Lacathedrale

I had actually tentatively named the layout Brighton Victoria before, @Curlew . I would prefer to omit a subtitle so Brighton (Trafalgar Rd) is less desirable than "Brighton Trafalgar" even if the latter is a bit on the nose. I'm quite happy with Brighton Victoria, I just forgot I had called it that at some point. BV or BT? Hmmm... Anyway, all the track is laid now bar the additional FY tracks for which I'm now waiting on some No. 2 brass screws to finish. I was hoping to get the wiring done on the rest of the layout today and run some trains but honestly I was not prepared for how boring wiring is. I had forgotten. I'm wiring droppers to the brass screws at each board joint, since the rails are soldered together on the platform board, and split down the middle in the throat board. - hopefully it's going to mean the underneath is as simple as it gets. I'm still debating the relative merits of mechanical turnout control - there's space in the foreground of the throat board for a lever frame. Time to dig back into the Peter Denny Buckingham books!

My thoughts exactly @BlueLightning ! Maybe "Brighton Trafalgar" (because of the roads that the station would have been built over and around) - but then is it a little on the nose when held up against "London Waterloo" ? Unexpectedly the brass tube and PCB turned up today, so rather than wiring I thought I'd try to get the FY alignment pins done - it seems to work! Not perfect and it needs a bit of fettling yet, but in broad terms it's looking good. There's ALOT of slop in those drawer runners, and given that my other hobby is Model Engineering where thousands-of-an-inch matter it's a bit dismaying, but this is 00 after all and the stock does go through. I have another four pads and tubes cut and ready but I'm just about out of No. 2 brass screws, so the layout's final track-laying will be delayed for a couple of weeks given the Easter weekend now, and then next week I'm on holiday - but what I've got should be enough for me to lash it up later today or tomorrow morning for a ribbon cutting ceremony.

Well I think it's only the right thing to do to not directly impinge on someone else's naming! Some other ideas I had knocking around: Brighton Low-Level Brighton St. Giles Brighton Laines, or just 'Laines' Brighton Trafalgar Answers on a postcard please? My foamcore has arrived - huzzah! - time to see how far 10 sheets gets me, I guess!

So with a day clear of any obligation ahead of me - I put down some objectives for Brighton East (tentative name) for today: Lay the P3 runaround Lay the P1 and P2 platform roads Fit droppers for each track at the terminus end Fit some cross-board wiring plugs and sockets Run some light engine movements! One and two achieved rather quickly: I mis-laid the rear underlay, so please ignore how the tracks look like they're veering off the edge! While I had the rear track in place I thought I'd test out access and while the layout is situated ideally for visuals, I'm not sure that the use of three links is going to work - but that's a problem for another day:

One recent bit of cud chewing I went through with my Minories++ was the length of the platform roads. Well, in my specific case it was the length of the headshunt on one of the platform roads - but I think the principle still stands as a theoretical exercise. It would be easy to paint with a broad brush and say 'all sidings and platforms should be as long as possible', but where do you draw the line on 'as possible' ? How much scenery is a willing sacrifice? How tight turnouts to gain that length, etc. ? In my case I realised that a runaround move on P3 with a normal-sized train would necessitate shunting the carriages back a little into the throat - just enough to block arrivals onto P2. I was a little aghast at this, until I realised that the runaround move itself would also block P2 arrivals by nature of... running around. In actuality, this slight operational kink is more likely to improve rather than detract from operations. Similarly, I realised aforementioned P3 headshunt is just slightly too small to fit a Lord Nelson in it, a locomotive I'm not looking to include but would prefer to have an option for. Elongating the headshunt would squeeze the station building down from 2/3rds depth to 1/2 and I think look rather silly. With some head scratching and nail biting trying to make things fit I realised that the whole bloody point of the Minories layout is the pilot loco usage, and so I was barking completely up the wrong tree and pulling the wrong levers.

Modelling wise, some AC Stadden figures turned up so I posed them briefly while trying to figure out where I put my needle files...

I promised myself that I wouldn't update this thread until the track was laid, but I took an impromptu visit to Brighton and for a moment I was completely disoriented as the platform side had only three windows: Above the roofline, the wings are still L-shaped and when you peer through the glass you can see the additional window in the floor above the roof too: So it looks like the decorative stonework was either moved (or built) three windows from the corner. It must have looked very strange from platform side indeed. Unless this was done at some point during the renovation works - I don't have any photos really of the building from this side except modern ones. In this configuration the building would look liked 3-9-3 instead of 4-6-4 - and my version is currently 4-5-4

Maybe i was looking in the wrong place- foam board is ordered now either way - if that fails then celotex to the rescue! Dave s. of the Brighton Circle provided this close up of the buffers at Central Croydon, which Brighton seemed to share a pattern with: It looks like there's eight sleepers worth of rail after the fishplate, so that's more than enough leeway to fiddle around. I must make sure to leave space in the platform surface for the angled rails to recess into them. @justin1985 poses a pertinent question - would there have been planks above for access to the rear supports of the bufferstop, or would the whole lot just be encased in hardcore and forgotten about?

