Theory of General Minories

[RJS1977]

10 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

Alternatively, some of CJF’s straight urban terminus designs are accompanied by the suggestion of inserting an additional board mid-way along the platforms instead,  giving a longer platform while retaining the concourse end as already built.
 

Of course, the Fiddle Yard also needs a similar extension - and I note @t-b-g‘s observation as to maintaining appropriate proportions of doing this, but it may be easier to build in some respects - as the ‘end board’ remains the end board.

 

Another option could be to add a scenic board, either to one side or at the end - which brings us to Buckingham again and @t-b-g.

 

My Aberystwyth Mark 2a was designed very much along those principles. As it had to fit along one 10' wall (rather than the 16' L-shape of Mark 1), train lengths were necessarily shorter than they had been on Mark 1. However I designed it so that all the platform roads crossed a board join at 90 degrees to allow future expansion should a move make such an expansion possible, and the cable from the control panel was also much longer than necessary to allow an extra board to be slotted in. Mark 2a was so tight on space that there was no room for a concourse or the main station buildings.

 

A change of address three years later gave me a wall 18" longer. This wasn't long enough to expand the platforms, but it did allow me to slip in an extra board for the station buildings. In fact, this extra board was a necessity as the folding legs on the original boards moved so freely that at the previous house it was only the end walls of the room that stopped the whole layout collapsing!  Subsequent expansion of the layout to include the goods yard was again designed to allow an extra board to be slotted in. This never happened, as not only did a suitable location never present itself, subsequent development of the fiddle yard into a reversible type meant four coach trains were effectively the limit anyway.

[Pacific231G]

8 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Minories, as originally conceived, is portable and so you set it up wherever there is room for it...

(And then fold it up and take it away when the room needs to be used for something else.)

 

Definitely so Phil, especially as a five foot long folding TT-3 layout. However, unless it's going to be essentially an exhibition layout, I think you do need somewhere where this is room to have it set up for several days at a time even if the layout is designed to be portable.

How many of us are really prepared to spend maybe an hour or so setting up and stocking a layout  every time we want to play trains and then another hour putting everything back again at the end of the session because we need the space for normal domestic activities.

 

I noted this comment by Peter Denny (Buckingham Branch Lines part one- Wild Swan p71)

"Although we were now living in a house the ony place where it could be erected was in the living room....The disadvantage ...was that it completely immobilised the room, with the result that the railway was only put out when somebody wanted to come and see it"  

 

I've come across a couple of layouts designed to be set up in the living room (often the largest room in the house) for operating sessions. in practice that seems to have fairly rapidly evolved into them only being set up in preparation for exhibtions, for testing, training operators or running through operating sequences. Nothing wrong with that of course if exhibiting is the intended purpose but not if you really want a layout to operate at home.

 

One obvious compromise is to have the main part of the layout where it can be left up over a longer term but to be able to plug in a fiddle yard very quickly for operating sessions but that does require there to be room for that.

 

I planned for this with my small H0 layout where the folding scenic section  is short enough to sit at the back of my workbench and was designed to be operated as a self contained shunting layout. I can though add a simple fiddle yard and operate it as a BLT. Even for casual operation I've tended to prefer that as I like to have somewhere for trains to come from and got to. I must admit though that, with another even smaller H0m layout being completed on the workbench, the H0 layout has been folded up in its box for rather too long.

Edited December 12, 2020 by Pacific231G

[St Enodoc]

10 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Minories, as originally conceived, is portable and so you set it up wherever there is room for it...

(And then fold it up and take it away when the room needs to be used for something else.)

 

Which is one of the main reasons it was in a cutting rather than on an embankment or viaduct.

[Joseph_Pestell]

7 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Which is one of the main reasons it was in a cutting rather than on an embankment or viaduct.

 

I'm not convinced that having it hinged makes things that much easier. Better to build one of the boards six inches longer (working on 50mm x 25mm timber for baseboards and 50 x 50 for the legs) and stow the other boards on a rack below.

