Theory of General Minories

[melmoth]

5 hours ago, melmoth said:

 

Birmingham Snow Hill, circa 1970

 

Never quite sure if it's good form to quote oneself or not, but @Nearholmer set a hare running earlier, and with too much time on my hands this is the result: a 6' x 1' N gauge Minories set up as a decaying city centre station that is now the terminus of a truncated route.

 

A - area of abandoned freight avoiding lines. Potentially used as car parking as per Birmingham Snow Hill, Manchester Central, Liverpool Exchange etc

B - disused tunnels

C - road overbridges

D - remains of freight avoiding lines, now used for running round the freight trains that now need to reverse here. The headshunt could be used to stable semi-derelict engineering stock

 

The layout could be built a fair bit shorter than 6', but as shown it would need a traverser fiddle yard of at least 3'

 

Operationally, it's a straightforward Minories, with the added attraction of being able to run freight onto the separate lines. Set it during a cold, grey 1970s winter (as also suggested) and the station is being kept open for heavy seasonal parcels traffic with only a hourly single car DMU shuttle to the outer suburbs of Mordor/Wolverhampton (delete as applicable). An 08 shunter acts as pilot to release incoming Rats and Whistlers from their various GUVs, CCTs and BGs.

 

What's not to like?

Edited December 14, 2022 by melmoth
Brain fog - wrote Hoovers instead of Whistlers

[simon b]

15 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

Further rationalisation: platform 1 disused (park road vehicles on it) and the platform road serves as a runround. The old loco spur is of course gone (maybe the buffers remain) and stabling is on the kickback off platform 3. Overall roof mostly derelict or removed.

 

Clearly you can't run the same intensive service as a proper Minories, but it should be ok for a single operator.  Not the first time I've posted something like this but the previous times are well down in the Silurian layers of the thread.

 

 

 

 

 

The more I look at that the more I like it, would stand out from the crowd. 

 

But to do it justice I would take it away from the minories concept and make it as a standalone design. 

Move the signal box to the rear of the layout and turn the kick back into a domestic coal yard, platform 3 wouldn't exist the track just being the headshunt for said coal yard.

 

Perhaps it was a former through station with the tunnel now blocked off under the station buildings, like Liverpool street platforms 1 and 2 maybe.

[simon b]

On 13/12/2022 at 23:28, Harlequin said:

 

I don’t honestly think that it’s possible to fit a OO Minories + FY in 9ft.

 

Agreed, but loose one of the crossovers and you can fit a Victoria park lookalike in that space.

[DCB]

One oddity of Minories which gets carried over long after it became irrelevant are the pillars for the hinges. If you don't need to fold it the loco road can run right to the far end and leave room for some parcels vans to lurk,     At the end of the day though suburban termini with an intensive service of three or four coach trains hauled by tank engines or heritage DMUs exist only as models and in our imagination.

Edited December 15, 2022 by DCB

[Nearholmer]

…… and on many “pre-metro” LRT systems.

 

Tower Gateway station on the DLR being above Minories, of course.

Lewisham DLR is even in a gloomy trench with a bridge over it IIRC.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

@melmoth's plan (and mention of Mordor) put me in mind of the never-built Midland station in Wolverhampton - land was acquired and levelled but in the end laid out as a rather sparse goods station only, with Midland passenger trains using the L&NWR station. If built, it could have been Minories in style, but would undoubtedly have been in terminal decay by the 1970s.

[melmoth]

19 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

@melmoth's plan (and mention of Mordor) put me in mind of the never-built Midland station in Wolverhampton - land was acquired and levelled but in the end laid out as a rather sparse goods station only, with Midland passenger trains using the L&NWR station. If built, it could have been Minories in style, but would undoubtedly have been in terminal decay by the 1970s.

 

"Terminal Decay" would be a great name for the layout.

[MyRule1]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

…… and on many “pre-metro” LRT systems.

 

Tower Gateway station on the DLR being above Minories, of course.

Lewisham DLR is even in a gloomy trench with a bridge over it IIRC.

Stansted Airport could be viewed as a modern day Minories, it even has the modelling advantage of a single line feed through the scenic break of a tunnel.

[Pacific231G]

On 13/12/2022 at 22:43, RJS1977 said:

Depends a little on the length of the fiddleyard. If you use either a traverser or a cassette fiddle yard (so no offstage pointwork is needed), you should be able to do it.

 

Cyril Freezer's original Minories plan was 5'6" long in 00 (not including fiddle yard), so 9' all-in could be done.

 

The original Minories plan was actually 6ft 6ins long (i.e. 2 metres) in 00 (5ft long in TT-3) and that extra foot may be critical depending on how short a train you're prepared to tolerate. Cyril Freezer's own plans for it increased over the years to 7ft and later 8ft.

