Harlequin

Clevedon - Col Stephens terminus right alongside GWR terminus. There's even a connection between them for wagon exchange.

To put it another way, with DCC you control trains, not sections of track. Like Zomboid I also use a Sprog device and the JMRI app to control my layout, which allows any tablet or smartphone to be a "controller" (actually it's more correct to call them "throttles"). This is very flexible and cost effective because you don't have to buy proprietary wireless devices. JMRI is a bit techy and a bit clunky but, ignoring the wireless throttles for a moment, it's great for controlling multiple trains from the main computer. You can open several throttle windows on screen and then you can clearly see the identity of each loco along with all it's function buttons and throttle slider. Then just moving the mouse pointer over the appropriate throttle slider and rolling the mouse wheel adjusts the speed. I love this method of driving and it's very easy to jump between multiple moving locos that way.

Still very much in the learning phase but things are improving. This is print #4 straight out of the printer with supports still in place: And after an hour or so of very careful chopping and trimming: Nothing has been deliberately thickened yet, it's all to scale and amazingly, the 5/8ths inch vertical rods supporting the guard rail have printed successfully. They are incredibly fragile and somewhat warped, though! Notice also that the ball in the finial is hollow. Annoyingly, the peak of the finial seems to have been truncated and the ladder is a mess and not connected to the landing. This print is sharper than previous ones and that's because I moved the printer into a room with no windows and kept the door shut so that no UV light could affect the resin during the print. Onwards...

Quick sketch idea: I tried to make it simple, loose and a bit frayed round the edges. There's a connection from branch to main line for operational interest. The high release crossover also makes life interesting and a bit more varied. Run round loop is completed in the fiddle yard so that you can have 4-5 six wheelers and the platform is (plenty) long enough for them. Very deliberate separation of branch line and main line exits. Room for a bit of scenery beyond the buffer stops. Can't justify 3 simultaneous loco movements, though! Only 2... Is this too simplified or is it deceptively simple?

Hi Peter, What are you thinking about a fiddle yard?

Well, if gradients are eliminated, at least within most of the shed, then your basic trackplan would still work but just simplified: A double track line would head sinuously (because you are good at sinuous) from North to South on the West side, passing your goods yard, and a double-track triangle in the South West corner would feed the station on the East side. The southernmost junction of the triangle would be outside, as per your current plan (I assume).

I was talking about Meteorological summer, of course.

And Hornby say, "Summer 2020", which starts in June, right? So, ignoring Rails's fallacious date, that's 6 days then, folks! I have a good feeling about this (and heaven knows we need something to feel good about).

It's all looking really atmospheric! Have you thought about applying "focus stacking" to your photos to make them look even more realistic?

Thanks for the explanation about the door. Makes more sense now. (I was expecting a quadrant.) I can just about make out the elevation numbers on the large zoomed in image and I'm not sure about them. (Possibly silly of me to question professionally written software but hey I'm a programmer and I know that all sorts of things can go wrong...) It feels like the goods route in particular will be very steep - right on the generally accepted 1:35 limit and possibly worse. And that's not allowing for transitions to and from level around the big double junction. Does AnyRail handle transitions? Just something worth checking because it could be very annoying in the real world.

I flipped the goods yard to the inside in my suggestion for similar reasons.

To squeeeeze a bit more out of the space and get a bit more operating flexibility, how about moving the top crossover currently between loops 3 and 4 from it's current position onto the lifting section? OK, that makes the lifting section a bit more complicated but the pay off would be that in one direction all three loops would be reversible and loops 2,3,4 and 5 would become slightly longer.

@Graham70 Some practical questions: Is the shed warm enough to use in winter and draught free? (And not too hot in summer?) When the caravan is in place how much space is there between it and the layout? If the fiddle yard is on a lower level, how and where does it connect to the double-track circuit of the shed? (Is that connection going to take up space in the scenic area?) If the colliery scene is on a lower level, does that have a separate connection to the top level taking up space and requiring a particular alignment of the colliery line? What radius and pitch of helix are you thinking of? Have you considered the traction problems of RTR steam locos hauling long trains up the helix? How are you going to fit a return loop in the lower level, just in terms of the width needed?

I see... Sorry, I was thinking about it differently (wrongly). So if there's something standing in the relevant centre road, you can't reverse another train. You'd have to stash it in one of the other loops until the blocking train moves (either way) then run the stashed train round again and into the centre road.

How do trains in the up loops get onto the down line when reversing without appearing on scene running wrong road and vice versa?

Hi Jon, Fair enough. 6ft 6 by 2ft 6 is about the size of a door. In fact you could use a door for the baseboard... Why cut it at all? That size might be a bit awkward to move but you won't have to do it very often (I hope).

It is difficult because you're trying to do the almost impossible and what you've got so far (or maybe what you had a few iterations back) is actually pretty amazing! It's worth trying to fit the required extra loop in (and crossovers?) but if you can't then I think you've probably already reached the best possible compromise for this form of the plan. The only other planning avenue open to you then would be to start again with a blank canvas and try something deliberately different. You might find a better plan or that the current plan is as good as it gets. BTW: In my last suggestion, cassettes were 1080mm long and the operating well was 1660 * 1380mm (minus a couple of fillets in the corners).

The thread title is "O gauge GWR branch shunting layout", you said in the OP that shunting was your interest, time and funds were limited and that the room size was a limit not a target. And yet your design above shows a double track roundy-round that fills the entire space... Just sayin', that's all...

I can't post the whole image because I don't know who has the copyright but here's the lamp in the Sebastopol photo: S on the rear, Diamond on the left (left with the lamp lens facing you)

Hi Mikkel, Atkins says, ...from 1879 the sides of GW lamps were painted... ...a white diamond was often painted on a black ground on the left... and a red 'S' for special on the right... Even so, some lamps had no side markings at all, and the 'S' may have been on the back of some lamps. So, I think you have free reign! Atkins also says that the mounting method officially changed from "spigots" to lamp irons in 1903, although the implementation lagged as usual. (A wonderful photo of "Sebastopol" that has recently been posted on the "Everything Great Western" FB group shows a crystal clear image of a lamp with S on the back and the white diamond on the left hand side.)

Hmmm... This is all sounding rather impractical, I’m afraid.

Hi Mark, Very nice flowing curves! How do your doors open? Are they really hinged in the centre or conventionally in the door frames either side of the opening? This may impact on the width of the boards and the trackwork just inside the doorway, if they open inwards. The baseboards are quite deep at 1metre. Lots of people would find that too far to comfortably reach the back but maybe it's OK for you. What is the rail-top to rail-top clearance where the south-bound lines pass under the station approach lines? Are you sure there's enough distance for them to reach the same level at the crossover into the goods yard? Edit: (Standard streamline track spacing is 2inches which rounds to 51mm to the nearest mm.)

I still think that cassettes would provide more usable FY capacity without the heavy cost of pointwork and tightly curved storage loops. They would be more flexible, allowing trains to be reversed, swapped from down to up, and locos to be exchanged or to "run round", as required. They would make use of the room's volume not just it's tiny floor area...