Pacific231G

Much of the excessively high cost of HS2 seems to have come from not merely trying to build a high speed line, most developed countries have proved they can do that, but to build an underground, or at least invisible, high speed line which nobody else has been daft enough to try.

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

How about Merthyr Vale?  Here the exchange sidings were about half a mile south of the colliery and Merthyr Vale station and a hundred yards or so north of Black Lion, which was the junction with the TVR.  The layout was simple run-around loops and where BR locos detached and rescued their brake vans while the NCB's locos worked the empties down to the pit, and brought the loadeds back up.  NCB here had an Austerity, and outside cylindered Avonside side tank, and BR-built 8750 9600.  The site lends itself to shelf baseboards, with the railways here constructed themselves on shelves in the mountainside at different levels, the main A470 (as it was then) Cardiff-Merthyr road at the top, also shelved into the mountain. The trackbed of the Penydarren Tramroad was at the bottom of the pile, still a little above the river, distinguished by stone sleepers. The gradient was downhill from Black Lion to the colliery, so loaded wagons had to be brought uphill to the exchange sidings from the colliery, good place to see steam engines working hard.  The TVR main line behind the sidings was of course uphill in the opposite direction.  Lots of Valleys atmosphere!

I don't think I could ever feel comfortable about modelling Merthyr Vale Colliery or even its sidings. It was that mine's active spoil heap above the opposite side of the valley that collapsed onto the Pantglas school in Aberfan in 1966 (Three years after concerns about the tips raised by the local authority were basically ignored by the NCB) .

https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/letters.htm

34 minutes ago, swampy said:

Based on Maritime Pit at Pontypridd ( he writes )

Yes, I can see the two levels there with the Barry Railway at high level but the actual pit connected to the Taff Vale. I woder if Ian Rice was aware that there was another colliery called Deep Navigation- it seems unlikely that he wasn't.

This is a bit tighter

It's interesting, given the miners' remarks about Penallta and Deep Nav. that Maritime Colliery closed in 1961 but it contined to be pumped out  for many years after. 

For a more compact arrangement the Pen-y-Rhiw colliery a bit further down the colliery line from Maritime also looks promising. It closed in 1922 but again was kept open for pumping (to protect the nearby Cwm Colliery) until the late 1960s.

57 minutes ago, swampy said:

In his book "Model Railway Layout Design", Iain Rice showed a multi-level plan for a South Wales based pit, "Deep Navigation Colliery".

 

Pete

That's interesting as Deep Navigation was a real colliery in the Treharris district. I wonder if Ian Rice's plan was based on it or if he just liked the name but the real pit was quite a large one . This map is from 1915

I assume that it was this section on two levels that Ian Rice was inspired by

I'm conscious of Deep Navigation because in 1991 I made a film for the BBC's "Careering Ahead" programme about the employment prospects of the miners at the nearby Penallta Colliery which was due to close that November (several months later). Potential employers were being taken down on visits to see the range of high level and transferable skills of the miners and I remember walking about a mile from the shaft to the coalface clutching three headlamps (plus my own) to give us light to film by (with a clockwork camera) and they were heavy!

I was told (rightly or wrongly) by the miners themselves that Penallta, which was a very profitable pit, was only closing because of the closure of Deep Navigation Colliery that Easter. Deep Nav. only had about three more years of production but, its closure made the still very profitable Penallta Colliery uneconomic because of the resultant extra costs of pumping but, taken together, the two pits would have been profitable for years and they thought the closure decision was political.

When Michael Hesseltine announced further pit closures in October 1992, I went back to make a second film to see how the Penallta miners were getting on. It wasn't a happy story as their skills were largely ignored by employers. The quote from one of them, who I took with my film crew to look over the now closed pit was telling "I'd go back down there tomorrow...and what have I lost: I've lost a secure job, a secure future and the comradeship of the finest group of men you could ever hope to work with". Graham was by then working in a small factory making Christmas decorations! To say that the Penallta miners were bitter is putting it mildly and I couldnt blame them.

