Bittern

As an update, I've started designing the buildings, to get an idea of the best proportions, in particular how long to make the right-hand transhipment shed to get the right feel while fitting into a practical length. There's a lot of guesswork involved, and squinting at fuzzy buildings behind ship photos to decide if the building I'm looking at is in the right dock complex.

On 19/04/2024 at 20:42, Michael Hodgson said:

I've always found wagon turntable attractive but you can't attach wagons to a loco for movements to the buildings. 

So how are you moving wagons there - Hand of God or motorised wagons? 

I was intending to treat at least the top lines as scenic, because they lead through other warehouses to Railway Street Goods Station (that was the original access to the dock), and I'd assume they were normally shunted using locomotives coming from that side. One of those lines fed directly into Building 37 across the turntable, but that was a long siding which was presumably shunted using horses or a Y8 (at 15.5 tons wet weight, they might have been light enough to cross a wagon turntable, at least if no management or P-way staff were looking) because reach wagons would have been ridiculous and I can't see any capstans for those tracks in photographs. The curved  siding into building 37  appears to have been shunted by human or animal muscle power, so either a motorised van or some sort of concealed mechanism seems like the best choice.

I hadn't yet decided whether to try to build a "rope" mechanism to pull  wagons into building 37 (hidden inside the building), or to have it intersect the front edge of the board and model the interior. In BTDB days it was the diesel mechanics' workshop for lorries and plant, so it seems plausible that it was used for that in earlier periods as well, providing an excuse to more different wagons, but that also gives an interesting interior 

There were bollards alongside the loop line furthest from the transhipment sheds, but I don't expect I'd use them because in the model locomotive haulage is so much easier.

On 21/04/2024 at 07:38, The Johnster said:

Hull of course suggests fish traffic as well, a major part of this ports' activities, but there was a hefty amount of general merchandise exported and imported there as well, and a lot of Scandinavian timber. 

This particular dock appears to have been used for timber in the 19th century, then for the Ellerman Wilson Line (and subsidiaries) smaller vessels to offload baggage and light cargo after disembarking passengers at Victoria Pier in the early 20th century, before the station at Alexandria Dock was built. It seems they did medium maintenance there too until at least  the 1950s.

After WWII the sheds on this side were demolished but the sidings remained in use - something pale (my guess is sand or dredge) was loaded into open wagons from barges with a grab bucket on the crane in my diagram, but there were also vans and shock opens. Sugar was also barged to or from  that dock in the late 1960s but I assume it went to the other side - I was surprised to find out that commercial river freight lingered on until the 1970s in Yorkshire. The crane itself was steam powered (it predated the hydraulic system), justifying a coal wagon, though I haven't been able to make out a coal pile in photos (my guess is that it was under the cabin, unless the crane was later converted to hydraulic or electric power).

On 21/04/2024 at 07:38, The Johnster said:

I'm guessing we are looking south towards the actual wet dock with the Humber beyond.

Yes, that was the plan. The viewing position would be in the cemetery, with the sheds and wet dock at the backscene, and beyond that is a line of warehouses (on the backscene), then main NER goods station, and  the Humber. Paragon is about 500m behind the viewer.

On 19/04/2024 at 19:34, Schooner said:

2. Suggest diamond both more accurate and more fun, but YMMV, especially if track building is the raison d'etre behind the whole scheme. It's not unlikely for a diamond formation set in c.1900 to have been altered to give more flexible working by the late '30s, and certainly post-War.

Some of the 1950s BfA photos look almost more like a Barry slip, but unfortunately that yard is out of focus in nearly all of the BfA and Historic England photos. OTOH, the OS have a nice crisp photo, with a shadow across the track 🤷‍♂️. Such is life, the first rule of maps also applies with a sheet boundary across the site.  A single slip is tricky if the map geometry is correct, because the crossing angle is rather sharp and there's not much room for an outside slip, though I'll keep fiddling.

A Barry Slip does have the advantage of being makable using Templot's plug track, since K-crossings are still a work-in-progress. OTOH, as I'll model it as  inset track I could solder it without worrying about making it match the other track.

