Pacific231G

Thanks for this. I hadn't noticed Westonmouth Central before and it's exactly what I was suggesting. It would be good to have a trackplan.

Can you get UV resistant overlays for your skylights? The lighting levels on the Madder Valley have recently been increased (which makes it look far better) but the lights are (and have been for some time) LEDs that shouldn't emit significant UV. The room that the MVR is kept in (as with the Dartmoor and Valley scenes at Pendon) also has no natural light so no sunlight pouring in UV and all the scenes are proteced by glass windows so atmospheric pollution is also very low. John Ahern did use shellac for his card buildings but I need to find out whether the current Pendon modellers use it or anything equivalent- modern cardstock for art may be less prone to absorbing moisture than older types- especially the manilla envelopes, file card and other office supplies that were probably all that John Ahern (who was an insurance broker) could get hold of during the war and the austerity period that followed I believe that LED lighting is increasingly used by museums and galleries though many tradiitonal galleries and museums were designed to have plenty of natural light. I don't know if they now use UV filtering glass.

The through platforms - which aren't part of the operational model could just be dummied so, while interesting things are happening in the terminus area there just happens to be no activity on the through platforms. Alternatively we could place the viewing side so that we're looking at the terminal platforms from the through side (rather as one might have a quayside as the front edge of a marine station so you don't actually have to model any ships. Several of CJF's plans were for the junction end of branch lines where the branch operation was independent of the main lines which were just unconnected tracks and you could apply that to a situation where the bays are part of a larger station. The advantage of the Kings Cross suburban platforms is the solid wall between them and main train shed.

My pleasure Steve. I'll be interestedto to hear how the piece about that idea in the book compares with the magazine article (which I have).

Hi Andy I'm looking at an article by Anthony New in Hornby Magazine from June 2008 titled Modelling Weymouth's Harbour tramway. It fits your description to a tee. and includes diagramatic plans of the actual Weymouth Pier layout from 1931, 1960 and 1973. There are four layout plans, the first, in 8ft x 6ft for a terminus to fiddle yard with just the Pier, then an 11ft x 8ft plan including a longish stretch of the tramway as well, then two more that also includ Weymouth Town, the second of which in 12ft x 8ft also includes Castle Cary (the junction for the Weymouth line) with a continuous run main line and a reversing curve.

Very interesting Gordon. I wasn't aware that SNCF's dual voltage locos had separate pans for each system and AFAIK the dual-voltage TGVs only have one for each power car. I'm rather intigued by the quad voltage CC40100, originally designed for international TEE services, that had four pans- one for each system - and have never really undestood why they were designed that way rather than having the switching between the different systems downstream of the actual pans. It is true that lower voltage systems (1500Vdc for SNCF)have to handle higher currents for the same power while conversely higher voltage systems (25kV50Hz for SNCF) need larger air gaps to avoid arcing but are there designs differwences between the pans themselves (on the CC40100s they don't look any different) ? Where such differences are not an issue I'd always understood that the reason for preferring to use the rear pan was that if the loco encountered a damaged section of overhead line the pan in use might suffer damage but if the front pan was down it probably wouldn't so making repair a lot cheaper.

On thursday evening our photograhic society had a an expedition to the redeveloped Coal Drops Yard area between the approaches to St. Pancras and Kings Cross (a fascinating location I didn't know and must go back to). On the way to and from I passed by the suburban platforms (9,10 & 11) at Kings Cross. This is still something of a station within a station with a solid (and quite attractive) wall between it and the rest of the LNER station. It struck me, not for the first time, that such an arrangement could be a good way of justifying a small busy urban terminus with just three platforms. As an annexe such a terminus wouldn't necessarily have to be purely suburban- it could also handle parcels, semi-fasts and even sleepers somewhat separately from the adjoining grand terminus and if the lines to it didn't immediately link to the main lines (perhaps because of tunnels) so much the better. Though not itself a particularly attractive station there is an example of that in Paris where the Gare de Bercy is on the other side of the road from the Gare de Lyon but its platforms extend (P-V) the lettered sequence of paltforms in the main station. It serves intercity and local trains and is relatively recent having been built in 1977 to serve TAC (overnight Motorail) services but there's no reason why such an "annexe" station shouldn't be much older. (It is also close to where a large number of rail served warehouses reflecting regional architectures once supplied Paris with wine but that's another story)

