Hi All,
I'm new to all this so please be kind. My layout started as the 6 x 4ft Hornby track mat train set and rapidly morphed into trying to (very loosely) recreate the Harborne branch line coming off Birmingham New Street in the LMS (ish) era, heavily compromised by space (4ft x 11ft), time, money, etc.
I'm learning as I go along and making all the mistakes. It's looped in reality, but in the diagram I've stretched it out as the mainlines disappear into tunnels to London and Wolverhampton in model land. Build status is that most of the track is now down and wired up with droppers, some modelling has taken place, so it's a bit late to make any major changes, but I'd be really interested to know:
1) Is this close to prototypical? I'm starting to care more about this as a learn.
- Have I got this massively wrong? Could it be more prototypical without starting from scratch?
- I've made platform 3 bi-directional as operationally it allows a through train in both directions, would that have happened?
- If a local service returns from Harborne via Rotton Park along the branch line back into New Street then it would need to travel the "wrong way" through platform 4 to head to the hidden sidings, would that have been allowed? I'm aware that in reality Harborne didn't have a direct connection back to the mainline, but I wanted locos to be able to access the turntable without having to go all the way round the branch line.
- Would a steam locomotive ever push rolling stock over extended distances? For example, if I picked up from wagons from the M&B sidings and rejoined the branch, could I then push them down the line into Harborne sidings or would this never have happened? In reality the M&B spur had access from both directions (track triangle), so this wasn't an issue, but I only had space for one set of points. This is an elevated section and I've not pinned the track yet, so any changes here are still possible, but space limited.
- I included the station approach passing loop because I had the track and the space, and it's another place to store a train which makes things more interesting.
2) Signalling
I now know I should have considered this at the start if I wanted realism, but here we are. Any advice on where to drop the signals to give this a flavour of reality? Especially interested in the bi-directional areas. Or is this too "train set" to stress about accurate signalling?
It's OO gauge and DCC should that be relevant.