[St Enodoc]

Just now, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I'm not convinced that having it hinged makes things that much easier. Better to build one of the boards six inches longer (working on 50mm x 25mm timber for baseboards and 50 x 50 for the legs) and stow the other boards on a rack below.

That would work Joseph, but it's a different concept from a folding layout.

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 minute ago, St Enodoc said:

That would work Joseph, but it's a different concept from a folding layout.

 

I'm not against a folding layout where there are just two boards. But Minories needs at least three and once you go there, I don't see much point in folding (unless you store the layout on end).

 

And I think that it looks so much better as a station on a viaduct as CJF drew in later versions.

[RJS1977]

The portable terminus extension of my club's 00 layout is built on four identically sized baseboards on folding legs, with a wooden 'retaining wall' along the back.

 

The four boards can be stacked for storage:

First board - right way up.

Second board - upside down and rotated through 180 degrees on top of the first

Third board - right way up on top of the second, held in place by locating pegs

Fourth board - upside down and rotated through 180 degrees on top of the third

 

The wooden walls serve to both space the boards the correct distance apart and to provide side protection.

 

The bottom board has castors fitted so the whole unit can be wheeled down the clubroom and stowed under the permanent part of the layout.

 

It really is a marvellous piece of plywood engineering, the only fault with it being that the one week the designer was away, another club member cut the hole for the turntable in the wrong board, meaning that the board with four legs is now at the wrong end of the layout, and the whole station has to be assembled and then aligned with the rest of the layout rather than starting from the permanent part of the layout and working outwards. Other than that though, it's an excellent concept.

[t-b-g]

The early Buckingham, built in a "bedsit", had one board set up on a frame and the other boards slotted in when the layout was packed away.

 

As with all these things, there are many ways of arranging baseboards, transportation, stacking etc.

 

There can never be a "right way" that suits everybody, or even a "best way".

 

Many years ago, a very good modeller named Dave Stringer, a member of our club in the late 70s early 80s, built a super little layout called, from memory, something like Aberford. It was a three board layout, two scenic and one fiddle yard and the whole thing was on hinges. It took about 15 seconds to set up and dismantle but was light enough to be carried by one person very easily. I think that even the legs hinged down but it was 40 years ago, so my memory may be mixing that with another layout.

 

Each board was around 3ft long and it hinged in a Z shape, with the hinges between the scenic board and the fiddle yard underneath, so the fiddle yard went on top when it was folded. It was very nicely done and as a concept, worked as well as any.

 

With modern lightweight construction methods, a similar arrangement with 3ft 6ins or even 4ft boards would be quite achievable.

 

My personal preference is to not hinge the boards so I can set one board up in a small area to work on. If they are hinged, you need the full space to be able to spread them out to work on.

[Chris116]

When I had fitted wardrobes put in my bedroom I got them made 44 inches high and the layout sits on top of them. Main wall is 13'8" with a 2' wide baseboard, the window end is 8'6" by 2' and the door end is 6' by 1'6". It will make a good run for an end to end layout. National Rail section will be double track Fiddle Yard to Fiddle Yard while the Preserved line is Fiddle Yard to terminal station. On the long wall is a 1' wide shelf which will be used for the Wisconsin based US layout I am currently working on. 

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

Many years ago, a very good modeller named Dave Stringer, a member of our club in the late 70s early 80s, built a super little layout called, from memory, something like Aberford. It was a three board layout, two scenic and one fiddle yard and the whole thing was on hinges. It took about 15 seconds to set up and dismantle but was light enough to be carried by one person very easily. I think that even the legs hinged down but it was 40 years ago, so my memory may be mixing that with another layout.

 

Each board was around 3ft long and it hinged in a Z shape, with the hinges between the scenic board and the fiddle yard underneath, so the fiddle yard went on top when it was folded. It was very nicely done and as a concept, worked as well as any.

 

With modern lightweight construction methods, a similar arrangement with 3ft 6ins or even 4ft boards would be quite achievable.