Not a bad shout - I have ordereD sheets of 10mm stuff because I don't fancy cutting four sheets of 5mm every time. @Oldddudders I did look at Celotex but it seems to be hilariously expensive even for small pieces. Before I get ahead of myself I do need to finish track, and so that means gluing down P1/P2 roads, finishing the loop for P3, and laying the traverser tracks. Since I don't yet have any material for alignment pins (2mm rod, 3mm tube, PCB are winging their way to me as we speak), work is still concentrated at the country end of the layout. Now if I could only find out where my rail joiners ended up....

Really interested in your custom throttle - one thing I've felt is a bit lacking in commercial controls is the aesthetics and being able to mount in a mahogany cigar box with brass dials and ivory buttons - YES PLEASE!

Any ideas for a solid ~20mm material I can use for my platforms that isn't as heavy or difficult to manipulate as wood? I'll glue SE Finecast embossed sheets to the sides and surfaces where required.

So, I think after all that we've come to a conclusion one way or another around the various lengths and positions: To model the terminus building at the end of the platforms at anywhere near approaching scale, it needs to be 142mm tall in the central area. In order for the building roofline not to intersect with the door, it needs to be at least 45mm from the end of the baseboard. It could be a low-profile flat, but: The runaround loop does not need any more space, nor does the concourse, so using a flat would only add meaningful capacity to the loco runaround capacity. The only locomotive which can't fit onto the runaround which I have even the most remote desire to own or operate is a Lord Nelson, which can simply use one of the other platforms and leverage the pilot locomotive. With that in mind, I may as well model the station building and use that space at the end of the boards for a small forecourt cameo.

Oh yes that's a great point. I think I remember reading the original station had access via the West Coastway which went diagonally under the station to pop out at the site of the goods yard on the South-East corner.

After the above I've had a change of heart and decided on transition-era BR (NE) : Just Kidding! A late April Fool's joke for you there :) The building as above is scaled to 87.5% (don't tell anyone, it's essentially H0) and I think still looks just as impressive - but I have ordered a set of Edwardian figures from AC Stadden to stand around and give a sense of scale to the building before I firm up the decision. Rather than needing to build a foamcore box, I fiddle around with various stock boxes until I found the point of intersection - which is over the middle area of the building, approximately the height of a Bachmann stock box away from the platform-end of the building - around 9cm: What this means is that I have/am forced to have around 40mm of space at the front of the building to model the porticos and forecourt and the station is compressed in depth a little - not ideal but I don't think it makes a huge difference. I will have to rearrange the arches through the building so I can get a nice view of the trains from the end of the baseboards, I think! Here's another shot mercifully back in the Umber period: There aren't very many pictures of Brighton station without the overall train-shed, but here's one of them from a Littleton Press book: It's undated, but clearly pre-1882. Quite what a little chapel is doing at the end of the platforms I have no clue...

@Edwardian thank you for the ideas - definitely something to muIl over. For now I want to take the 1840's-1880's Mocatta styled station building as far as I can, so I'm going to look in that direction first. @Dana Ashdown though I have no intention of changing the time period or area modelled, I agree and will increase the length of the head-shunt on the loop by 30mm which will permit me in future to run basically any locomotive from the southern region and will give me a bit of leeway in positioning for the Atlantic. The loop itself is already large enough for four Mk1 carriages so I'm going to leave that well alone. Assuming I do that, the area available between the end of the rails and the end of the baseboard is around 170mmm.. A width of 170mm between the baseboard end and the buffers is enough for the scale concourse/covered walkway and station building depth with a little wiggle room. @Oldddudders I also agree that to model the station building, covered walkway, etc. as a removable unit since there's a logical endpoint of paving before transitioning to the macadam platform surfaces. Speaking of platforms, one thing I hadn't actually calculated yet was the platform height and its impact. The platforms to be about 20mm above baseboard level since the track is laid on 5mm underlay. Strictly speaking it should be a little higher, but I am going to lean on the premise that is a station that has had no major upgrades since being built - and clearly before modern platform heights were adopted! Since the station building needs to sit atop the 20mm tall platforms it would definitely clash with the garage door, as well as being wider than the baseboards I have available. Rather than omitting large parts of the building or removing floors, I think the solution may be rather simple: scale the building down by ~10-15% and omit one window bay in the middle area of the building. It's still ginormous as typical model railway buildings go, but fits in both width and height without a problem. Here's a rough illustration of the difference in scale: Time to quickly mock that up!