On 19/04/2024 at 19:34, Schooner said:

This is in 4mm, but perhaps not 00 if you're making your own track? Just to double check for curvature and clearances etc.

Yes, 00 - tracing out the S&C at approximately true scale using 9' 1:5 turnouts (which matches the map as closely as possible) gives a ruling radius of 31" and fits into only slightly more space than that setrack sketch (just over 1m), though I'll have to check exactly where the fouling points are. I had considered moving up to EM but my main reason to want  to build track is to be able to have flowing curved formations that would help fit a main line station (even a small one) into the available space for my next layout without looking awkward. 

On 19/04/2024 at 19:34, Schooner said:

When are you setting it? 

Most of my stock is late crest, but this photo shows a strangely ornate entrance to the building marked as "wooden shed" on my sketch, which was replaced with plain solid planking by 1937 and demolished entirely by 1948, so I'll build it in its earlier condition and decide later whether to paint it as if it had survived or run it with my pre-war stock (I'm leaning towards the earlier setting).

On 22/04/2024 at 18:22, 37Oban said:

I have long thought that the docks of Hull would make a great choice for a model.

Yes, as large dock complexes go it has plenty of fairly compact scenes even in the later docks, and, especially before Queen's Dock closed, high-status buildings, working class neighbourhoods, and the docks all together in a way that would make an attractive model. Unfortunately I can't think of a practical way to do justice to this level crossing, and it has to be set earlier than almost all of my stock.

There's also a a shipyard that looks like a model track plan (complete with continuous run) and the most prototype-for-anything yard I think I've ever seen, with smaller-than-setrack curves.

The Goal

I have two basic objectives for this layout - exploring new skills, and providing somewhere interesting to shuffle a few wagons around until I can build a larger/more permanent layout. 

In terms of track plan, the features I was looking for are:

• shunting uses on-scene paintwork if possible, and not a sector plate or traverser
• simple S&C, preferably including a diamond, to see how I get on building track
• plenty of car spots, to give purposeful activity
• realistic layout,
• plausible wagon variety

Space is not particularly constrained - I want to keep this small, cheap, manageable, and moveable, because I'll be moving in 3 years, but the only definite limits are that it has to be less than 9' × 4'6" (including fiddle yard)  and I certainly don't plan to fill that space.  

The Plan

I was hunting around the old OS maps for inspiration and found the northwest side of Railway Dock, in Hull (for context, Trinity Dock Street Bridge is inspired by the northeast side). Viewed from the cemetery, there's convenient scenic breaks at both ends, and a run of buildings along the back. By squinting at Britain from Above's photographs (especially this and this) they appear to be wooden  sheds, but I'm considering swapping one of them for one of the brick-built transhipment sheds between the railway and Humber Dock, because of the interesting weathering. 

The site also seems good because it has car spots at the transshipment shed, a crane on the curved loop, a weighbridge by the crane which would need to be unloaded before it can be locked to allow a locomotive over, and so on. 

As a first rough concept sketch, I put this together with setrack to get an idea of sizes (small loose-heel switches seem most plausible for the location and date it was laid out). The loop marked "6 wagons" is around scale length, but the segment marked '8 wagons" should be more like 14, so when I draw it in Templot I'll try to tweak the proportions.

Having thought about it a bit more, it would probably be  better to slant the tracks so that there is room at the left hand end for a barge or coaster, to make the view across the docks to the backscene  more convincing and to break up the regimented alignment

A peculiarity of that particular location is that it is accessed from a kick-back off a  track alongside Prince's Dock (now under the Princes Quay carpark) with no way for a loco to run round, so it seems likely that trains would be propelled on- and off-scene.