The curious thing was that, though Penallta had been closed and capped for a year, there were still trains (daily I think) taking coal out from there. I assume the stockpiles had been deliberately built up against a possible future NUM strike.     

10 hours ago, natterjack said:

FWIIW I'm working on a scratch build using commercially available @ 14.2mm  and 7.6mm N Gauge tyres (as measured) which are 1.82mm wide with flange depths @ 0.5mm. At this stage I'll be going for 10.5mm b-to-b. Having already used fine scale OO wheels on an earlier TT120 motorisation conversion I don't anticipate any crucial problems. Any rivet counters are free to point me in alternative directions that do not involve more than a kitchen table.

Hi Natterjack

What track are you using?

I've just been measuring the wheelsets from a Tillig H0m wagon with a more accurate (in my hands) digital calliper than the mechancial one I used last night  and I'm getting a back to back of about 10.2mm (NEM for 12 mm gauge is 10.2-10.4) flange depth of 0.75mm (NEM is 0.5- 1.0) and tyre/wheel width of 2.35mm (NEM is 2.3-2.5)*

From this it looks like Tillig have gone towards the finer end of the NEM range but from what I've seen of Hornby's products (admittedly mostly in photos) I'd guess that they're within the NEM norms but leaning more towards their coarser end. That would fit with wanting to use sharper curves (though Hornby's set points are not as sharp, relative to gauge, as 00 setrack) and deeper flanges to allow for temporarily laid track. It's difficult to be sure though as it's on leading pony wheels which are small anyway where the extra flange depth seems most apparent: I think the width of the wheel treads are noticeably greater.

*(The tyre width can go down to 2.0mm if the minimum flangeway of 0.9mm in NEM 110 is used and, unlike NMRA specs, the NEMs provide an allowable range rather than a set of tolerances)

On 28/09/2023 at 14:13, 009 micro modeller said:

So more like P87 then?

Not necessarily going that far.  So far as I can tell the wheel profiles used by Hornby seem to be similar to those used by Tillig for TT and H0m (but see below) . The NEMs give a tyre width of 2.3-2.5mm (including the flange) though that can be reduced to 2.0mm if the flangeway is kept to 0.9mm  (the range is 0.9-1.0mm) I've just put a vernier on a couple of Tillig H0m wheelsets and they look to be about 2.5mm. 

Tillig offer their tramway track as being for both H0m and TT suggesting that they are using the same flangeways for both 12mm gauge usages.

20 hours ago, teletougos said:

It's weird, as I have a lot of HP Products TT wheels, which hail from the time TT scale started, in 1946.

 

They are .072" and quite the finescale look. 

 

I don't think anything in TT since, has gotten anywhere near that fine.

 

Except in TT3.

That's very interesting. Despite the "Table Top" apellation suggesting the trainset market, it implies that Hal Joyce was aiming more at the serious model railroad market. I'd wondered though why Joyce had combined an "Imperial" scale ratio (1/10 inch to the foot- a common ratio for engineering drawings in the US)  with a metric  gauge of 12mm. However, I've dug out the 1950 revision of NMRA track and wheel standards (the first to include TT) and they give the minimum gauge for TT as 0.471 inch- which is is 56.5 inches/120 (0.4708) to three decimal places.

The same NMRA revision gives for TT a minimum tread width of 0.050" and a minimum tire width of 0.077"

14 hours ago, Hobby said:

 

Shouldn't that be "wouldn't "? It's not aimed at finescale modellers!

So far as wheel profiles etc. are concerned, Hornby's products aren't finescale, any more than they (or any other mass market product)  are in 00. However, there's nothing to stop anyone using finer scale wheelsets etc in the gauge just as modellers do in 00 or H0 (for example with H0 RP25-88 wheelsets replacing RP25-110). The difference from 00 is that, if you want to do that in TT (as in H0) you don't have to use a different gauge. Plain track is the same and using smaller crossing and flangeway clearances is surely a lot simpler than a complete change of gauge.

42 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Gauge wars are generally quite boring, but I will point out that while the gauge is to scale in TT:120, a lot of the other track and wheel dimensions are rather coarse.  Commercial toy trains are a bundle of compromises.  You just pick the bundle that offends you least (in the knowledge that others will have different tastes) or go properly finescale.

Fortunately, gauge wars should not apply to TT120 any more than they ever have in H0. It's certainly true that there are compromises (and that's true for proprietary models in any scale) but, unless you got to proto standards,  even EM has compromised crossing clearances and wheel profiles.

So far as I can tell, the track and wheel standards used for TT120 are the established NEM 12mm gauge standards. These are slightly coarser (by about 12-14% relative to the gauge diffrence than those for 16.5mm gauge (MOROP's NEM standards for wheel profiles and track are gauge not scale specific (so for H0m are the same as TT)  

Peco's TT120 track does look finer than Hornby's and, according to my calculations, Peco's TT track profile using code 55 rail is equivalent to code 75 in H0.   Horby's code 80 rail in 1:120 scale is slightly heavier than code 100 in 1:87 scale. 

On 18/09/2023 at 10:06, jjb1970 said:

In some ways OO has fewer dimensional issues than HO. With OO is tends to be quite a constant issue of the gauge/scale discrepancy and because it's pretty constant you can easily just adjust for it. HO has multiple scales for passenger vehicles and manufacturers play with width for locomotives.

I'm not sure how you "easily adjust" for the track being visibly the wrong gauge except by just ignoring the discrepancy. H0 is well defined as 1:87 scale (1:87.1 in the USA) so any manufacturer using a different scale for coaches (and there have been examples) is simply playing fast and loose. They'd have to in any case use different scales within the same vehicle if buffer heights etc. weren't to be a dead giveaway (I have some Lilliput SNCF DEV AO coaches where this was the case and, though the buffers are at the proper height thee coaches are visibly slightly lower - though not by much) than others built to the proper scale) .

Some manufacturers did shorten coaches using around 1:100 scale for length and that happened in  00 as well but AFAIK kept to 1:87 for height and width . Rivarossi and others did once use a scale of around 1:80  for their European outline models but the difference was fairly obvious (I had a Rivarossi 231E and got rid of it because  it simply didn't fit with the rest of my stock)

Back in the 1950s some German manufacturers did try to persuade the nascent MOROP to establish 1:80 (on 16.5mm gauge) as the scale for H0 but fortunately were rebuffed.

Playing with the width of mainly steam locomotives  does happen - mainly to persuade them to go round 450mm radius curves in H0 - but, unless the sole purpose of a model railway is to display steam locomotives, bu**ering up the whole thing to avoid that really is the tail wagging the dog.

Surely it's far better to get the scale correct from the start and then make any necessary compromises than to build a ginormous compromise in from the start (as happened with 00, TT-3 and British N scale) It's not just when you look at a vehicle end on that the compromis becomes obvious but it's also there in platform and structure clearances, track centres etc.

I therefore have no doubt that Hornby made the right choice in adopting the correct scale of 1:120 for their new range.

I also received the Hornby TT:120 club "summer" issue this week and note that, following Simon Kohler's departure, Montana Hoeren is also leaving the company.

22 hours ago, Bob83a said:

The ghost train has been replaced by a bus!, I believe it is one way only. So the only regular use between Greenford and South Ruislip is freight which uses the Greenford to West Ealing connection. But that does include the HS2 tunnel segments from Grain to West Ruislip for the western end of the Northolt Tunnels,  I.e. West Ruislip to Greenford.

There have been a few of those. ISTR  a weekly bus from Ealing Broadway to Clapham Junction, possibly rendered moot when the Overground (etc) station at Shepherd's Bush opened. When I first moved to the area in the early 1990s there was very little freight on the Greenford Branch and the half hourly Greenford-Ealing-Paddington DMUs (now Greenford-W. Ealing) was almost all you ever saw on it. Nowadays it's quite well used with about a dozen or so freight trains carrying a mixture of aggregates, ballast and waste (from Brentford). 

16 hours ago, melmerby said:

I think what was left of the line (not much) south east of Greenford, went when HS2 work started.☹️

It's really just the connection at OOC that was cut. The line is still in regular use as far as just short of North Acton to serve an aggregates depot and the single track (it was singled some time ago) is still in place past North Acton Central Line station. Apart from a daily "ghost train" and occasional diversions the line hasn't carried passengers for decades. After the link to the GWML at OOC was cut, the "ghost train" ran instead down the Greenford Branch to the bay platform at West Ealing and latterly ran only weekly but the last one ran on December 7th.   

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Don't forget that buckeye stock is perfectly compatible with screw-coupled.  You pull a pin and the buckeye drops to reveal a standard drawhook; in fact, the buckeye on the coach in the Highley Engine House picture is in this position.  You have to insert saddle-shaped cast spacers on the buffer shanks, as the buffers are retracted out of use when the buckeyes are being used (you remove the saddles and push the buffers in), but none of this is difficult or particularly time-consuming, or needs anything more than very simple training (show a bloke how to do it once, and that's all he needs to know).  So, the existence of buckeye stock on other railways would not act as any incentive for the GW or LMS to introduce it on their own railways, and the other railways of course owned large amounts of suburban and pre-grouping stock that would not have had buckeyes either.

That compatibility is true but  would you want to do all that - even if not particularly time consuming- when handling through coaches etc. where coaches were fitted with drophead buckeyes would they or the screw couplings be used when making and breaking trains en route? 

2 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

Were there any patent or royalty issues with buckeyes?

There seems to have been a reluctance to use anything that involved patents or royalties in the UK.

No. Eli Janney patented the coupler in 1873 with other patents towards the end of the nineteenth centure. The type D coupler, developed by Arthur James Bazeley  (who was an engineer with the GWR until he emigrated to Ohio in 1906) was adopted as the standard coupler in the US in 1915. A standard item that everyone is required to use can't be a proprietory product limited to the patent holder so there was an agreement between the American casting companies to patent share. The drophead arrangement with retractable buffers was patented by  W S Laycock of Sheffield possibly as early as 1897 so it too would be long out of patent.

According to the Scottish Railway Preservation Society, who have one at Boness they use as  a mess for station staff, they were used for high security mail and parcels traffic that was accompanied en route. The first were converted in 1986 so they don't seem to have had a very long life. Were they perhaps a response to the great train robbery?

They retained one passenger compartment and the toilet. 

I don't know what if anything was used for this purpose before they were built in Britain but in France, where mail had to be accompanied by a postal "agent", they had specially built bag carrying coaches known as Alleges Postales  which also had accomodation including a toilet for the posties. These were distinct from TPO coaches. There were also of course horse boxes that included a compartment for the grooms. 

I don't know how they were classified in Britain but in France, couriers, groms and accompanying drovers were not classed as passengers (so certain rules didn't apply) but sorting staff in TPOs were. That meant- among other things- that a wooden bodied TPO couldn't be marshalled immediately behind the locomotive (passengers in wooden bodied had to be separated by a non-passenger vehicle or failing that by three passenger compartments locked out of service)

8 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

They were fitted with screw couplings and side buffers - compatible with Southern Railway or British Railways stock having buckeye heads dropped and buffers extended ................................ though, for some reason the Maunsell Dining Firsts - adjacent to which they were coupled at one time - had to be fitted with Continental-style gangways.

The position and dimensions of buffers and drawhooks on British rolling stock follows UIC standards and AFAIK has done so for very many years so, loading gauge and braking systems apart, they were compatible. However, the corridor connections were not. I was though wondering whether buckeyes  (or other couplers that kept coaches together and upright in crashes) were ever mandatory  on BR so needing to be fitted to the CIWL  F type sleepers. 

With the F type's "continental" corridor connections not being compatible with the British type there were, as well as the diner, in the BR era, two Mk1 brake seconds each fitted with a compatible gangway at one end to provide the guards compartment and also allow him to walk through the whole train.  On the other side of the Channel the sleepers were coupled to a Wagon Restaurant (later just a buffet)  and to a number of day coaches.

I did get to travel on the accompanying foot passenger service to Paris in February 1975 but by then plebs like me travelled from Victoria on a separate EMU to Dover Marine that ran a few minutes behind the Night Ferry. Getting to the train ferry berth involved what seemed a long walk  on a snowy winter night and, by the time the foot passengers got there, the sleepers had already been loaded. After we sailed I did go down to the vehicle deck to have a gander at the Voitures Lits which were then still CIWL: I didn't though pay any attention to their couplings.   The rest of the vehicle deck was occupied by trucks and there were no railway goods wagons.

At Dunkerque the sleepers were coupled to a set of day coaches for foot passengers but, in winter, these were not unfortunately for our exclusive use. so, despite the very early hour, the train got very crowded at Dunkerque Ville (dep. 05:25) and Lille (dep. 06.30) with morning commuters to Paris so I got very little sleep!

Before the Night ferry, with its rather elderly sleeping  cars, was withdrawn there had been plans to use BR sleeping cars on the service. Loading gauge wouldn't have been a problem but they'd presumably have needed other modifications such as Westinghouse brakes and retractable steps to accomodate the lower platforms in France and Belgium and nothing came of it. 

9 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

The Southern were perfectly happy splitting & joining buckeyes at the likes of Faversham, Barnham or Bournemouth.

 

The oddity, as far as I'm concerned, is India where massive passenger trains of twenty or more heavy coaches use screw couplings but much freight stock is now equipped with buckeyes !

They were indeed and it works fine if all the stock is so fitted. The problem in Europe was that every major raiway administration would have had to fit them for them to be used in international trains which could have half a dozen final destinations for its consist.

The UIC started trying to get agreement on an automatic coupler for over a hundred years (with a version of the Willison coupler being favourite) but could never get all the railways to agree on it. That's probably now moot for passenger trains as units are taking over from loco hauled carriages. 

The more modern LHB (Linke Hofmann Busch - now Alstom LHB) passenger coaches  introduced in 2000 are fitted with AAR type couplers but Indian Railways do still have a lot of the older ICF coaches with side buffers and screwlink couplers. Something I've noticed in images from India's more disastrous train crashes is how the coaches (presumably ICF) seem to be scattered individually across the crash site with often massive loss of life so clearly separated.

If buckeyes (or equivalent) were required in Britain within trains what were the originally CIWL type F sleepers used on the Night Ferry fitted with? 

On 20/09/2023 at 12:24, Wickham Green too said:

So now we have TPWS, AWS, ATC, GPS, ERMTS and who knows what to keep trains apart yet we're still worried about crashworthiness ............. hmmmmm

Unfortunately no safety system is 100% effective so, however rarely,  trains will still crash (signalling systems do for example offer little protection against infrastructure failures) but, even with increased speeds, train crashes are, with some exceptions, generally less deadly now, at least in the developed world,  than they were in the past and that's largely due to better crashworthiness of coaches. 

I've often wondered why AAR (buckeye) couplers that do increase crash safety (they tend to keep coaches together and in line so they don't telescope into one another)  were widely adopted for British passenger trains but were never (AFAIK) used in the rest of western Europe. I guess it may have had something to do with trains requiring more splitting and joining of through carriages on long distance trains and many of those incorporating stock from more than one country.

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

0.5tph seems a very odd measure ...... I'm trying to visualise half a train arriving every hour ! ☹️ ....................... if they mean a train every two hours, why don't they say so !

It's a perfectly rational way of expressing the frequency . 0.5tph is six characters and fits in with frequency measures for other lines.  1 train/2hours is rather more to put on a legend and would be different from the way it's expressed for other lines.  

On 01/04/2023 at 07:32, eastwestdivide said:

Steam-hauled double decker coaches! Who’d have thought it?

At the risk of going OT from Johann's fascinating thread why not? Double deck railway coaches have been around at least since 1853 when the C.F. de l’Ouest came up with them for its Paris suburban services from St. Lazare! closely followed by the Nord and the Est.

Enclosed  and open double deck carriages at St Germain en Laye around 1900.

The oriignal open upper deck type were absolute deathtraps but survived until the 1930s while the later enclosed type (but stilll with outside stairs) were used  for another twenty or so years

Train loading at Montmorency in about 1950

The last user of these four wheel double deck coaches was on the short but very steep independent line from Enghien to Montmorency ,in the northern outer suburbs of Paris, which used them until it closed in 1954. They had though been very widely used on several suburban commuter routes into Paris including into Bastille where they were only replaced by ex DRG single deck bogie coaches in the late 1940s.

In the nineteenth century there had even been double deck steam railcars in France and Germany

One of two steam railcars built by the Etat railway in France in 1880  to make operation of lightly used lines as economical as possible (no photos of them seem to exist I think because the Etat was rather ashamed of them)

Similar but rather larger double deck steam railcar that could accommodate eighty passengers designed by Georg Thomas of the Hessische Ludwigsbahn in Germany in about 1880 and used by several German railway companies.

Though double deck trains are often used now to increase capacity for the same platform lengths, the main reason for introducing them was because their tare weight per passenger was lower so more passengers could be handled withourt needing more powerful locomotives.

On 19/09/2023 at 12:40, The Stationmaster said:

Yes, part of it is clearly visible in the 1914 25" OS map

Sorry. I meant to add the OS map but got distracted. 

Here is a composite of the six inch maps covering the whole route of the Latime rRoad and Acton Railway with the line of the built but abandoned section marked in red alng with the rather obvious line where the shape of Frithville Gardens shows a route joining the H&C between its Shepherds Bush station (now Shepherds Bush Market) and the future location of the original H&C Wood Lane station .  I assume the long thin parcel of land running west to east just to the north of Frithville Gardens (where the upper Hammersmith legend is) is a purchase for a line to the WLER though that's not certain.This map must have been surveyed before 1901 as Wormwood Scrubs is marked as Her Majesty's Prison.

Despite the railway's name there's no sign of it ever having got close to Latimer Road station (also marked in red). There would  have been little point as a junction there would simply have taken it back to to the GWML which it had left at Acton.

If you want to trace its intended route in greater detail the details were in the London Gazette

London Gazette Nov 26 1886 p 5883.pdf

On 18/09/2023 at 08:33, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

That quote reminded me of a similar thing back in the earl 1980's when I was exhibiting what I think was unique back then - an American O gauge layout - Wyandotte Transfer.

 

 

Once we had set up and before the public were admitted, I went out into the gangway just to see how the layout looked. At this point the barrier team arrived and before they started to assemble our barrier the team leader looked my layout up and down and said, in a strong Welsh accent, "There's some people who like this sort of thing, I suppose."

 

I must admit that m view is almost the exact opposite - almost any foreign layout is usually more interesting to me than the average British one. 

 

Why? Because I've been going to exhibitions for about 60 years and I've seen just about ever conceivable 'take' on British model railways. Whereas, a good layout of a country, about which I know little, is educational, interesting and thought-provoking.

A good memory Paul. I can't remember where I saw it- it may have been the MRC show- but Wyandotte Transfer directly inspired my own first "serious" layout which was an H0 N.American switching/shortline terminus. I thought though that it was earlier than the 1980s but it certainly led to many visits to Victors to buy boxcars etc. 

We've had the same reaction at Ally Pally a few times when the "continental" layouts and society stands tended to be grouped together and one often heard visitors saying "Oh it's all foreign here" before walking away.

On 14/09/2023 at 10:55, Flying Pig said:

A similar tippler at Lincoln in April 1969 (by David Ford on Flickr).  Note the crossover on the near side, the empties on the right and the condition of the various railheads which suggest it was a straight-through operation.  I guess locos would not have been allowed over the tippler.

 

 

I don't know about the Lincoln tipper but I just found this image of Corrall Queen loco passing over the tippler

https://www.flickr.com/photos/52467480@N08/6454426137/sizes/l/

If you're interested in this location, George Woods took a very good sequence sequence of photos at Corrall's in Southampton in 1971. They're alll in his album of British Industrial locos on flickr and, though they focus on the loco, show the atmosphere of the place very well

https://www.flickr.com/photos/52467480@N08/albums/72157628278328931/page1

On 14/09/2023 at 10:31, Pacific231G said:

It's clear that the tippler is not at the end of a siding and you can see the corner of the previous wagon at the left-hand edge of the photo. That makes the shunting quite interesting as each wagon that has been tippled has to be pushed off it, the next wagon has then to be placed, uncoupled and the rest of the cut pulled away. Looking at the trackplan from the planning documents the only rough positions for it that I can find where curves of the adjoining tracks fit are those I've marked in red. One of those requires an additional track to be laid so the one on the eastern side of the site seems the more likely especially as there seems to be a ship to the left of the tippler and I think the buildings in the far background may well be those on the other side of the Itchen

 

 

There is another image of the tippler at Dibdens Wharf here.

https://live.staticflickr.com/7035/6454428569_ef2b9e675c_b.jpg

I assume it was taken by the same photographer at the same time as this one

https://live.staticflickr.com/7032/6454429733_e213dc7cb9_b.jpg

8 hours ago, Turbostar said:

@Pacific231G not sure where you got to with your research but just noticed this on the London Transport Museum website. Might be worth a visit to the Acton Depot to check it out if you have not done so already.

 

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/maps/item/1995-1619

I got as far as finding this line sketched into a gazeteer but there seems to have been doubt about whether it was going to join the H&C or the West London Extension. I also found some interesting land parcels and street lines between the abandoned section from Acton and the H&C  on the 25 inch OS maps.

17 hours ago, tractionman said:

SB stands for Signal Box but I don't think the letters relate to the building they're written over as it's an odd size and shape for a signal box and there's a siding running into it, so my guess is the building is a shed of some kind, in the goods yard, and the abbreviation for the signal box refers to the building closer to the running lines to the right?

 

Edit--on second thought, I'm thinking not a building such as a shed as it's not hatched so perhaps a platform in the yard?

In crowded locations the legend for buildings does seem to get a bit distant but the S.B. legend is consistent with those on the same line so I think the actual signalbox is on the platform to the left of the station building and what may be a lamp room where I've marked it in red

In the goods yard, which is at a lower level than the station,  you've got an end and side loading dock (where the S.B. legend is) , a fairly large two road goods shed and what may be a short mileage siding (where the hard standing is marked north of the goods shed. I assume that wagons to and from the engineering works would be left on the left hand end of that siding and brought to and from it by the works loco, or perhaps earlier judging by the wagon turntables, a horse. I can't really see the size of the Atlantic Works then justifying a loco but looking at the 1936 OS map  https://maps.nls.uk/view/114581806 you can see that that the Atlantic Works have expanded massively and there's even what looks like a small loco shed in the north east corner of the new works to the north of the mainline.

The signal box has now disappeared from the station (where it can only have been a small block post)  with a new box larger replacing both it and a second box that originally controlled the entrance to the now presumably much busier goods branch.

Looking beyond the station the Linotype works (vital to newpaper production) on the Bridgewater Canal a little to the south had also expanded (but without a rail connection) and, rather tragically, there was a "radium works (polish &c)" on the sounth bank of the canal a little to the south east of the station. One can only wonder what exposure to radium did to both its workers and customers.

All that light industry probably explains why a minor station needed such a large goods shed.