I do know of two layouts, in 4mm scale, that did manage to fit Minories (or its equivalent) into three metres including a 1metre fiddle yard. One is Geoff Ashdown's EM gauge Tower Pier which uses a cassette fiddle yard (It's not exactly the Minories plan but is operationally equivalent)

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/174747-Hornby-announce-tt120/page/135/#comment-5016226

The other is the late David Curtis' "Casterbridge North" also in EM.

Casterberbridge N. was a "pure" Minories.  based on the LSWR in the 1900s. For a fiddle yard, he used a double track sector plate that fed two sidings behind the station hidden by a high level street. David Curtis used a similar tri-fold system to Gavin Thrum's Great Moor Street (which was on 3 3ft 6in long boards)* https://thrumlington.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-moor-street-minories.html

However, David told me in a phone conversation (a few months before he sadly died two years ago) that the double fold had seemed like a good idea at the time but had proved rather cumbersome. Carrying the layout was definitely a two man  job so he wouldn’t do it that way again as the whole thing was rather too heavy and rather unnwieldy.

 

The Minories throat will fit onto a three foot long board using Peco medium or other three foot radius points but you would then be looking at three foot long trains - with a tank loco possibly three short suburban coaches.  On Casterbridge N. David Curtis was able to run a four coach train of LSWR six wheel stock with a 4-4-0 tank loco. There are some photos and David's description of the layout on the Falmouth  Society of Railway Modellers website here.

https://fsrm.weebly.com/casterbridge-north.html

Edited December 15, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

8 hours ago, DCB said:

One oddity of Minories which gets carried over long after it became irrelevant are the pillars for the hinges. If you don't need to fold it the loco road can run right to the far end and leave room for some parcels vans to lurk,     At the end of the day though suburban termini with an intensive service of three or four coach trains hauled by tank engines or heritage DMUs exist only as models and in our imagination.

You could even extend the spur the full length of the station as a goods siding and still use the first part of it as a loco layover track. If you think that's not prototypical it was exactly how a small good facility was provided at the former Ramsgate Sands/Harbour terminus.

 

You can do that with a folding layout as well and, even if not folded, I think the road bridge between the platforms and the throat is an important feature as it breaks the layout into distinct scenes and hides just how short the trains were. Both Casterbridge North and Tower Pier (see my post above) include that bridge and it does work. 

I'm also not sure about the unrealism of an intensive service of short trains with tank locos. From Paris-Bastille, the ex DRG bogie coaches that replaced the previous four wheel double deck coaches after the war normally worked as four coach sets hauled by non push-pull 2-6-2 tank locos (1-131TBs).

There are also many examples of suburban commuter stations with three platforms. Hammersmith (H&C) though now a London Underground station was a joint Met/GWR terminus (and still has the GWR platform seats to prove it). It was opened in 1864 and would have had loco hauled trains and presumably a turnover loco operation before it was electrified in 1906. If you know the station it does actually feel rather like Minories.

Windsor Riverside also had three platforms (it now has two) and was the outer end of a fairly busy commuter line.

 

However, operating Minories just with MU or push-pull stock can get rather boring unless you just want to show off that stock. As a turnover operation with loco hauled stock it is though quite challenging if you run an intensive service on it.

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Nearholmer]

Whitechapel & Mile End has appeared here before, but it is worthy of being repeated.

 

This is while it was a District Railway only terminus in the 1890s, before the line was extended eastwards. It was host to a very busy service of short trains hailed by 4-4-0T, and it was very, very cramped. There was an asymmetric scissors on the curved approach. The other station peeking in on the RHS is the East London Railway.

 

 

You couldn’t ask for a much more atmospheric site than Whitechapel in the 1890s.

 

 

The whole of the ‘subsurface’ lines of what later became LT were like a toy train set in steam days, tight curves, short trains, frequent services. Why the r-t-r makers don’t serve-up a Beyer Peacock 4-4-0T beats me because they were used by multiple companies around London, then many were sold to industrial and LR users in the early 1900s at electrification.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Pacific231G]

On 14/12/2022 at 00:14, Flying Pig said:

How about if you save a crossover by rationalising to a single track approach?

 

 

Apart from the kickback siding I think you've discovered Fort William (old) which had just two sets of points and a surprising amount of operation! It took me a while to realise that, apart from the double track approach and the loco spur. the Fort could do anything that Minories could. As  a reversing terminus it also had surprisingly intense levels of activity, though with long periods of quiet in between. With sleepers or restaurants coming off the trains from London and Glasgow before going on to Mallaig and the observation car going on, along with tail loads of fish etc. there was often work for two station pilots. The train from Glasgow and that from Mallaig arrived soon after one another, and in the summer were sometimes closely followed by a relief train so things did get busy.   