Bradfield Gloucester Square. It was the featured layout in BRM in November 2012 and was more fully described in MRJ nos 216-218 also in 2012. There was a long topic on it here while John Elliott (The Laird) was developing it that has now been archived. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/28198-bradfield-gloucester-square-br-1962-ish/ There are plenty of links to John Elliott's well shot videos of different aspects of its operation and mercifully most of the photos in that thread still seem to be extant. I've seen it in operation several times esepcially since it was bought by the Tring & District MRC and was able to pore over it in greater depth at one of the Chiltern modellers' days in Watford. Along with Geoff Ashdown's Tower Pier it's a layout I could enjoy watching for extended periods at exhibtions. I think that was largely down to a well developed operating timetable/sequence and I've noticed with layouts I've operated at exhibtions that having a good sequence to run does make all the difference.

I've operated an EMU based Minories which had an occasional loco hauled parcels train. For those fascinated by the subtle variations of SR EMUs it provided plenty of interest but, when I was operating it, the town suddenly seemed to need an awful lot of parcels! It was enough to convince me that a basic passenger Minories wouldn't be enough alone to hold my interest but, with some goods facilities, it probably would. The loco spur could also be extended to fom a parcels and postals/departures only bay which a pilot loco could certainly used the throat end of to lurk in, though looking at Ramsgate Beach one of the goods sidings could do the same.

That makes perfect sense Barry. While delving a bit I found this https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/article/93111/an-alternative-overhead-system-the-rigid-overhead-conductor-rail-system/ Furrer+Frey seemed to be presenting this as a new idea but I'm sure it's been used for ages. under the canopy seems very logical and one of the suggested uses for ROCS. I also found this from Indian Railways https://rdso.indianrailways.gov.in/uploads/files/TI_IN 0041.pdf

It looks very good Barry (though why did you film it in portrait rather than landscape?). I wondered though whether you actually needed to use Viessman masts etc on the hidden linking section? Catenary is always a bit delicate (and expensive) so could you have simply used a length of appropriately mounted rail at the same height. This is prototypical and known as Rigid Overhead Contact or Rigid Catenary*. I'm pretty sure SNCF used and uses this in tunnels and under bridges as it requires less height (and is less prone to dewiring) than a conventional sytem where the contact in a number of tunnels as it doesn't involve a contact wire hanging from a catenary wire. *possibly incorrectly though the "rigid" contact bar does have a slight catenary curve between supports.

Why would anyone go for 00 or H0 in preference to N? It's not just the range available but the balance between what you can get in a given space and whether the models are large enough to make you feel part of the scene. That's clearly very subjective and, for some people, 00 or H0 is too small so they stick with 0 scale even though that means a far simpler layout. Speaking for myself, H0 gives models that are large enough but I can't quite get what I want into the room I have available. In N scale I could quite easily but the models are just too small and seem too far away when viewing them. In TT the models are just large enough and I could get what I want into the space. I agree about the coarse track that Hornby have gone for but frankly, if you use the track designed for train sets with excessively sharp pointwork and fixed radius curves in any scale it's not going to look great. To be fair, Hornby's TT track looks better in that regard than most 00 or H0 equivalents. I very much doubt if backwards compatibility with TT-3. was even a passing thought and I doubt if the pointwork is. It was more likely to make it sturdy enough for train set purposes. Fortunately, nobody working in TT has to use Hornby track (Tillig's TT track is also code 80). and Peco's offering with code 55 visible (though isn't the actual rail section code 80 with part of it hidden) is actually manufactured in the UK.

I wasn't certain as, though I've enjoyed watching it in operation several times I'd not spotted that the layout in question had quite such an awkward path to get coaching stock between platforms and sidings. I have been wondering if it was inspired by this. though here there is direct access between the main arrival platform and the carriage sidings.

Interesting! Although small goods depots weren't unknown at busy city termini (Birmingham Moor St. Ramsgate Sands and Lyon St. Paul come immediately to mind) I don't think you'd ever have quite such a small coal yard. You'd be far more likely to have a dedicated coal depot a bit further down the line. Urban centres used to use a lot of coal. That road would probably be more useful as a mileage siding. This view of the small goods yard at Ramsgate seems to show just that, a siding serving the small goods shed (and also acting at its far end as a loco layover spur with an ashpit and water tower) and a mileage siding. There are open wagons on that siding but I don't think they carry coal The nearest I can think of with coals sidings was Richmond upon Thames where the two long coal sidings had far greater capacity than the other goods facilities (which were where the multistory car park is now) .

