Pacific231G

A small point but these locos were built for the C.F.de l'Ouest not by it. The example in the Mulhouse museum was built by Fives-Lille but no fewer than ten manufacturers built batches of the 339 locos that formed this class between 1867 and 1885. Unlike in Britain where the larger railways built most of their own, it was more common elsewhere for railway operating companies to order their locos from specialist companies. I don't know how unusual the practice of French railways of ordering locos to the same design in batches from different manufacturers often over an extended timescale was but I suspect government industrial policy may have played a part in this.

How many platforms were being operated this way at Cardiff? Sorry, just read your post again. With one platform and a loco road it's pretty easy as there's almost no shunting required but what's more critical is the cycle time, after the five minute turn round of the train how long would the newly released loco be be on the loco siding before its next train arrived? Getting five locos from arriving trains to the next batch of departures would have been rather more involved and re-reading the description in the Est paper it seems that at least one of them in each cycle - presumably the one with the most distant destination- did have to visit the shed. The others seem to have used a vacant bit of the throat pointwork but they stayed close to the platform they'd just come from. The dwell time of ten minutes seems to have been determined by the Est as that required for passenger work and trains on this line also carried quite a lot of post and parcels in the fourgons (baggage/guard's vans) at each end of every train. In the 1920s most of the ground floor of the station building and the area beneath the concourse was taken up with post and parcels sorting rooms. Also, in 1925 the trains in use on the Ligne de Vincennes at Bastille were composed of four wheel double deckers with an upper saloon which probably would have taken longer to load and unload than conventional slam door compartment stock. From my own experience, when the two car DMU Greenford branch train came into Paddington (it now terminates at W. Ealing) it was on the platform for about six minutes before departing and in the rush hour it could be pretty packed though it does only carry passengers. This is the complete timetable graph for the two hour evening rush as far out as Boissy-St. Leger. Further out it became far less busy and its outer end was positively rural.

haut-le-pied literally high on the hoof. It was originally an equestrian term for an unencumbered horse (one not carrying any load or pulling anything) that was adopted by the railways. Although the Est's traffic department showed it as HP in the Bastill diagram, light engines were( are?) normally referred to as h.l.p.or machines h.l.p. in things like rule books just by the initials with no mention of the original term it came from. It's sometimes also been used to refer to empty carriage stock though VV (Voitures Vide) is the usual term for this. Given the huge input of British engineers and promoters into the first wave of French railway building, a lot of French railway terms were directly transliterated from English or were even English words; aiguilles - points, signalisation- signalling, enclenchement- interlocking, rail-rail, train - train, but a few rather more poetic terms did emerge. Apart from haut-le-pied I rather like coeur de croisement - heart of the crossing- meaning frog (another equestrian term) or common crossing, and crocodile the type of AWS ramp developed by Lartigue & Forest in 1872 and mandated for all main line railways after a disastrous crash in 1933 .

Based on the platform occupancy chart for Paris Bastille in 1925, after the traffic department had rationalised the operation for maximum evening rush (18.00-20.00) , the standard time a train was on the platform from arrival to departure was ten minutes. A loco arriving with a train would be taking out another one after about 24-26 minutes. That would have included watering but I don't think much coaling as locos generally took out a train from the next platform to the one they'd brought in so it probably wouldn't have involved a trip to the small loco depot.By 1925 the line was being worked by 50 identical Prairie tanks and the part of it to Limeil heavily used by commuters was a relatively short 25kms . This chart, at the foot of the timetable graph for the line, usefully indicates which earlier arrival (service train or empty stock working) the loco taking a train out had been at the head of so you can see how long they spent at the terminus. Even train numbers are arrivals and odd numbers are departures and when the previous loco working is shown as HP, that indicates that it arrived as a light engine but possibly only from the adjoining shed which did have a large coaling stage.

