whart57

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I've just remembered another terminus with Seironim's track plan: Sheerness on Sea.

 

Sheerness actually had an even more interesting earlier terminus, about which relatively little seems to be recorded and, for about twenty years I think, the new terminus was a branch from the old one, so the old one would make a great model, with all that "in and out". The 1896 25" OS shows the strange arrangement, and the 1931 25" OS shows the track plan with centre-release road with three-way point at the new station, as I remember it from the 1970s.

 

The old station is here http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/s/sheerness_dockyard/

 

It had a positively insane track plan, and what isn't mentioned in that write-up is that the overall roof was destroyed during WW1 when a battleship blew-up  nearby  https://www.historicmedway.co.uk/localdisasters/hms_bulwark.htm . 

It gets better actually. Old timetables suggest that trains from Sittingbourne and beyond ran into the Dockyard station and then reversed out to run the little bit to Sheerness on Sea. Certainly the 1887 and 1910 Bradshaws have them doing that. (As an aside the 1887 Bradshaw decided to squeeze in the Isle of Man railways on a bit of space in the middle of the LDCR stuff ..... ) The 1921 Bradshaw however still lists the Dockyard station but it has no trains going to it. Whether that was because of the roof having been blown off or simply because the craziness of this operation finally got through to HQ is something I don't know.

19 minutes ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

For anyone with a bit more space, Greenwich Park would make a show-stopper in the right hands (not mine!).
 

Even though the real Greenwich Park only saw a shuttle service for most of it's life? It would be a use for the Hattons P class though.

Now I know that this is theory and the idea is for a busy opposite end of a city centre terminus so picky little details like the whole point of Greenwich Park station disappearing in 1899 with the working union between SER and LCDR are not wanted.

In which case the SECR area provides a few more candidates. Chatham Central for example, though the modern Thameslink connection might offer better suggestions. Back in pre-Group days the stations of St Paul's (now part of Blackfriars) and Holborn (originally Snow Hill) were small termini, but they lay beside the through line connecting the southern and northern railways. I've always thought this bit of London railway would make an excellent exhibition layout given the three stations of St Pauls, Ludgate Hill and Holborn lying so close to each other the platforms almost touch. As anyone who takes the Thameslink trains across the city will know today.

Continuing along this tangent, how about Amsterdam, Spuistraat, the terminus of the metre gauge interurban tramline to Haarlem and Zandvoort. The trackplan contains a scissors crossing as well as various crossovers. The crossovers were needed as about a third of the services required the motor car to run round at the termini. The other services were push-pull with a motor car at each end.

Amsterdam city council forced the closure of the line in 1957, their objection was the long tram trains running through the centre (ironically they weren't much longer than the Combinos running today), the mix with the city trams and the need to have dual gauge track for a couple of kilometres. However this shot from 1955 shows what things were like.

That platform edge is looking a whole lot better.

The ballast colour will affect the overall look though. Aside from the fact it doesn't want to look too clean, what colour are you going to use?

Do you have a copy of Gordon Gravett's Modelling grass and landscape detailing? It has some good stuff on things like road surfaces and the like. Not tried his techniques myself but having seen some of his layouts they certainly work for him. I personally find hard surfaces like roads and platforms a nightmare to get right so when the occasion arises - as it will do pretty soon - I'll give some of his stuff a whirl.

I would say though that the brickwork needs a lot of sooting up.

The Minories approach does allow the modelling of some massive city termini. Not the whole station of course, but many large stations were cobbled together over time. Take this example of London Victoria, this is an early map from the 1860s when the station was new

Victoria was the terminus of the West End and Crystal Palace Railway, a semi-independent company owned by the LBSCR with the GWR,  LCDR and others also having an interest. As a result it is actually two stations side by side, the LCDR (later SECR) station to the East and the Brighton station to the West. There was effectively a further divide on the Brighton side with Brighton trains and Portsmouth trains occupying different platforms. Even today Victoria is three stations, a station for Kent, a station for South London suburban lines and a station for lines to the South Coast.

So a while ago I drew out what the westernmost section would look like as a Minories style layout

I say Minories-style because obviously it doesn't contain the full CJF features. The dotted line incidentally is a scenic feature, the start of the other fourteen platforms

Of course for most of those into 19th century railways the Eastern side with its broad and standard mixed-gauge tracks would be far more interesting. The GWR did continue to run into Victoria up to WW1.

14 hours ago, t-b-g said:

 

Build another Minories at the other end. Somewhere between the two, build some carriage sidings and a loco shed. All the stock out on display all the time. 

I have this vague recollection of someone who built a layout with two single line termini, but when operating one acted as fiddle yard for the other. That way he could have an OO GWR branch terminus as well as a German HO station. Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?