Most of our terminus plans are indeed gross simplifications of what the steam era railways would have in any busy terminus and far more appropriate for an outer terminus like say Windsor Riverside (which also had three platforms) The big railway may have been constrained for space when it ventured into the heart of large cities but it didn't generally have our problems with length so the approach pointwork could be spread over half a mile or more. Looking at your interesting variant, and I've had a good hour's entertainment playing around with it, I may be missing something but I'm not sure what parallel moves the extra track to platform three offers that a simpler addition to the basic Minories of a running line between the up main and platform three does not. This also preserves the minumum four points length approach to platforms 1 & 2. With a conventional up and down signalled main line you can only have parallel moves if the inbound (up) path is to a higher numbered platform than the outbound With this plan you can also have an arrival on platform three while moving a loco between the loco spur and platform one or two. I think that, like many "Minories type" plans, you've lost the great virtue of CJF's original Minories arrangement that only one path between the main line and the three platforms (inbound "up" line to platform one) involves an immediate reverse curve and here there are two such reverses. That's not a problem if, as the big railway almost always did, you have enough length for crossovers long enough for the stock you're using to not experience buffer locking (real or apparent) or corridor connections wildly out of line. The great virtue of CJF's arrangement is that even with medium (nominal 3 ft) radius points you can, with fairly long corridor stock, avoid that reverse curve for five of the six possible paths and still fit the whole throat into about three feet (my addition lengthens the approach to platform three by one point length) I've had a go at developing this arrangement to offer the same accomodation as yours and parallel moves between any two platforms and the main line without using slips. The problem with these with RTL trackwork is that Peco's slips are effectively about two foot radius (equivalent to their small radius points) and for passenger stock I think that's too sharp. With bespoke pointwork you could obviously avoid that (Peco's NMRA spec. 88 line slips are no. 6 so it's a pity they don't do a three foot radius slip in Streamline) To avoid slips I've made the carriage siding a kickback from the run round loop and there would be room to add a second carriage siding. I've also added a trap siding to enable the direct road to platform three to act as a headshunt for the lower trackwork- it could be extended into the fiddle yard to offer a relief road for ECS and off stage shed moves. The kickback carriage siding(s) may be a bit awkward to shunt so, allowing one slip in a less critical posiiton, I think you get the same degree of parallel moves and, so long as you don't shunt passenger stock between the run round loop and the old turntable line, only have an immediate reverse on the path between the up line and platform one.

The road to the summit was built on the upper track bed of the original railway after it closed in 1925 and doesn't appear to have been that much wider so wouldnt have needed a lot of new earthworks. The new rack tramway (Panoramique des Dômes) was opened in 2012 and runs almost entirely alongside the road. The road was closed while the new rack line was built but, comparing the current IGN aerial view with those from the 1950s (available on http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr) it does seem that the road remained where it was and the tramway was added to the "inside" of it (the route is essentially a spiral wrapped around the mountain) by cutting further into the slopes so the tramway isn't quite on the line of the original railway. Looking at the 1950s road and contemporary postcards it looks as if the original upper railway terminus was about a hundred metres further up the road (which was later extended ) than the current one. When the original railway was running, the only other way to ascend the mountain was by a couple of much steeper zig-zag paths the chemin des chevres (goat track) and the chemin des muletiers (mule track) which are still available to walkers.

Obedient or creatures of habit? One effect of the rationalisation of Paris Bastille was that trains departed in standard sequences, the first ones going fast for part of the line then stopping to cover different stations and the final ones covering the inner stops. The result was that, for the evening peak, commuters always knew which platform their train would be on. Given the cramped terminus' rather narrow concourse that saved a lot of milling around. With non push-pull loco hauled trains that also meant that the evolutions needed to get locos bringing in trains (service or VV Voiture Vide ie ECS) to the front of subsequent trains would have repeated a number of times during the busy period. I've never really understood why that sort of pattern was so relatively unknown for British commuter termini. Having to wait on the concourse at Paddington to find out which platform the Greenford train (before it was truncated to West Ealing) would be leaving from, usually, but not always, followed by a mad dash to platforms 13 and 14 at the far end of the station, was a source of stress every time I used that service. I learnt that fairly quickly but it's not obvious and for anyone not used to it there's no indication of which side to go and no reason why there should not be.

Which simply means a wide corridor. I believe the Latin root of the word "vomere" means to discharge rapidly which could refer to many things, possibly digestive, but more often getting the crowds out of a theatre or amphitheatre via the vomitoria. That doesn't imply any particular relaationship between that and the contents of anyone's stomach. There is a myth about Romans throwing up between courses at feasts in order to eat more and using a room called a vomitorium to do so but that's a complete myth. Seneca, did write of slaves specifically employed to wipe up 'the leavings of drunks' but that unpleasant task is all too familiar to anyone holding a particularly boozy party. The abbreviated term "vom" meaning an entrance or exit either for the audience or the actors is still used in the theatre. It has nothing to do with the word you get when you add -it to it.

The Greenford Branch bay (between the Central Line platforms) at Greenford has platform faces on both sides but only one is used. The trouble is there is no sign to indicate which side! The middle platform line at White City on the Central Line also has the westbound and eastbound platforms on either side but that's because some trains coming from Central London terminate there. If you're strap hanging on an eastbound (into London) train in the rush hour you can sometimes walk across the platform and get a seat in the almost empty waiting train. Some French stations had/have a single line in front of the main station buildings with another platform on its other side apparently serving both it and the next line over. I think this was so that, if say the main platform served "up" trains , passengers (and perhaps more important baggage barrows) for "down" trains only had to cross one line to reach their platform.

You weren't that mistaken Keith. Although a few Clyde "puffers" did venture beyond their usual stamping grounds, they were only really typical of the inshore waters around Scotland though the larger "outside" boats up to 88 ft long (to fit the locks of the Crinnan Canal) were designed for the more open and rougher waters of the Hebrides. There was at least one that plied the Bristol Channel but it was endlessly getting into trouble. The RN based its 106 VICs (Victualling Inshore Craft) on them and those were used more widely even well beyond British waters (though many were bought by Scottish owners after the war) . However, although for a small quay or port elsewhere in Britain a puffer or VIC is possible, it isn't really typical. What's always been missing are the small raised quarter-deck coasters (steam or motor) larger than a VIC at around 100-120 ft long (around 18" in 4mm scale) but still small enough to fit the sort of quay or harbour you might fit onto a layout and far more typical of the sort of vessel you would once find in any port or harbour around the British coast. The Scalescenes coaster looks to be typical of the type developed in the Netherlands that were taken up by many British owners from the 1950s and built by many yards . At 60 cms in 00 it's a good size for a typical coaster of about 500 tons (I think there were regulations or duties that kicked in at 500 tons making coasters just under that size popular) but there were smaller coasters than that which still looked like proper seagoing ships with a full width navigation bridge (rather than just the puffer's tiny wheelhouse) lifeboats in davits, a fairly large deckhouse with the galley, engine room entrance and accomodation for at least the master, mate and chief engineer on the quarter deck etc. (I think the Dutch type coasters had all their crew accomodation aft) Some of the later 80ft long VICS do start to look like such small seagoing coasters https://clydemaritime.co.uk/puffersandvics/Engesund (1).JPG (though the "Engesund", formerly VIC93, had been lengthened from 80 to 106 ft and fitted with an oil engine) but those available as kits seem to all be the smaller 66ft long "Vital Spark" type that could fit in the Forth and Clyde Canal.

Small historic aside, before widespread pasteurisation and TB testing in the 1950s, the introduction of milk tankers in the 1920s actually increased the prevelance of bovine TB in urban populations. This was because milk from an infected cow might in a tank load be mixed with milk from up to a thousand others and made the whole lot infectious. a churn would contain milk from far fewer cows so the odds of it including milk from an infected cow was far less. Looking at terminus operations, dedicated loco spurs seem to have been associated with "turnover" operation of loco hauled suburban trains where an incoming tank loco took out a subsequent departure. That was of course the type of operation that (observed at Liverpool Street Met.) inspired Cyril Freezer's design for an intensely worked city terminus in the same sort of space as a branch line terminus but the ingenious arrangement of the entrance pointwork, cutting out most immediate reverse curves, seems to have been an original flash of inspiration he had while doodling track a track plan so unrelated to the particular track arrangement there. There do appear at Ramsgate Beach (aka Harbour) terminus to have been loco facilities for water and possibly an ash pit (at least in its earlier years as seen in this image) at the start of the long siding serving the goods shed. Extending the Minories loco spur for parcels or goods isn't incompatible with using it for turnover locos during the morning and evening peaks (which in the case of Ramsgate was presumably the arrival of a lot of trains carrying day trippers in the morning whose return home was more staggered- you can still see this pattern to some extent at Tattenham Corner on Derby Day) .

Well here they are again. All but one of these were from Walkley's 1926 MRN article. Note that in those days 00 (as well as 0, 1,2 & 3) referred to the gauge. Walkley was very firmly in the correct scale for 00 is 3.5mm/ft camp. It was several years later when 4mm/ft was starting to win that particular battle that he decided to start calling it Half 0 and I think it was Maskelyne, the MRN Editor (who was very supportive of using the correct scale) who coined H0 for that gauge and scale. The French continued to refer to 16.5mm gauge (with the scale of 1:86 or 1:87 following logically) as 00 but sometimes H0 until about 1950 when for consistency they settled on H0. Unfolded, the layout was 6ft by 11 inches.

I don't think that's really fair. The Epochs widely used in Europe were devised by MOROP (which is a federation of European national model railway associations founded in the early 1950s) have a lot of overlap both to accomodate differences between countries and the fact that, by and large, the divisions are not fixed in time but represent significant transitions. These transitions are pretty common across Europe but took place at slightly different points in time. For example, for most countries Epoch III starts in 1945 or 1946 with post Second World War reconstruction but for Spain, which wasn't involved in the war but had to reconstruct after its civil war, it starts in 1940 See https://www.morop.eu/downloads/nem/fr/morop.xls. for more details of national differences. The main purpose of the system of Epochs is to enable modellers to buy items of rolling stock of different nationalities that can credibly run together without having to be au fait with each country's specific railway history. For various reasons, Britain's railway history was rather different from most other European countries mainly because we nationalised later and the Second World War wasn't such a massive dislocation for our railways. You probably could though fit them into the same system (Epoch II grouping, epoch III 1948 nationalisation, Epoch IV post steam, Epoch V 1994 Privatisation) The need for consistency is though far less because relatively few trains and wagons have crossed the channel and, even with the tunnel passenger trains only use one line in Britain. In any case there is no co-ordinating body run by modellers in Britain equivalent to MOROP and its national constituents or the NMRA so the manufacturers have, as always, set our standard to suit themselves.

The one problem with this arrangement is that an arriving goods working has to use one of the platform roads. That was the situation on the goods version of CJF's original Minories and may not be too much of a problem if we assume that only two platforms (2&3?) are needed for passenger trains outside rush hours but I'm not sure how prototypical it would be. Arguably of course, Minories is an impression rather than a realistic model of an urban terminus so it's the sense of busyness that counts.

I've operated a couple of "basic" (passenger only) Minories layouts- both very close to the original plan and, though with turnover locos it was quite a challenge to avoid getting snarled up, I did find that operation became a bit repetitive. I'd want a simple goods yard or something to add some variety to the range of operation. It's worth looking at Birmingham Hope St. This was Danstercivicman's version of Minories from 2016-2018 (before he moved on to Stranraer). It had a two road milk depot kicking back from platform three without a separate goods headshunt and it does work. Dan said he'd found it great fun to operate and had a complete timetable for it. It was an imagined GCR secondary terminus in Birmingham opearating semi-fasts and locals. It's well worth reading the thread and most of the images seem to have survived the mass loss. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/117470-birmingham-hope-st-br-ex-gcr-minories-style-urban-layout-1965/ Dan's baseboards were 40cm wide but that included some low relief buildings. Cyril Freezer's original plan with a retaining wall behind platform 1 was 9 inches wide for TT-3 with rather narrow platforms so this should fit into a couple of 77L Really Useful Boxes (especially if you store the baseboards backscene down)