@TJ52 I think the issue will be that any movement of the door while the building is 'up' would risk damage. I'm definitely going to include it somehow. @Nick C Rather than cutting down floors, balconies, etc. my thought on those lines was to scale the building down a little - maybe 90% or H0-scale and then it'll fit in easily? It fixes the height issue and would allow me to model the building along the width/depth as-is rather than removing doors and windows to narrow it. That would then compromise part of the overall facade though, so needs proving out too. I really need to get a 3D representation there to see how the door intersects with the building - when I do get one in situ we'll be able to see what we're dealing with - I found my foamcore so just need some spare time with the hot glue gun to mock it up. It might just be the roofline of the left wing of the building, or the front (i.e. road-facing) profile which I would happily omit or not model, in order that I didn't make any compromises on the rest of it.

I've printed up a mock-up of the original 1840 Brighton station building and placed it to illustrate the prototypically narrow concourse. I think the look is quite effective: I think I will need to scale the building down a little - while I can remove bays to make it fit more naturally in width, the height is really at the limit. On those lines @TJ52, I did consider siting the building further back and having a wider (i.e. non-prototypical) concourse but I'm only JUST at the clearance for my garage door and any further back and it'll get clouted every time the door opens or closes! The only saving grace with the current setup is that the central area of the building is lower down, as the garage door ribs would otherwise intersect with the rear wing, as shown below: I think I need a 3D mockup but I can't find my bloody stock of foam-core anywhere so it'll have to wait a little while longer I'm afraid. @Andy_C - The Atlantic is by far the largest locomotive I'm planning to include on this layout and it fits with the clearance you can see above - quite tight, but enough in a pinch. I would expect this runaround to mainly be used by non-push-pull fitted tank locomotives as P1 and P2 are much longer and suitable for bigger trains without snarling up the throat.

Crossposting from my thread which is the build of a Minories++ layout - the rear of the layout is basically Minories as-writ: I decided to add a runaround loop, carriage siding and headshunt in the foreground since I didn't see any operational detraction from their inclusion, I already had the width and wanted the dimensions to be broadly proportional - but the core of the operation is as written by Mr. Freezer way-back when. With a station building in-place and with a prototypically narrow concourse (my basis for this station is the pre-modernisation Brighton station of 1840-1882) I think it looks quite nice:

It's starting to look a bit like a station, finally! On-layout are the five coaches I've built and bashed into LBSCR prototypes and I'm really quite pleased with how they've turned out. The trio on P3 are not yet complete with roof detail still pending, but look quite effective IMO. This is the arrangement that I'm looking at - albeit with the station building about half the width of the flat 'concourse' area above. A fairly narrow concourse is prototypical for the Mocatta-era Brighton station building - it should only be around 15' in depth before the drop down to track level. I had considered extending the platform tracks to their maximum extent as follows: This pushes the station building hard up against the boundary of the layout and becomes a very low-profile flat. Operationally nothing is gained, except another 9" or so of plain track: I'm not sure! Any thoughts?

The longest rail is 4’ - either side of that is an expansion gap in the inter-board joins - is that not enough?

Glue dried and brass pins soldered: In the background you can see the wood holding down the foam on the FY boards. I've actually run out of foam now, so I bloody hope what I've got is sufficient. In terms of track-laying I still need to: Put in the crossover in the second picture's foreground properly Lay the tails for the platform roads and carriage siding to extend them to their proper length. Fit the traverser locks so I can lay the rest of the traverser tracks and ensure each pair of traverser tracks properly aligns with the layout tracks I've yet to fit any droppers anywhere, but since all the track subassemblies on a board are soldered together I'm not too worried about that.

Agreed 100% with Harlequin. I had initially planned for traditional breaks, but when I had the points to hand and tried them out with regular joiners I was pleasantly surprised. I have run a terrier over the Vee and there wasn't even the slightest hint of a stutter because the insulated section is really that small. I have provisioned for the dropper wires, but I'm not expecting to need to use them. I guess we should point out that the regular insulated rail joiners work fine with the bulkhead rail, and presumably you will still want to use them where you deliberately want electrical block breaks, or sections for occupation detection.

Not much to show since it's all under a layer of plywood and tins of paints - but I've got all of the joins between the station boards fixed with brass screws and solder, and foamtack glue holding the track down on the throat. I have aligned the 'old turntable road' in the front-right of the layout such that the track, if it were extended, will exit off the end of the board. This will make a potential future expansion for use with a real turntable significantly easier. I have recently gotten hold of a Proxxon microdrill and I'm really pleased with it, it made drilling the last few screw holes a real breeze. It's going to make sorting the track feeds very easy, I think.

I haven't, unifrog turnouts don't need them as they're pre-gapped at the vee point and the rest of the rails are fed from the stock rails. It means you can power the entire layout as pictured with crocodile clips on any two rails.

Thank you, Schooner - baby's now 7mo and loads of fun. I've run out of rail joiners, but this is the progress so far: