 worked on.  Would be nice to see them both working on the layout.

[Pacific231G]

On 26/03/2023 at 03:37, tom s said:

In my opinion Minories lends itself just as favourably to pilot locomotive operation as it does to the prototype's second-loco-releases-first running.

I agree. turnover loco operation was really about fast turn round suburban/commuter operation with loco hauled (rather than push-pull). The locos- probably tanks-  would have made multiple relatively short runs, taking on water but probably not coal. Pilot locos didn't typically seem to have had a dedicated layover siding so with Minories one can extend the loco spur to make a fourth departures only or parcels platform. It may still be a favourite lurking place for a pilot.

If you search for Bastille in this topic you'll see details of how they handled turnover operations there. 

 

I've recently watched "The Last Journey" on Talking Pictures TV a 1936 film made "with the cooperation of the Great Western Railway Company". It's not that good a film- a sort of lightweight La Bête Humaine (though made before Jean Renoir's 1938 film with Jean Gabin) but it includes a lot of contemporary operational stuff including a pannier tank bringing into Paddington the coaching stock for the express that the story is based around (I'm not sure if those locos dedicated to ECS movements were technically station pilots) One thing I did wonder about was the driver, who'd just brought an express in, signing off at the  Ranelagh Bridge Stabling Yard. Would the main line crew have done that or would they have taken their loco back to Old Oak Common? 

[Lacathedrale]

One recent bit of cud chewing I went through with my Minories++ was the length of the platform roads. Well, in my specific case it was the length of the headshunt on one of the platform roads - but I think the principle still stands as a theoretical exercise. It would be easy to paint with a broad brush and say 'all sidings and platforms should be as long as possible', but where do you draw the line on 'as possible' ? How much scenery is a willing sacrifice? How tight turnouts to gain that length, etc. ?

 

In my case I realised that a runaround move on P3 with a normal-sized train would necessitate shunting the carriages back a little into the throat - just enough to block arrivals onto P2. I was a little aghast at this, until I realised that the runaround move itself would also block P2 arrivals by nature of... running around. In actuality, this slight operational kink is more likely to improve rather than detract from operations. 

 

Similarly, I realised aforementioned P3 headshunt is just slightly too small to fit a Lord Nelson in it, a locomotive I'm not looking to include but would prefer to have an option for. Elongating the headshunt would squeeze the station building down from 2/3rds depth to 1/2 and I think look rather silly. With some head scratching and nail biting trying to make things fit I realised that the whole bloody point of the Minories layout is the pilot loco usage, and so I was barking completely up the wrong tree and pulling the wrong levers.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

The original Minories didn't have run rounds, and surely any station as cramped as Minories (I don't know how big your Minories++ layout is)  wouldn't be able to make much use of them anyway. However, I suppose that if, say, your platforms were long enough to accommodate a loco + 5 carriages (quite a decent length for a Minories-style layout), then you might have some 2-carriage trains at off-peak times or from less important destinations that run round, and incorporate a run round loop into one of the platform roads for these trains. Obviously, the headshunt only needs to be long enough for the locos that haul these trains, and wouldn't need to accommodate a Lord Nelson. Needing to set back to run round strikes me as belonging more to a country branch line than a busy double track terminus. Instead, you'd either have a pilot shunt the carriages into a different platform (or a carriage siding) to release the loco, or you'd have another loco waiting to haul the outgoing train, and so release the incoming loco that way.

[rhnrhn]

A space saving alternative to a release cross-over to facilitate run arounds would be a traverser as deployed at Birmingham Moor Street or sector plate as used in the terminus bay at Snow Hill. Further information, pictures and drawings can be found at www.warwickshirerailways.com:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/moorstreet-gwr-article3.htm

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms1223.htm

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by rhnrhn
links

[RobinofLoxley]

4 hours ago, rhnrhn said:

A space saving alternative to a release cross-over to facilitate run arounds would be a traverser as deployed at Birmingham Moor Street or sector plate as used in the terminus bay at Snow Hill. Further information, pictures and drawings can be found at www.warwickshirerailways.com:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/moorstreet-gwr-article3.htm

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms1223.htm

 

Not just that but also the Traverser at Bastille oft mentioned here

[Pacific231G]

On 07/04/2023 at 08:31, rhnrhn said:

A space saving alternative to a release cross-over to facilitate run arounds would be a traverser as deployed at Birmingham Moor Street or sector plate as used in the terminus bay at Snow Hill. Further information, pictures and drawings can be found at www.warwickshirerailways.com:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/moorstreet-gwr-article3.htm

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms1223.htm

 

Cyril Freezer suggest using a sector plate as a goods loco release on one of his later versions of Minories (the one with a kickback goods yard) 

The trouble though for a busy passenger terminus with that is that Moor Street was the only example in Britain, just as Bastille was in France, and both were AFAIK only used by tank locos for intensive suburban services*. So, if you use one, you're effectively modelling that terminus.

You could perhaps have a concealed one . For a long time, I assumed that the loco length extension hidden beneath the high-level station building that Tom Cunnington and co. added to Minories (GN) was a traverser until Tom put me right. 

Termini with no loco releases were far more common, possibly the norm for busy city termini, as it was usually far more efficient to simply use a pilot or turnover loco.  Even Fort William - hardly a city terminus though intensely busy at times- lost its releasing crossover in the early 1950s and, from all accounts, it had hardly ever been used once the Mallaig extension was opened. for years.

 

Sector plate or turntable releases were rather less rare where length was a real issue;  Sheerness Dockyard and Ramsgate Harbour come to mind as well as Snow Hill. However, to meet BofT rules in Britain, they had to be rather complex things and I think the increasing length of locos made them less useful as a loco can't simply run straight onto one but has to stop short, uncouple, and then pull forward. 

 

There was an example of a large sector plate that presented the tracks it wasn't aligned with a void at Boulogne's Gare Maritime but I suspect that was only allowable because trains approached the station along quayside track very slowly and once again, if you used one you'd effectively be modelling Boulogne Mme.

*Having looked in detail at the rationalised operating pattern adopted to increase peak hour throughput at Bastille in the mid 1920s,  I'm fairly convinced that , following that rationalisaton, the traversers actually got very little use. Incoming trains didn't hang around on the platform, before departing with a fresh loco, for long enough to make them worthwhile even if the opposite platform road was unoccupied. 

Edited April 8, 2023 by Pacific231G
clarification of final note

[Nearholmer]

I’ve long thought that Minories does merit a release crossover somewhere, not for the passenger service as envisaged, but for off-peak moves such as delivering loco coal (I’m assuming a top-up provision at the loco spur), bringing a few vehicles to/from the goods facility if there is one, and parcels/newspaper trains.

 

If the particular model is set “in the olden days”, traffic could also legitimately include horse boxes and perishables, both handled at the passenger platforms, provided that there is a way in and out for horse drawn vehicles.

[rhnrhn]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

The trouble though for a busy passenger terminus with that is that Moor Street was the only example in Britain, just as Bastille was in France, and both were AFAIK only used by tank locos for intensive suburban services*.

 

Tender Loco's on long distance runs also used the traverser at Moor Street (well at least once...):

 

Ex-GWR 4-6-0 No 5946 'Marwell Hall' arrives at Platform 3 from Kingswear:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms2750.htm

 

and then reverses back off Platform 3's traverser in order to work back to Tyseley shed to be serviced:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms2738.htm

 

[Pacific231G]

15 minutes ago, rhnrhn said:

 

Tender Loco's on long distance runs also used the traverser at Moor Street (well at least once...):

 

Ex-GWR 4-6-0 No 5946 'Marwell Hall' arrives at Platform 3 from Kingswear:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms2750.htm

 

and then reverses back off Platform 3's traverser in order to work back to Tyseley shed to be serviced:

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms2738.htm

 

Interesting. I'd understood that all the long distance stuff went to Snow Hill and Moor Street was purely suburban. That actually makes it a far more interesting prototype.  Would that just have been because SH was too busy or were there particular long distance routes that used Moor Street.  Bastille was effectively tank locos only and almost all of them, from the 1920s until push-pull sets with Mikado tanks were introduced  in the early 1960s, from a single class of Prairie (SNCF 131TB) , 

[woodenhead]

29 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Interesting. I'd understood that all the long distance stuff went to Snow Hill and Moor Street was purely suburban. That actually makes it a far more interesting prototype.  Would that just have been because SH was too busy or were there particular long distance routes that used Moor Street.  Bastille was effectively tank locos only and almost all of them, from the 1920s until push-pull sets with Mikado tanks were introduced  in the early 1960s, from a single class of Prairie (SNCF 131TB) , 

Moor Street was to relieve pressure on the 2 track tunnel into Snow Hill and Snow Hill itself, trains ran mainly to and from Shirley and Henley in Arden with 4 services per day through to Stratford-upon-Avon.

[rhnrhn]

43 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Would that just have been because SH was too busy or were there particular long distance routes that used Moor Street. 

Witthout the working or service time table for the period I couldn't say.

 

However the date given for the photograph is 3rd September 1960, which was a Saturday - so perhaps some special weekend working owing to restrictions at Snow Hill?

 

It wasn't the only occasion that such a train used Moor Street. Warwickshire Railways (which is a gold mine of information) also has a picture of a Castle headed train from Portsmouth Harbour arriving at Moor Street on 2nd July 1960 - also a Saturday...

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms2753.htm

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2023 by rhnrhn

[Pacific231G]

In the early 1960s (from 1962 till the end of steam) I used to watch, and sometimes travel on as far as Reading or Banbury , the summer Saturday trains after school at Oxford (my school had lessons on Saturday mornings)  and there were always a number of them. That one would have come through too early for us but would have carried passengers back from the Isle of Wight as the guest houses normally changed visitors on Saturdays. Newport Castle is plated for 81A (OOC) so I'd guess the train changed locos at Reading. I can't see from the photo whether the coaching stock is WR or SR but the train is quite short at 6  carriages.

I'm guessing, from the photos in Warwickshire railways, that Moor Street was local and commuter only during the week but, with fewer commuters, had capacity for long distance holiday trains on Saturdays when these tended to run and these would not then take up capacity at SH and its tunnel.  

Edited April 8, 2023 by Pacific231G

[Siberian Snooper]

Trains off the Southern, sometimes changed locos at Oxford, especially if coming via Basingstoke and using the west curve, avoiding Reading altogether.

 

 

[Northroader]

You could also go to Moor Street for excursions on Race Days, especially to Stratford on Avon.