Questions

1. Can anyone think of operational problems/frustrations with this design? I envision the sequence being a train arrives and is stashed in a loop, empty/reloaded wagons are collected from the crane and warehouse (leaving behind those which still need loading), and  the incoming wagons are spotted at the right location for unloading, then the loaded wagons leave.
2. Assuming someone doesn't know what was actually there, do you think I should attempt to make that diamond into a slip? It is marked as a diamond in the OS maps but in 1937 and 1952 photos there's some fuzzy curves  that could possibly be slip roads on the inland (bottom) side.
3. Do you see any benefit in terms of "play value" to stretching the right hand loop out to full scale? Uncompressed, the prototype scenic area is 586' long, which would be 2.34m so I could fit it but I don't think it adds anything.
4. Do you know of any sources with photos of that side of the dock before it was redeveloped? There are loads of photos of the other side with its distinctive buildings, but the only photos of this side I've found so far are aerial photos in the Britain from Above collection, most of which are focused on somewhere else but have tantalising hints of interesting details, especially the earlier photos.

On 19/02/2024 at 04:23, Andy Hayter said:

However, I wonder just how many companies around the world are rolling nickel silver strip to make the rail sections needed - various codes in FB and bullhead section. 

There's at least two that supply the UK trade: Alloy Wire International appear to make Code 55 for Peco, and there's a UK company that makes rail for several of the societies. There's a surprisingly large number of wire drawing companies who include flat-bottom rail in their examples of products  — I was looking into custom profiles of a particular alloy for work, and kept seeing that shape in their marketing.

3 hours ago, Dungrange said:

Whilst that makes some sense in the context of a small station, I was primarily thinking of the models of largish stations with maybe 6 platforms, yet there often just seems to be one DMU that circulates in just one direction (with no return working).

True that. The part that makes it a bit odd is that unless there’s a freight terminal those units are probably the only trains that do anything but appear, maybe stop, and disappear, because they can split or join units, terminate and reverse or move to stabling sidings, etc.

something I discovered quite quickly from my first train set (which I named my account after) was that while through express trains are  nice to look at (even if trimmed to 3 coaches, from the right perspective) they don’t offer much play value on their own. 

3 hours ago, Dungrange said:

In many ways I suppose it's no different to the market for named locomotives and celebrity liveries being favoured over owning multiple plain old BR blue or EWS liveried locomotives. 

The manufacturers must love GBRf.

On 04/12/2023 at 00:43, C126 said:

I appreciate the economic arguments described above, but how can manufacturers get youngsters interested in the hobby, if they can not buy what they see when they travel by train, or just peer over the fence?  Or do young people gain an interest in other ways?  I assume rail travel is declining in this demographic group.  Are they inspired by visiting preservation venues?  I am curious about how the youth start hobbies that do not involve staring at a mobile-phone.

While I’m not exactly young any more, I’m a bit closer than many. For most young people getting into hobbies (involving a screen or not) the most common way seems to be associating with people who are already involved and wanting to have a go themselves, or recruitment at places like student club stands at university orientation. 
 

even when I was a teenager though none of the few other young people I knew who were into model trains had much interest in modelling the current scene: one had essentially an eclectic train set of “I like it and I can afford it”, the others were focused on pre-nationalisation steam, the 1960s, and pre-Amtrak American diesels 

On 04/12/2023 at 02:13, Dungrange said:

Manufacturers don't have any duty to get youngsters into the hobby.  Their raison d'etre is simply to make money for their shareholders. 

 

true, though if they are concerned about their long-term viability recruiting new customers is important. For UK-based modellers  Peco and Bachman can be fairly certain of getting some custom regardless of their chosen prototype (Hornby also to a lesser extent). Hornby seem to be getting most of the attention (deservedly or not, I simply don’t know) for trying to expand the market, though some of their attempts seem wildly misjudged. 

On 04/12/2023 at 02:13, Dungrange said:

Even within the adults that frequent RMweb, there are people who seem to want one of each class, rather than have multiple near identical locomotives and I've seen the same at exhibitions, where DMUs are clearly under-represented - not because they aren't made, but because a lot of people seem to subscribe to a one of each philosophy.