Edited December 15, 2022 by Pacific231G

[RobinofLoxley]

58 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Whitechapel & Mile End has appeared here before, but it is worthy of being repeated.

 

This is while it was a District Railway only terminus in the 1890s, before the line was extended eastwards. It was host to a very busy service of short trains hailed by 4-4-0T, and it was very, very cramped. There was an asymmetric scissors on the curved approach. The other station peeking in on the RHS is the East London Railway.

 

 

You couldn’t ask for a much more atmospheric site than Whitechapel in the 1890s.

 

 

The whole of the ‘subsurface’ lines of what later became LT were like a toy train set in steam days, tight curves, short trains, frequent services. Why the r-t-r makers don’t serve-up a Beyer Peacock 4-4-0T beats me because they were used by multiple companies around London, then many were sold to industrial and LR users in the early 1900s at electrification.

An absolute ripper

[Lacathedrale]

Why is there another scissors underneath 'End' ? 

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, Lacathedrale said:

Why is there another scissors underneath 'End' ? 

Because pre-grouping = complicated pointwork.

 

Of course it might just be a single slip rather than a scissors - allowing a van at the end of that siding to be attached to a train or removed from a train onto it.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve been wondering that too. The least implausible explanation I can think of is that the end of the loop road is an end-loading dock and that the scissors allows tail traffic to be added easily, but I’m not convinced I’ve got it right.

 

But, the operating practices of the urban and inner suburban lines at these early dates were nothing like as streamlined as later, so tail traffic is conceivable. IIRC, I read somewhere that the Duke of Wellington’s (or maybe it was another PM) coffin was transported direct from his country seat where he died to Westminster station in the same van, for instance.

 

Anyway, here’s what I think is probably a slightly later survey, with yet more complicated pointwork to give access to what I think is probably a loco stabling point. It seems to show an open-sided shed/canopy, and what I would guess are coaling platforms, but I suppose it might just be a goods facility.

 

 

If anyone is deeply interested, there are quite a few drawings of this station in this pre-1900 form in the LT Museum collection. Not viewable on line, unfortunately.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

15 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Because pre-grouping = complicated pointwork.

 

What @Nearholmer didn't show us, out of consideration for our sanity, I suppose, was the little corner alongside the throat:

 

 

Is that a triple slip? Or just a two-and-a-half slip? Or possibly a slip and three halves?

 

It's enough to put one off micro-layouts for life!

Edited December 15, 2022 by Compound2632

[woodenhead]

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

It's enough to put one off micro-layouts for life!

Or the perfect starter for an Iain Rice / James Hilton pre group cameo with handbuilt track.

Edited December 15, 2022 by woodenhead

[Nearholmer]

44 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

What @Nearholmer didn't show us

Ah, but I did in my later post.

 

it’s all about the slow reveal.

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Ah, but I did in my later post.

 

it’s all about the slow reveal.

 

Doh. My fault for not keeping up.

 

But my extract is to a bigger scale than yours, so there!

[t-b-g]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Whitechapel & Mile End has appeared here before, but it is worthy of being repeated.

 

This is while it was a District Railway only terminus in the 1890s, before the line was extended eastwards. It was host to a very busy service of short trains hailed by 4-4-0T, and it was very, very cramped. There was an asymmetric scissors on the curved approach. The other station peeking in on the RHS is the East London Railway.

 

 

You couldn’t ask for a much more atmospheric site than Whitechapel in the 1890s.

 

 

The whole of the ‘subsurface’ lines of what later became LT were like a toy train set in steam days, tight curves, short trains, frequent services. Why the r-t-r makers don’t serve-up a Beyer Peacock 4-4-0T beats me because they were used by multiple companies around London, then many were sold to industrial and LR users in the early 1900s at electrification.

 

You mean something like this....

 

As modelled exquisitely by Geoff Taylor for a layout that I am involved with.

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Something very much like that indeed.

 

But, he seems to have the railways upside down. They should be in gloomy trenches, not up on viaducts.

[Compound2632]

Just now, Nearholmer said:

Something very much like that indeed.

 

But, he seems to have the railways upside down. They should be in gloomy trenches, not up on viaducts.

 

I expect they want their beautiful rolling stock to be visible!

[calcifer]

How should Minories be adjusted for right-hand running?

[t-b-g]

11 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I expect they want their beautiful rolling stock to be visible!

 

We do have a couple of these running on it. I built this one from an IKB kit, slightly altered to be a proper District Railway one. It was photographed on a certain well known EM gauge layout.