42 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

 

This plan crops up regularly on Minories threads. It wasn't intended by the author to be Minories, rather the outer suburban counterpart, with elements of Caterham I think.  It's a different kind of layout altogether (omnes: It's a different kind of layout).

Just as a matter of interest I went to the National Library of Scotland website to look at the real Caterham on 25" to the mile OS maps. Turns out that the track plan is significantly different on the three different editions available. On the 1895 version Caterham is a simple single line terminus with a single line by the platform, almost Ashburton like, but with no loco facilities. Now the odd thing is that (doing a Portillo) consulting my 1887 Bradshaw, the Caterham branch train seems to be a shuttle service to Caterham Junction (aka Purley)

On the 1910 OS map though, there are loco facilities - a turntable and a spur - and the platform layout has been remodelled to have the station building at the end and two lines, one each side of the platform, both of which have run-rounds. This is the closest to Iain Rice's Harestone, but is considerably bigger. By 1933 however the turntable and loco siding have gone as the line has been electrified.

What is pretty clear though is that Caterham is no "Minories".

Wimblehurst Road at the Croydon MRC show about three years ago.

One feature on a number of Colonel Stephen's light railways was gravity shunting, rather than the loco running round it's train by means of a loop. Sometimes it was through laziness - mixed trains from Headcorn to Tenderden on the K&ESR would stop short of Tenderden station - and a little up gradient - then roll the coach to the platform and the goods wagons into the yard, thus saving a bit of shunting. This is recorded as happening but it's not clear that it would have occurred on days when the Colonel motored over from Tonbridge to look things over.

It might have done as on the East Kent, the Colonel didn't provide a loop at Wingham Canterbury Road and gravity shunting was the only possibility. (The first passing loop was at Eastry, a dozen miles away)

So gravity shunting would be an interesting, if challenging, feature on a light railway layout. I drew out this plan for a 3mm scale light railway layout in a spare bedroom (The plan - with 6" squares - is nicely drawn as it was intended for publication in the 3mm Society magazine as part of a series on how 3mm scale made things possible in modern domestic locations)

As you can see, the extension to the Town station requires a gravity shunt. I figured on simple methods like a pin rising between the tracks to hold back the axle of the coach while the loco runs into the siding, and then the pin dropping and the coach rolling into the platform where a spring retarder slows it down to a halt. Cleverer solutions are of course available.

The operation envisaged also had most passenger services operated by those back to back railbuses. That this is possible in 3mm scale is demonstrated by Stephen Driscoll's layout, Wimblehurst Road, which is effectively a small part of the larger scheme

15 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Iain Rice's plans look OK to me but I think that he is usually working on the premise that hand-built pointwork will be used.

Speaking from experience I can say that hand-built pointwork is even less forgiving than commercial stuff.

9 hours ago, roythebus said:

Having tried to build several CJF layouts over the years, very few of them are actually buildable and workable.

Similar complaints have been made of Iain Rice's plans too, even though Iain built some of them and exhibited them.

My take would be that when designing for publication there are two incompatible pressures: the need to fit a "standard" space, such as a 6'x4' baseboard or 7'6"x5'6" (the interior measurements of a common 8'x6' garden shed); and, on the other hand, the need to squeeze in all the features the layout theme requires. There is a huge temptation then to skimp on clearances, to make curves a smidgen sharper and to squeeze turnouts together tighter than physically possible. The purpose of the design is after all to look good on the page.

It would be an interesting exercise for someone bored with lockdown to take some of CJF's plans and try to recreate them in Anyrail, just to see how much extra baseboard space all round is required to make them work.

Indeed, but no need to bristle so.

15 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Plenty of stuff claiming to come from Lancasters, Halifaxes, Stirlings, and B17s; probably the pickings of stores rather than from actual a/c.  Sadly, a lot ended up on the ground or the sea bed between there and Germany...

 

At the risk of being political. Seventy five years on we should really be remembering what they were going over to Germany to do. And most of those on the receiving end of their deliveries were just ordinary folk.

47 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 I heard about that and wasn’t it a way to check that instructions/requests had actually been read, rather than just something ridiculous to wind people up?

It's a technique often used. Some authors deliberately put an instruction to editors or proof-readers a hundred odd pages in to make sure they are actually reading that far. Map makers create fake villages or streets to catch illegal copyists. And the earliest example of "fake news" was a newspaper printing a made up story to catch out a rival they suspected of plagiarism.

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

(this is intended to be read as a tongue in cheek comment, I’m not trying to start WW3).

That's all right, so was mine

23 hours ago, The Johnster said:

the western hemisphere isn't really known for good looking steam locomotives

Oi!  The entire GWR was located in the western hemisphere, west of the Greenwich Meridian...

 

 

And your point is?

In the spirit of a rockband who demanded promoters remove one colour from the M&Ms put in the dressing room as a way of testing said promoters' attention to detail, I look at the railway depictions in films and television dramas less for strict accuracy than as a measure of how much effort the producers put in to make the railway scenes fit period and place. And I regard the former as more important.

5 hours ago, Fenman said:

 

I think you are forgetting that the railway system was originally built by the dynamic and, allegedly, hugely efficient private sector.

 

This was not public investment in aid to people in either bankrupt or failed states (with all the difficulties that implies of getting aid where it is needed): these were private companies operating at the height of 19th century entrepreneurial industrialisation. They were meant to be models of the efficient allocation of scarce capital. But it turned out that a combination of the egos of the company leaders and an overwhelming desire to create monopolies (that could then be exploited with high rents) were the main driving forces.

 

Jack Simmons has written how the celebrations when the first railway company reached a particular town were usually dwarfed by the celebrations when a second company arrived: local people were usually fed up of the exploitation and welcomed the competition that would drive down prices.

 

Nevertheless there was plenty of opportunity to make easy money from railway investors. First off there was the uniquely British practice of requiring every railway, no matter how short, to apply for an Act of Parliament, which had to be passed by both houses. That meant lawyers and lobbyists dipping in. It also meant finding an MP or peer or two to propose and sponsor the Bill as well as making sure that competitors didn't make use of the parliamentary procedure of a single MP shouting "object" at Second Reading to scupper the bill before it got started.

Once the railway had its Act it could then start acquiring the land. Often they would find that the sweeteners given to landowners to buy off their opposition at the parliamentary stage were not enough to prevent further demands. Yes, the railway now had powers for compulsory purchase but the legal process would be expensive and take forever. A promise of a bridge or occupation crossing might be enough.

Then some months later the landowner would be back. That bridge is not actually needed you know, but you Mr Railway are obliged to build it. Maybe we could come to some arrangement?

One small positive from the virus crisis is that we no longer live with the noise of planes circling in the stack for Gatwick. The sky is also a clear blue with no vapour trails.

But we have not been entirely aircraft free. We have had a vintage plane fly over, sometimes doing a few circles of the town before heading south again. This plane is - I think - a Harvard trainer and carries USAF markings. I don't know where its from.

Anyone else seeing different things from the usual procession of 737s and A320s?

The Transport Minister re-iterated on Friday that the plan to reverse Beeching was going ahead.

Mind you he was trying to avoid talking about another issue, one the press were - are - much more interested in, so maybe a soupcon of salt is advisable

On 08/05/2020 at 21:23, maico said:

The front of the Italian ATR 100 is a bit of an aquired taste

 

Well if it's large radiators you are after:

And not much more handsome in profile

But they eventually got it right

Does this mean that our friend from Horsehay should include the ruins of Abraham Darby's furnace as they were in the 1960's, pre Telford New Town and the revival of interest in the Industrial past? Be an interesting bit of modelling.

Incidentally, you have mis-spoke here. The Ironbridge was commissioned by Abraham Darby III and designed by one Thomas Pritchard. Telford designed the first iron bridge, replacing a medieval stone bridge, at Buildwas. But that is not the modern bridge.

I take your point about looking "train-setty" and it would if you merely went for a set of Metcalfe cottages. However your idea of a row of trees to create a sound break is 21st century thinking, no-one would have bothered in the mid 20th century. There is also the little matter that a row of mature trees in the 1960s would have been planted in the 1930s to 1940s. But what with the war and the Depression before that people had other things on their plates.

I hope I am not offending you with my suggestions, but I am coming to this from having lived in the area forty years ago and not having been back since. In my mind I have a vision of the place in a period not far removed from the one you are modelling. Out of interest I have been "driving around" using Google Streetview and it seems to me today that Telford is a lot greener and tidier than I remember.

The other thing to remember is that in your period Dawley New Town (not even Telford yet, Wellington was not added to the new town till a few years later) had only just been created.

To come back to the workmen's cottages idea, the Metcalfeshire idea of rows of back to backs wouldn't work, that's not East Shropshire. More typical is individual small, low ceilinged cottages with small outbuildings for kitchens and sculleries, or perhaps a short row of three or four, not even all to the same design. Today most have been gentrified - blame the first generation of teachers and office managers moving to Telford for that - and often a short row has been knocked together to make one residence. And most would have had a bit of garden, usually turned over to vegetable growing.

But keep up the good work, I'm interested in this one.

By the way, were you aware of this bit of level crossing still lingering in a road near Doseley

Some forty years ago I took some pictures of my then two year old daughter peeking through the level crossing gates. I'm pretty certain this was the spot.