I think that’s partly explained by people being willing to imagine that each train is every identical train, so you only need as many of each type (class, operator, etc. combination) as you want on-scene at once. After all, without checking the fiddle yard, how long would it take you to notice if someone did have a complete set of the different 387s used on a particular line on a day?  

For an interesting modern south London layout I'd probably forget about a station entirely and focus on a tangle of junctions  like the St. Johns–Lewisham, Bermondsey, or Stewart's Lane areas, perhaps also with an aggregates, post, or containers terminal, built in N scale - unit trains running in and out of  stations are just too efficient to provide operating interest through station operations, so I wouldn't use space for that, and when your region and era of interest are all about watching trains shuttling around ISTM best to focus on that. 

Now, what I'd do with that space is a load of docks and warehouses, shops, offices, yards, and so on:  without space to reasonably include some of my favourite later main-line classes running at speed I'd be tempted to move to to an earlier period so I can also include trams - Hull had some wonderful modelling inspiration because part of the docks ran right into the town centre.

On 27/12/2023 at 11:53, DCB said:

With a single helix you need to reverse the trains on the visual section, ideally a terminus and then reverse the trains again on the lower level.

I'm sure I've seen an American design ( I'm visualising Model Railroader-style diagrams) where the inner track continued for an extra half-turn and then crossed back to the other side of the board while the outer track went straight, so that the helix effectively spliced into one track of a double track line, but I can't remember how the layout compensated for the unequal staging space for each direction.

A variant of that would be to put a double junction at level -1 relative to the main line on level 0, then have the curved route run under the main line on the level and rise up inside the main oval, while the straight route rises up to level 0 outside the main oval. The downsides of that, apart from congestion on the helix, are that the level curve needs to be outside the helix (adding an extra double track width to the circle) and you need a return loop on the lower level (though that could go under the helix).

TBH, if you've got a continuous run and can arrange access in a way that doesn't require a lifting section or duck-under (eg a section of layout on a trolley, or a loft/cellar), an around-the-room helix seems like a more practical solution.

@Newmodeller96 Where's the entrance? Whatever you do on a lower level needs to keep clear of that.

I had been thinking of arranging the slopes under the scenery, since the land rises steeply inside the curve at St Bees and your short trains can probably cope with unusually steep gradients, but that's on the wrong side of the line to view the coastal section from the sea and it's a long way across the river to the hill where the priory is.

I'd go for a looped 8 to get the extra scenic space. Depending on how you arrange the station scenery, you might be able to do it on the flat with hidden lines behind the cliffs, though your trains should have  no problem with much steeper gradients than you'll need and that would deconflict the two routes making it easier to automate the turnbacks and either interact with them via the signalling system (which might increase the operating interest in what is otherwise a very simple layout) or use simple alternating shuttles/JMRI/etc. to shuttle trains back and forth  while you watch the trains go by.

On 11/11/2023 at 17:36, polybear said:

How thick are the printed sleepers - am I correct in thinking perhaps just over 3mm?  If so then perhaps one downside will be ballasting.

At the cost of using slightly more filament, you could print extra infill between the sleepers: I believe one of Martin's development images showed that it could generate STL like where the chair pockets were deeper than the space between and around the sleepers to suit milled MDF sleepers, but if you can't in the current release fiddling with slicer settings could produces the same effect.

2 hours ago, Mike Harvey said:

There is a detailed article by Mike Cosgrove in the July 1996 Railway Modeller.

That's the one I was thinking of — I thought it was a bit  later, no wonder I couldn't find it.

For a small frame with simple interlocking you might have more luck using FDM printing or laser-cut plastic to implement a system like the one AMBIS make (made?) based on slotted plates. (Similar designs were used by Hornby Dublo and, briefly, the NER.) A home-made clone was written up in Railway Modeller in the 1990s, along with an explanation of how to implement some locks, but I only have paper back-issues so it will take a while to find.

If you're interested I can sketch up the basic elements, and/or try to find the article. The big limitation is that it can't do some types of conditional locking without losing the simplicity and robustness that are its main advantages, if it is possible at all.

Given your space constraints, have you considered doing  something based on one of the ECML branches, where shorter trains (e.g. half-length 80xs)  are to be expected and some branches aren't electrified?

The line between Selby and Hull is ideal for your scenic requirements 😁 and can justify almost any non-electric ECML stock. The most operational interest is at Selby with the bay platform, junction (which could be offstage, or cropped just beyond the eastern vertex so the tracks remain parallel), and Cemex plant, though you couldn't do the real Selby's scenery justice because of the river and houses so you'd need a pretext to move that interest further down the line.

The Durham Coast and Tees Valley lines also have some possibly useful inspiration, especially around Hartlepool, but there's several stations that do a lot with relatively small footprints, and it has been used as a diversionary route for the ECML. It's not as flat though. If you don't mind removing the building Stockton station might make a good basis for a terminus/through station, and while it has a family resemblance to Darlington and Hull it's a lot smaller.

A radically different ECML option to consider would be something based around a facility like Highdyke Sidings, which in steam days was the exchange sidings for an iron ore branch but after closure in 1973 there was a preservation attempt: it failed, but they had some particularly important items. For the modern era, it could represent a platform-less terminus for the preserved line. For added interest you could keep one of the former British Steel facilities open (shades of the GCR(N)) and have their locos bring wagons to part of  the exchange sidings, while the rest of the yard is used for stock storage (strengthening coaches, kitchen cars, etc.).

From when RTR carriages only came in a composite and a brake standard.

Drawing a shape and extruding it is pretty much the first thing covered in a 3D CAD tutorial. Creating a specific 3D curve is hard to get right from photos (hence the difficulty even major model companies have in getting it right every time with things like class 47 cab roofs or Deltic  noses), but a bus seat in good condition is close enough to a straight extrusion with filleted edges that would probably do in 4mm scale (same for most train seats before the 1970s), and for a knackered old one no two are quite the same so poking the basic shape with the 3D sculpting tools should produce a fairly good result without much difficulty. 

The trick is that the teeth need to be fine enough that pitch is less than the minimum rail web thickness, and not to push down too hard.

A slitting disk is generally quicker, especially if you use one that's big enough to hold at right angles to the rail, but sometimes a saw is the best tool for the  job, and I find it easier to get a clean, burr-free, cut  with a saw.

14 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Hmm ..... just heard a BBC report about Heathrow baggage handlers going on strike - employed by a company called Menzeez ...... hmmmm !

That is how the Australian politician Robert Menzies pronounced it, but Australians are nearly as bad as Americans for mangling names.

EDIT: the only clip I've heard of him saying his own name was him quoting someone else, and even when opening a building named after himself or being sworn in to offices he didn't have to say his own name. I did do a trawl through videos of him through, and noticed that his accent changed a lot: in the 1930s he spoke pure RP, in the 1950s it was a bit more Australian and he had typical Melburnian short vowels here and there, and in the late 60s he was speaking with the kind of soft Melbourne accent someone of his background would have today.

On 18/11/2022 at 03:19, D9020 Nimbus said:

It's often been considered that the LNER dieselisation plan was basically fantasy, in that the railway couldn't have afforded it (although some of the weaker railroads in the US were among the first to dieselise). The paper is dated August 1947 at which time nationalisation was all but inevitable, so perhaps the announcement was part of the campaign against it, rather than a serious proposal?

Quite a few of the LNER's post-war decisions seem to have been aimed at boosting the short term value of the company, which makes me suspect that a certain amount of briar-patching was going on and they really just wanted to get what they could out of nationalisation and were glad to sell when they could get a good price. On the other hand, the heavy focus on marketing, customer experience, and business development,  combined with a few high-quality pilot projects (Woodhead electrification, ECML express diesels, etc.) might have been enough to convince the market that they could fix the underlying problems they'd had since before Grouping, especially if they'd been able to lobby for policy changes that the BTC and BRB had considered off-limits to non-departmental government employees until Beeching was specifically asked for policy recommendations, or at least offload some of the millstones inherited from the GCR and GER.

On 27/11/2022 at 07:24, KeithMacdonald said:

 

In a desperate attempt to remain on topic, I better ask:

Are there any prototypical cricket grounds next to railways?

Cullompton Cricket Club, as shown in this rather good picture of 45137 The Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire Regiment [TA].

On 02/10/2022 at 22:13, Pacific231G said:

I think there were legal reasons why the two classes in Britain were originally categorised as first and third rather than first and second and I believe that the change to first and second came with the 1956 summer timetables when those had become the two classes agreed internationally by the UIC

I think it was a hangover from the legal requirement to have third class trains, with everything else being optional for the railway companies. 
 

There were some Mk1 carriages built for use as second class on boat trains where ordinary second (ex-third) class carriages were used for third class passengers: that’s the reason for the handful of SOs with first class seats at second class spacing, with the normal Second Opens being labelled as tourist stock. 

I agree - that level of documentation is excessive for my own needs, though I do keep notes of requirements, designs and why I did or didn't like them, and so on, since it would be useful if I ever wrote up a project and it give me a reminder of what I was thinking when I start the next project (which helps avoid making a mistake I avoided in the past).  I also make detailed construction documentation (wiring diagrams etc.), links to or copies of photos used as references, and so on. 

Even for a club layout, where writing out documentation in full is more useful, I think AyJay's example went a bit far stating the obvious, though I suspect that's partly just the natural result of filling out a template without a real project to provide some content.

For some reason they appear to have omitted the white line around the windows on the reversed-livery Golden Arrow cars (unlike the Mk2 pullmans), which makes  the livery even worse. 

On 09/07/2020 at 05:08, BernardTPM said:

And blue with grey doors between those two versions, I think.

And the W&C stock was in a rather ugly livery of blue with grey doors and coach ends (including the cabs), which really didn't suit it at all.

On 15/07/2022 at 04:52, tythatguy1312 said:

To continue discussion of them, a unique possibility that's dawned upon me is what could've happened if Peppercorn, Ivatt, Bulleid or Collett had been trusted with the job of designing the BR Standard range instead of Riddles. There could be some truly fascinating potential here.

The other fun idea that the argument about Thompson raises is "What if Maunsell had lasted a bit longer on the Southern and Bulleid became CME of the LNER?"

As for Bulleid standards, I'd expect gear-driven miniature valve gear like he wanted for the Spamcans, BFB wheels, a push for shed modernisation (which may or may not have happened, but could have reduced the pressure for the 1955 modernisation), casing designed to reduce cleaning effort, and an absurdly oversized bogie Sentinel. 

Ivatt standards would probably be very similar to the Riddles ones, except some of the stylistic touches, where I personally think Riddles's taste comes out ahead. On second thoughts though that could just be budget, so a non-austerity Ivatt design would be an interesting conjecture.

On 05/07/2022 at 05:17, tythatguy1312 said:

Alas, I'm unsure as to why someone would actively dislike Thompson for aesthetic issues, especially considering how the (admittedly somewhat ugly) BR Standard Class 9f is regularly cited as extremely popular.

The 9f has an internal consistency to its design (though I think the Standard 4 Tank is the most attractive), whereas Thompson's rebuilds look like they're cobbled together out of an ill-assorted set of parts without any thought to styling (because they were). OTOH, while the Springboks weren't as attractive as the B17s or V2s, they're still more decorative than, say, an Ivatt class 4.

(While I'm criticising LNER pacific aesthetics though, Peppercorn's front half was nothing to shout about and the A3s would have been tidier with the footplate in front of the splashers raised a couple of inches.)

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The power requirements of the 1955 plan diesels were based on the work done on steam locos at the Rugby Testing Plant, which led to Class 5 steam power being replaced with Type 2 diesels, and Class 8 with Type 4, a Type too low in each case.  Not sure why this happened, but it did!

The error was that the diesels were specified based on the sustained power of the steam locos they were supposed to replace (which were carefully measured at Rugby), but had much less margin above that for short-term peaks (which weren't measured so systematically).