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dpgibbons

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  1. dpgibbons
    My trainsim days have given me a taste for authentic modelling of railway operations. Fortunately BR(S) modellers are well blessed with the necessary material, starting with the Southern Email Group's timetable archives at https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SEmG/files/MartinWhiteCollection/ (you may need to join the group to access these).
     
    I also have the Xpress publication "District Controllers View No. 14: North Devon" - this wonderful series really brings the dusty world of WTTs, CWNs and EWNs to life and adds lots of colour and operational detail.
     
    From these sources I now have a WTT for a Summer Saturday in 1961 that shows 42 arrivals and departures at Torrington, including 6 mixed passenger/goods serving the Halwill Jct line, 4 goods, 3 Light Engine and 1 parcels. There are 28 passenger trains of which 13 convey through coaches to/from Waterloo. The carriage working notices give me the passenger train formations and tell me that the longest train was the morning Atlantic Coast Express departure with 7 coaches, and that I'd need a minimum of 35 items of coaching stock (!) to operate the full schedule. The 7 Engine diagrams were covered by 6 Ivatt 2MTs and one M7 from Barnstaple (Torrington shed closed in 1959), but with a little modellers license I can assign a couple of those to a WC and an N class.
     
    I now have a clear idea of what rolling stock I will need together with some important parameters for my layout planning.
     
    No doubt some pruning will be required, but clearly this is not going to be a dull layout to operate.
  2. dpgibbons

    Here's the easy part

    By dpgibbons,

    Here's the easy part, as I'm a lot handier with a credit card than I am with a soldering iron. This is most of the rolling stock needed for Torrington (plus a few indulgences) on my test track.
     

  3. dpgibbons

    First steps

    By dpgibbons,

    My layout project had to be modest in scope and size and interesting to operate. I have history with BR (S) steam-era routes in trainsims, together with a lot of reference material on Devon and Dorset railways. So I looked at a lot of possibilities in that area.
     
    Despite its modest size, Torrington in the 1950s boasted through coach services to London, considerable milk and china clay traffic, and also terminated services from Halwill Jct. Almost everything needed to operate the line authentically is available as RTR; Ivatt 2MTs and M7s on most services, WCs and N Class Moguls as occasional visitors, and Type 22s and 25s in the freight-only years. Plus passenger vans, 6 wheel milk tanks and clay wagons. And all models of a quality that I could only dream about as a teenager.
     
    So Torrington it is. And I have Darren's OO layout as inspiration. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/3565-torrington-mk-1-and-torrington-mk-2/page-1
  4. dpgibbons

    Here we go again...

    By dpgibbons,

    As a teenager I started a 32ft long N Gauge layout of Weymouth station - a laughable youthful folly given my lack of skills and resources at the time. The baseboards live on as a workbench in my parent's garage. A few grains of ballast live on.
     
    Now I'm returning to N Gauge modelling with greater resources on hand and a grim determination to actually get something built.
     
    Thankfully in the intervening decades the internet has arrived to provide both tuition and access to UK model shops.
     
    A blog seems a good way to keep me focused, so here goes...
  5. dpgibbons

    Planning with TrainSim

    By dpgibbons,

    AnyRail is a great way to plan a layout but it gives you little idea of how the finished article will operate.
     
    So I've built a mock-up of the Torrington layout in Train Simulator 2017 (TS2017) and I'm using it to rehearse the Summer WTT I discussed in earlier posts.
     
    It's quickly apparent that it poses a major shunting puzzle with the demands of holiday traffic stretching the station's sidings capacity to the limit.
     
    The test is also shedding light on likely fiddle yard requirements - which will be a lot more than I expected, if I want to avoid spending a lot of time remarshalling stock offstage.
     

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