 

 

Good afternoon Tony

I have built a couple of folding layouts including my current H0 layout (though that's a horizontal fold) but, even though both use(d) separate plug in fiddle yards, I'm also not entirely convinced. My first was a vertical fold H0e layout on two three foot six by one foot baseboards using the type of very solid hinge towers that Peter Denny employed on Leighton Buzzard Mk-1.  The two downsides were first that the layout had to be opened out to do any work on it with any work on wiring etc. under the board requiring the whole layout to be turned on its side possibly straining the hinges and second even with such a small layout the folded layout was a bit cumpersome to get up and down the stairs in my house (one reason why I've decide to limit baseboard sizes to one metre long in future) .

 

I do know of two Minories based layouts built as tri-folds  and it was the method used for Nick Freezer's Dugdale Road layout.

Gavin Thrumm's LMS based OO Great Moor Street  https://thrumlington.blogspot.com/2015/06/

has three 3ft 6in long baseboards with a factory scene hiding the four road fiddle yard - a very neat arrangement.

The folded layout fits onto the back seat of his car for outings and is completely self contained with all the electrics built in.

 

The other tri-fold Minories is Casterbridge North by David Curtis, a retired architect and a founder member of the Falmouth Society of Railway Modeller. 

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

This EM gauge layout is three metres long with a two road traverser on the right hand board feeding a couple of storage sidings behind the retaining wall. It's a very neat and compact layout built in 2012  based on the LSWR in 1900-1010. Looking at the photos it is able to handle trains of three bogie coaches plus a brake van of stock from that time hauled by tank locos.

 

The Falmouth Society put me in touch with David a couple of years ago and  I had a very interesting conversation with him about the layout which was used both at home and at exhibitions. David told me that, though  he didn't usually work it to a timetable, the Minories plan could sustain an hour long sequence. Assuming that each storage siding could hold two trains, I reckon that the layout could have accomodated up to five or even six trains for an operating session without touching any stock.

David also said that, though the double fold had seemed like a good idea at the time, it had proved to be rather cumbersome. Carrying the layout was always a two man  job and he definitely wouldn’t do it that way again !

 

A sad postscript to this is that I've  only learned in the past hour, from the Falmouth Society's website, that David Curtis, who was born in 1932, has very recently died. He was hosting socially distanced  meetings of the Societ during the summer. He was clearly a very fine modeller and was a member of the EMGS often adding their publicity display to Casterbridge at exhibitions.

Tony, did you by any chance know David?   

Edited December 12, 2020 by Pacific231G

[t-b-g]

10 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Good afternoon Tony

I have built a couple of folding layouts including my current H0 layout (though that's a horizontal fold) but, even though both use(d) separate plug in fiddle yards ,  I'm also not entirely convinced. My first was a vertical fold H0e layout on two three foot six by one foot baseboards using the type of very solid hinge towers that Peter Denny employed on Leighton Buzzard Mk-1.  I found that the two downsides were that the layout had to be opened out to do any work on it and working on wiring etc. under the board meant turning the whole thing on its side possibly straining the hinges and even with such a small layout the folded layout was a bit cumpersome to get up and down the stairs in my house (one reason why I've decide to limit baseboard sizes to one metre long in future) .

 

I know of two Minories based layouts built that way as tri-folds  and it was the method used for Nick Freezer's Dugdale Road layout.

Gavin Thrumm's LMS based OO Great Moor Street  https://thrumlington.blogspot.com/2015/06/

has three 3ft 6in long baseboards with a factory scene hiding the four road fiddle yard - a very neat arrangement.

The folded layout fits onto the back seat of his car for outings and is completely self contained with all the electrics built in. Stock is all pre

The other tri-fold Minories is Casterbridge North by David Curtis, a retired architect in Falmouth. 

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

This EM gauge layout is three metres long with a two road traverser on the right hand board feeding a couple of storage sidings behind the retaining wall. It's a very neat and compact layout built in 2012  based on the LSWR in 1900-1010. Looking at the photos it is able to handle trains of three bogie coaches plus a brake van of stock from that time hauled by tank locos. The Falmouth Society of Railway Modellers put me in touch with David a couple of years ago and  I had a very interesting conversation with him about the layout which was used both at home and at exhibitions. David told me that, though  he didn't usually work it to a timetable, the Minories plan could sustain an hour long sequence. Assuming that each storage siding could hold two trains, I reckon that the layout could have accomodated up to five or even six trains for an operating session without touching any stock.