Hmmm, that would mean that the EM gauge "Minories GN" built as a 50th anniversary tribute by Tom Cunnington and others is no longer a Minories as it has a hidden traverser beyond the original end between platforms 1&2. (Correction- no it doesn'.t I'd thought that was what I'd seen but the tracks hidden under the high level building are just short loco length extensions of paltforms one ans two) Minories started as "a blinding inspiration doodled on the back of a page proof", it wasn't carved on tablets of stone and personally I'm happier to let Cyril Freezer himself define its essence. "...the essence is a pair of crossovers set at an angle to each other, simple effective and having the bonus that a train entering or leaving any of the three platform roads had only one wiggle to make" ("Spitalfields" Practical Model Railways, May 1988) All of his subsequent versions of Minories retained that essence but a great deal else changed and, while there may have been no pointwork beyond the station throat in the original passenger only Minories, all his other versions of it had points or even a sector plate on the left hand board. The Spitalfields article is interesting as it also confirms that Minories was originally designed as a minimum-sized TT gauge layout to fit on a folding 5ft x 9ins baseboard. Equally important was the intention. "I had one thing in mind when preparing the plan; to try to break the obsession with country branch terminii and to put forward the much more exciting concept of a busy city terminus" .

Thanks for this, very Interesting as they avoided the overunning into a void problem by having three sets of rails. I always understood that the BofT disapproved of multiple platform tracks converging towards a terminus though that was completely normal in other countries. They wouldn't be for running around the same train but simply to get the incoming train's loco to the country end to take over another train as quickly a possible. So for example, a train comes into platform 2 while an earlier train is wating to leave platform 1. It does so and the loco that brought it in follows it out. Platform 1 is now free for the loco trapped at the buffer end of platform 2 to release into it and get to the country end before the train it had brought in departs. After it does so, two more trains come into platforms 1 and 2 and there are now two locos at the country end that have had time to water and clean out their grates to take them out again. There is a rational way of working commuter termini where trains depart in order from the arrivals side enabling incoming trains to replace them in turn. With push-pull working that's relatively straightforward so long as trains need the same turn round times and you arrange the timetable for the whole line appropriately With locos, particularly steam locos hauling every train it gets a lot more involved. I've looked at this as applied to Paris-Bastille where there were traversers but where they then developed this rational to the ultimate degree to avoid rebuillding the terminus.

Mostly true except that the traversers (transfer tables in GW jargon) were at Moor Street which was a bit of a showcase for "things you can now do with electric power" from wagon lifts and traversers of several flavours to capstans and I think possibly conveyors in the low level goods shed. Were there sector plates at Snow Hill? I'm not at all sure why so many of the IofW termini had releasing turntables. Bembridge could easily have been equipped with a single turnout and as has been pointed out a turntable at just one end of a line for turning locos is a bit of a waste of time. Some railways turned even tank locos so, for example, all the termini on the Baie de Somme had and now once again have turntables at their ends.but didn't some of the Irish three foot railways do the same? I think the distinction between a railway and a miniature railway changed some years ago. I believe it used to be based on gauge with 12" being the point where it became a railway proper (AFAIR The 12" Ruslip Lido Railway was subject to greater regulation than the nearby 10.25" Watford Miniature Railway) I think it's now very different and based on various criteria but there's more than public liability insurance involved if your railway is ever open to the public.. The problem with using releasing traversers on a layout is that they were too rare. In Britain, if it has traversers then it's Moor Street (or in France Paris-Bastille) and couldn't be anywhere else. It's a bit like boat trains running through the streets. Weymouth or Dieppe respectively and again nowhere else in each country, (though Calais sort of did but a very long time ago) I don't count Canute Road in Southampton as that is really a level crossing, albeit a long one. Releasing turntables or those at the end of terminus platforms are much easier. There were enough of them to make adding another no big deal. With traversers you could hide them "off-stage" at the end to stand in for what would have been releasing crossovers (as with Minories GN) .

That's fair enough; they'll sell you any of their current stock for that very low price

Thanks for this Martin I knew that the radii in Peco's slips were tight but didn't realise they were quite that tight and it explains why my attempts to design a very short terminus throat including them to replace medium radius points have produced unexpectedly severe buffer locking.I'm about to do the same exercise with an SMP slip and some of their 3ft radius turnouts but suspect I'll get the same result.(Update: I did, one buffer of each coach was under the drawhook of the other just as with the Peco slip) Since I don't have room for Peco's large radius points (which would themselves be unusually sharp for any main line) I'll be interested to see how their bullhead track looks when applied to medium radius pointwork. Possibly a bit more goods yard sidings than back of the gasworks though in the 1950s and 1960s when Peco were producing Pecoway and Individulay track using a sleeper spacing of about 2ft6ins in 4mm scale (10mm), most scale modellers seemed to regard a nominal radius of three feet even for handbuilt points as the norm in OO . It certainly won't get over the fundamental dilemma that almost all of us run scale models on a very underscale railway (in terms of length rather than gauge) so are inevitably creating an impression of the railway rather than a scale model of the whole thing. Perhaps success is aesthetic rather than mathematical.

