Clive Mortimore

Hi All The basic Minnories layout will only allow for a train arriving and one departing when the departing train is leaving the platform that directly exits on to the down line and an up train is entering one of the other platforms. A train departing the other platforms will have use the cross over from the up line to the down line meaning any train entering the station will have to wait until the crossover is clear. Likewise a train entering using the up to down crossover will block all the trains in the station. Therefore with careful timetable planning using a traverser/turntable is feasible as only a few services can arrive and depart simultaneously. I worked that out while planning my proposed model. Many moons ago DEMU had a layout challenge based on the Minnories theme. A friend and I spent many hours working out how we could get everything in the space constraints and do it in P4. It was decided that the two crossovers would be best made into a scissors crossover. The point leading off to the loco siding would be added to the scissors as a tandem point with one of the points forming said scissors crossover. To get the point in for the third platform we would have ended up with a platform that could take a two coach train. So to save space a double slip was suggested. Now the country end blades of the double slip and the station end crossing of the diamond in the scissors would have been at the same place. This is a practice I have never seen, switches with a crossing V. The solution was found by having an offset scissors crossing. Templot was fired up and a track plan printed. That is as far as we got. A couple of years ago I revisited the plan and redrew it in MS Paint for OO. Last year I started to make the point work, life got in the way so it wasn't to last week that I finished the basic track work. It does need to be refined but that will come in time. The plan is for it to be a GNR terminus just in the City, next door to the Barbican. It will be on a viaduct and will have a station building in the same ER style as Harlow, and Colchester. To be set in the sixties with Cravens DMUs, Mk1 suburbans, maybe a Mk 1 corridor train for Cambridge and Peterborough. Parcels and a van train of perishable goods to fill in the mid-day action. A large part of the arches under the viaduct will be a parcels depot. I have to have a reason for all those BR road vans I have. The working title is Cripplegate, this is the only gate in the old roman city wall that does not have a station or major road named after it. http://en.wikipedia....ki/Cripplegate