David did though also say that though the double fold had seemed like a good idea at the time it had proved to be rather cumbersome. Carrying the layout was always a two man  job and he definitely wouldn’t do it that way again !

 

Sadly, I've  learned in the past hour from the Falmouth Society's website that David, who was born in 1932, has very recently died. He was clearly a very fine modeller and, as well as being a member of the EMGS was one of the founders of the FSRM.  Tony, did you know him by any chance?   

 

Having looked at the photos of David's layouts, I wish I had known him.

 

What lovely work.

 

I don't know how far he travelled exhibiting. Part of my mind thinks that if I had seen one of his layouts, I would have remembered it. Then I think again at how many shows and how many layouts I have seen over the years that I can't recall now.

 

The pre-grouping Minories "Casterbridge" is really very inspirational. I can see something like that and think "Not only is that achievable but also very desirable!"

 

I am with you on the baseboard thing. As the years go by, ease of use and light lifting become higher priorities. Even two small boards permanently joined isn't as easy to move around and lift into a car as it used to be. Being able to lift a single board onto a small table to work on is a big plus.

 

Last time I saw Nick Freezer, we talked about Dugdale Road. He still has it, although it has been stored unused for many years. I suggested he should dust off the cobwebs, revamp the scenic work and take it to a show or two!

 

[CKPR]

4 hours ago, t-b-g said:

Many years ago, a very good modeller named Dave Stringer, a member of our club in the late 70s early 80s, built a super little layout called, from memory, something like Aberford. It was a three board layout, two scenic and one fiddle yard and the whole thing was on hinges. It took about 15 seconds to set up and dismantle but was light enough to be carried by one person very easily. I think that even the legs hinged down but it was 40 years ago, so my memory may be mixing that with another layout.

 

Each board was around 3ft long and it hinged in a Z shape, with the hinges between the scenic board and the fiddle yard underneath, so the fiddle yard went on top when it was folded. It was very nicely done and as a concept, worked as well as any.

It was written up in 'Model Railways' November 1981 pp609-612, complete  with a photograph of the layout being unfolded.  

[t-b-g]

1 hour ago, CKPR said:

It was written up in 'Model Railways' November 1981 pp609-612, complete  with a photograph of the layout being unfolded.  

 

I didn't remember that it had appeared in the press but that does ring a bell. He had some lovely kit and scratchbuilt stock to run on it.

 

Another club member purchased it from Dave Stringer and intended altering it into a Hull and Barnsley themed layout called "Sunk Island" but I am not sure that it ever surfaced again (in the right hands, there could be a joke in there somewhere!).

 

Dave Stringer also built a very good layout of the terminus at Cawood on the Cawood Wistow and Selby Railway, which I enjoyed operating at several exhibitions. His layouts were very well built and very reliable.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

On 12/12/2020 at 01:13, Pacific231G said:

Definitely so Phil, especially as a five foot long folding TT-3 layout. However, unless it's going to be essentially an exhibition layout, I think you do need somewhere where this is room to have it set up for several days at a time even if the layout is designed to be portable.

How many of us are really prepared to spend maybe an hour or so setting up and stocking a layout  every time we want to play trains and then another hour putting everything back again at the end of the session because we need the space for normal domestic activities.

 

I noted this comment by Peter Denny (Buckingham Branch Lines part one- Wild Swan p71)

"Although we were now living in a house the ony place where it could be erected was in the living room....The disadvantage ...was that it completely immobilised the room, with the result that the railway was only put out when somebody wanted to come and see it"  

 

I've come across a couple of layouts designed to be set up in the living room (often the largest room in the house) for operating sessions. in practice that seems to have fairly rapidly evolved into them only being set up in preparation for exhibtions, for testing, training operators or running through operating sequences. Nothing wrong with that of course if exhibiting is the intended purpose but not if you really want a layout to operate at home.

 

One obvious compromise is to have the main part of the layout where it can be left up over a longer term but to be able to plug in a fiddle yard very quickly for operating sessions but that does require there to be room for that.

 

I planned for this with my small H0 layout where the folding scenic section  is short enough to sit at the back of my workbench and was designed to be operated as a self contained shunting layout. I can though add a simple fiddle yard and operate it as a BLT. Even for casual operation I've tended to prefer that as I like to have somewhere for trains to come from and got to. I must admit though that, with another even smaller H0m layout being completed on the workbench, the H0 layout has been folded up in its box for rather too long.

I’d definitely agree with this post and the quote from Peter Denny: I’d suggest that another factor in the equation of space and time needed for setting up a portable layout at home has been the large increase in ‘stuff’ people have accumulated during the ‘consumer era’ too.  We’ve seen it with model railways as well of course - how many of us have many more locos than we need for example, and far more than our forebears?

The gathering of ‘stuff’ may perhaps be starting to change* but in my case plans for the portable layout I wanted to build during lockdown came unstuck as increased homeworking (for the long-term) meant there was no longer the space nor the available free days to set up the proposed layout in the study.  I had to park not just one but two great ideas - one derived from a sketch of mine, and a very elegant scenic development of the theme by @Harlequin that’s in his gallery.

 

Having next dismissed the cellar due to damp, a more compact space was suggested in the bedroom of one of our adult children, who mainly lives away in student digs.  Plans were again progressing when, after our daughter had been home during the more relaxed movement restrictions of the summer, I double checked my measurements and had to revise an assumption I’d made that there’d be less stuff to be kept in said room after her visit - there was in fact more (and I could no longer move it to the cellar).  The final space I ended up with was even more compact, and a further round of great ideas had to be put on file.

 

By the time winter set in and layout building had to pause (I have a small, unheated outhouse / workshop), I’d only got as far as building a batch of baseboards without supports.  But the reason for this post is there has been a payoff...

 

While this may read as a tale of woe, with each change to the criteria a setback (which in layout design terms it was), from the alternative point of view of my family the creativity and ingenuity (and patience) of the Layout planners on RMweb in rising to each new challenge with solutions to every challenge means that the standing of the hobby has risen significantly in our house this year, and there is now far more interest in what I’m up to, and encouragement when I want to spend time (and a bit of money), something I was able to acknowledge at the end of my planning thread.

 

While work on the project has paused over the winter I’m exploring my long-standing interest in American model railroads, and having great fun doing so, and the family are far more involved.  True, I haven’t yet got a layout, but a portable home layout is seen as something that will be welcomed when it happens, not an imposition.

 

Finally - following roof repairs to a leaking ceiling above my daughter’s room, it was redecorated, and the colour the family chose for the walls was a perfect light, sky blue.  I kept out of the conversation to avoid influencing it, but it’s ideal for me too.
 

Keith.

 

(* digitalisation of books, music, films, ‘generation rent’, rising prices and squeeze on disposable income, etc..)

[john new]

On 12/12/2020 at 01:13, Pacific231G said:

Definitely so Phil, especially as a five foot long folding TT-3 layout. However, unless it's going to be essentially an exhibition layout, I think you do need somewhere where this is room to have it set up for several days at a time even if the layout is designed to be portable.

How many of us are really prepared to spend maybe an hour or so setting up and stocking a layout  every time we want to play trains and then another hour putting everything back again at the end of the session because we need the space for normal domestic activities.

 

I noted this comment by Peter Denny (Buckingham Branch Lines part one- Wild Swan p71)

"Although we were now living in a house the ony place where it could be erected was in the living room....The disadvantage ...was that it completely immobilised the room, with the result that the railway was only put out when somebody wanted to come and see it"  

 

I've come across a couple of layouts designed to be set up in the living room (often the largest room in the house) for operating sessions. in practice that seems to have fairly rapidly evolved into them only being set up in preparation for exhibtions, for testing, training operators or running through operating sequences. Nothing wrong with that of course if exhibiting is the intended purpose but not if you really want a layout to operate at home.

 

One obvious compromise is to have the main part of the layout where it can be left up over a longer term but to be able to plug in a fiddle yard very quickly for operating sessions but that does require there to be room for that.

 

I planned for this with my small H0 layout where the folding scenic section  is short enough to sit at the back of my workbench and was designed to be operated as a self contained shunting layout. I can though add a simple fiddle yard and operate it as a BLT. Even for casual operation I've tended to prefer that as I like to have somewhere for trains to come from and got to. I must admit though that, with another even smaller H0m layout being completed on the workbench, the H0 layout has been folded up in its box for rather too long.

Agree regarding issues of home set up.  My small layout is currently in a bedroom on my wife’s folding sewing table. That is only possible longish term because she can now use her other sewing machine on the desk downstairs. Models and gear also laid out on sheet boards on the bunk beds in the 3rd bedroom. (Normally stored in the garage although that is not ideal) All practical to do longish term because, sadly, COVID means no family visits. 
 

Long term the answer would be getting the garage turned into a properly insulated hobbies room for both of us, but we’ve been here 34 years and have never had the significant capital funds available. We were part of the way there this year but had to have the main house roof replaced, so back to square one! As others have said as you get older putting up/taking down becomes a more daunting prospect.

[woodenhead]

Whilst trying to avoid a Minories terminus I have actually ended up with one.  I am developing a layout based on the plan of Chester Northgate but I found putting in the junction made the plan a little crushed so I’ve omitted it leaving a Minories variant.  The up/down crossovers will be on board two when I finish putting down the last two tracks on this board.

[Pacific231G]

13 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Whilst trying to avoid a Minories terminus I have actually ended up with one.  I am developing a layout based on the plan of Chester Northgate but I found putting in the junction made the plan a little crushed so I’ve omitted it leaving a Minories variant.  The up/down crossovers will be on board two when I finish putting down the last two tracks on this board.

Looking good already. The centre road between what I assume were originally separate arrivals and departures platforms does seem to add to the "main line terminus but not in London" (because London termini alway needed the space for more platforms)

 

I wouldn't worry about this seeming like 'a Minories' It just goes to show how widely we can define 'Minories'. (Almost as widely as 'Microlayout' )

 

Personally. I've always seen 'Minories' as a particularly ingenious arrangement, using opposite  handed points in both crossovers, of the shortest possible throat to connect three (or more) platfoms to both sides of a double track main line without using complex pointwork. It neatly avoids all but one of the unseparated reverse curves that the shorter than prototypical points we use makes a problem unless we angle the approach. It's also arguably more visually interesting than a pair of straight crossovers one facing and one trailing.

 

Others though would define any compact main line terminus, especially one with three platform faces, as 'a Minories'. In this sense 'others' sometimes included Cyril Freezer himself as several of his other Main Line Terrminus plans of the month were described by him as "Minories Mk 2" etc.

 

 

 

 

   

[woodenhead]

27 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

Looking good already. The centre road between what I assume were originally separate arrivals and departures platforms does seem to add to the "main line terminus but not in London" (because London termini alway needed the space for more platforms)

 

I wouldn't worry about this seeming like 'a Minories' It just goes to show how widely we can define 'Minories'. (Almost as widely as 'Microlayout' )

   

I first became aware of the station in some pictures then came across the track diagram in a book regarding the CLC routes and it resonated with me as being something that would be interesting to model rather than copy the Laird's Bradfield.  Whilst it will be a Chester location it won't be an exact model of Northgate but a reimagined pastiche with a focus on parcels services and trains using the old CLC lines.  I might even throw in a 313 from RevolutioN as a 507 (or even as still a 313 as they were used to test the tunnels in Liverpool) to provide an alternative 3rd rail route to Birkenhead and Liverpool.

 

The plan is that this board will have power to rails on Sunday when an Amazon order of t-taps arrives.

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

I first became aware of the station in some pictures then came across the track diagram in a book regarding the CLC routes and it resonated with me as being something that would be interesting to model rather than copy the Laird's Bradfield.  Whilst it will be a Chester location it won't be an exact model of Northgate but a reimagined pastiche with a focus on parcels services and trains using the old CLC lines.  I might even throw in a 313 from RevolutioN as a 507 (or even as still a 313 as they were used to test the tunnels in Liverpool) to provide an alternative 3rd rail route to Birkenhead and Liverpool.

 

The plan is that this board will have power to rails on Sunday when an Amazon order of t-taps arrives.

It looks an excellent prototype with very little danger of being mistaken for "yet another Minories" , It has our favourite trick of kick back sidings to the cattle docks, and judging by the plans and photos here 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/chester_northgate/index.shtml the loco shed and goods yards are far enough away to be regarded as a separate faciility that doesn't need to be included. I rather liked the idea of an alternative route to Liverpool incuding the ferry rather than a direct train (better class of passenger on that route?) 

It was a also a good example of a terminuis designed for separate departure and arrival platforms with the main buildings on the departure side* and storage roads under the overall roof in between to keep the carefully painted and varnished coaches out of the elements (The original reason of course for train sheds with overall roofs)  Wooden bodied coaches really weren't done any favours by being left outside.  

 

*Which always struck me as implying ."You've had your ride on our train now s*d off and stop making our  statiion untidy! 

At main termini It did of course make perfect sense to have the ticket office, buffet, conveniences etc. on the departure side, things like the taxi rank  next to arrivals and perhaps the station hotel across the end (as at Paddington, St. Pancras, Marylebone sort of  and Gare d'Orsay)  Question, Though many did both,  were people more likely to use the station hotel before or after travelling on the railway? 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Pacific231G

[woodenhead]

4 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

It looks an excellent prototype with very little danger of being mistaken for "yet another Minories" , It has our favourite trick of kick back sidings to the cattle docks, and judging by the plans and photos here 

It links to Manchester via Northwich, Liverpool via Birkenhead and Wrexham via Shotton - gives me lots to play at.

 

I am imagining rump of WR services emanating from Paddington via Wrexham as parcels trains hauled by a 31, 50 or a Western, diesel units to Manchester, Birkenhead or Wrexham plus other loco hauled passenger trains via the CLC, Skelton Junc and Cheadle to Sheffield or down to Cardiff via Wrexham plus lots of parcels traffic.

[john new]

5 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

It looks an excellent prototype with very little danger of being mistaken for "yet another Minories" , It has our favourite trick of kick back sidings to the cattle docks, and judging by the plans and photos here 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/chester_northgate/index.shtml the loco shed and goods yards are far enough away to be regarded as a separate faciility that doesn't need to be included. I rather liked the idea of an alternative route to Liverpool incuding the ferry rather than a direct train (better class of passenger on that route?) 

It was a also a good example of a terminuis designed for separate departure and arrival platforms with the main buildings on the departure side* and storage roads under the overall roof in between to keep the carefully painted and varnished coaches out of the elements (The original reason of course for train sheds with overall roofs)  Wooden bodied coaches really weren't done any favours by being left outside.  

 

*Which always struck me as implying ."You've had your ride on our train now s*d off and stop making our  statiion untidy! 

At main termini It did of course make perfect sense to have the ticket office, buffet, conveniences etc. on the departure side, things like the taxi rank  next to arrivals and perhaps the station hotel across the end (as at Paddington, St. Pancras, Marylebone sort of  and Gare d'Orsay)  Question, Though many did both,  were people more likely to use the station hotel before or after travelling on the railway? 

 

Although cross channel ferry traffic is not directly comparable one of the main financial losses to Weymouth's local economy when Condor pulled out was the considerable overnight stays with people arriving the night before ready for the early morning (stupid o-clock) boat.

 

As for facilities aimed at serving departure passengers it still is, perfectly logically, the case. As examples both Bournemouth and Poole have the remaining buffet facilities on the up side, where far more people wait for a train going east/north than do so prior to boarding in Bournemouth for the onward leg to Weymouth. On the down side the predominant pax flow is definitely off the train and out of the station whether that is from terminating X country services or from the SW main line. Conversely, from memory as I've not changed trains there for a while, at Southampton the flows each way are far more balanced and there are buffet facilities for both the main up & the down platforms.

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by john new
Wording tweak.

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

It links to Manchester via Northwich, Liverpool via Birkenhead and Wrexham via Shotton - gives me lots to play at.

 

A rich set of destinations is key to the play value of this kind of layout.  Borchester and Bradfield both come to mind but I don't think either has the regional diversity of this scheme.  Should be good fun.

[Pacific231G]

5 hours ago, john new said:

 

Although cross channel ferry traffic is not directly comparable one of the main financial losses to Weymouth's local economy when Condor pulled out was the considerable overnight stays with people arriving the night before ready for the early morning (stupid o-clock) boat.

 

As for facilities aimed at serving departure passengers it still is, perfectly logically, the case. As examples both Bournemouth and Poole have the remaining buffet facilities on the up side, where far more people wait for a train going east/north than do so prior to boarding in Bournemouth for the onward leg to Weymouth. On the down side the predominant pax flow is definitely off the train and out of the station whether that is from terminating X country services or from the SW main line. Conversely, from memory as I've not changed trains there for a while, at Southampton the flows each way are far more balanced and there are buffet facilities for both the main up & the down platforms.

 

Apparently it was also the reason why Chicago & North Western trains run on the left. When it was a single track RR running generally west from Chicago, most depots were built on the north side of the track. When traffic increased the line was doubled but, with most people travelling to and from Chicago,  the normal American right hand running would have placed them on the side with far more arrivals than departures so, with a healthy passenger business with Chicago , they adopted left hand running instead. 

It's interesting for through stations to note whether their main buildings, assuming they weren't  split across both sides, were more commonly on the town side or the up (or predominant departures) side if that wasn't the same, and how that affected their design.

 

Oxford was both town and up but used to have facilities on both sides and a very grotty subway between them which , by the 1960s when I got to know it, all passengers to and from the down platform and bays had to use as the down entrance had been closed . There were conveniences and I think a waiting room on the down side but I don't remember a buffet, Banbury and Reading were town and down. Plymouth is definitely main buildings on the down side. When  that was the case, was it more common to have a low or high level entrance and ticket office as at Didcot, with fairly even passenger access to both sides. When I worked in Southampton in the 1980s the station had entrances on both sides with access roads sloping down from above the the tunnel on both sides of the line. It's not something I'd ever given much thought to for through stations but I will notice it more now. 

   

 

[Lacathedrale]

I know we spoke about this before, but I've completely lost track of what page in the thread it was - for the minimum stock requirements for a steam-hauled minories? If I remember correctly the conversation broadly went that:

 

1) Suburban trains would most likely dominate in real life, but being similar in look and organiation could be represented by a couple of loco + coach sets

2) A posh 'chairman's' train

3) A couple of regional trains (cheap and fast, and a prestigious one)

4) (part of?) a named express with top link stock

5) A goods loco and some NPCS: newspaper vans, horseboxes, carriage trucks, etc.

 

Is that about right?

 

[t-b-g]

49 minutes ago, Lacathedrale said:

I know we spoke about this before, but I've completely lost track of what page in the thread it was - for the minimum stock requirements for a steam-hauled minories? If I remember correctly the conversation broadly went that:

 

1) Suburban trains would most likely dominate in real life, but being similar in look and organiation could be represented by a couple of loco + coach sets

2) A posh 'chairman's' train

3) A couple of regional trains (cheap and fast, and a prestigious one)

4) (part of?) a named express with top link stock

5) A goods loco and some NPCS: newspaper vans, horseboxes, carriage trucks, etc.

 

Is that about right?

 

 

I think the "chairman's train" and the goods loco may be optional but nice to have category but yes, that would be a good list to work from.

 

There is perhaps one thing I would change, swapping one of the longer distance trains for a further suburban set.

 

That would allow a "rush hour" scene with all three suburban sets arriving and departing in quick succession, with all three platforms occupied by such trains. When rush hour is over, the pace slackens and the longer distance trains and suburban trains mix, perhaps with added tail load traffic to deal with.

 

Tony