I don't know about anyone else here but I've been using Kadees for years though sometimes Roco "harpoons" within sets. The successful EM gauge "Minories GN" also uses Kadees. I would probably avoid an overall roof at the loco release point but I've operated an 0n30 layout using Kadees and permanent magnets where the platform ends were under a canopy and it wasn't a problem. With permanent magnets you do have to be a bit careful where they're actually sited and electromagnets are an alternative.

Dudley was a 15" gauge railway so definitely ground level. http://www.stephensonloco.org.uk/sls_jacobs4.htm I hadn't realised that one of the locos used on the DZR was the same one I met years later as "Sir Winston Churchill" at Blenheim Park and its now at Evesham. I also hadn't realised that Belnheim was a 15" gauge railway and the loco is presumably to scale for the gauge as it's a lot smaller than those on the RHDR Blenheim also used to be home to the raised track miniature railway belonging to the Witney and West Oxfordshire Society of Model Engineers (now moved to Cutteslowe Park in Oxford as the City of Oxford S.M.E.) I think it was seeing the arrangements there that first convinced me of the essential failing of monorails. At Blenheim you had to pass through one of two swing bridge "level crossings" to get inside the circuit but I can't remember whether they used a turntable, traverser or a turnout (essentially a traverser or a rotating arrangement with one straight and one curved section of track on it) to access the steaming bay. The advantage of a turnout would be to enable trains of carriages to be run off the main line but it would be more complicated than a simple swinging section acting as a turntable. Is it just my impression or have S.M.E.s tended to move from raised to ground level track for their passenger carrying railways or is that just a function of gauge with 5" or above being ground level?

He also used a sector plate at the end of platform three on one of his Minories plans to enable the platform to be the run round for the lead to a kick back goods yard (and presumably vice versa). The downside of releasing traversers was that they were incredibly rare, the only one I'm aware of in a British mainline terminus was at Birmingham-Moor. and abroad I can only think of Paris-Bastille and two in Melbourne, all long gone. Their advantage over a turntable or sector plate (such as the one at Boulogne Maritime) was that the transfer table presented a continuous track to both incoming platform tracks. For passenger trains that was surely a regulatory requirement as you couldn't have a void before the buffers but did mean that a traverser between two platforms needed three sets of rails and to be released by the signalbox before it could move. I assume Boulogne got away with its sector plate, with no fewer than seven tracks coming into it, because trains arrived there at walking pace. At places like Bembridge, with only one platform, the turntable could also presumably be locked in the position where it faced the platform road. Electric traversers seem to have been a relatively modern development and before them , if you wanted to use a turntable release at a main line station you needed somethnig like this arrangement at the old Ramsgate Harbour terminus. Each platform track ended in a buffer stop and I assume the points were only set for the turntable once an arriving train had come to a stop. (not to scale) The miniature railway terminus idea could be fun, there used to be a very nice one on the exhibition circuit based on the RHDR, and it does give scope for intensive working from a fairly modest terminus. The Ruislip Lido Railway uses a turntable at the end of the line to both turn and release their single ended diesel locos (and steam when its running) though that's only a single platform operation. There's also scope for freelancing and mixing whatever locos you fancy, For once the discrepancy between loco scale and track scale if you base them on OO models would be pretty realistic- weren't Henry Greenly's locos for the RHDR based very roughly on third scale locos on quarter scale track? - as would the oversize treads, flanges and crossing clearances. One of my early childhood memories is from a miniature railway, I think the one at Dudley Zoo near Birmingham in the 1950s. Even as a four year old, though with a signalman grandfather, I remember thinking that a turntable actually on the main line was very odd. My recollection is that the whole train passed over the turntable but that may be false.

It does look rather wonderful though I'm reliably informed that many of the French locos actually had Gooch valve gear like this ex CF de l'Ouest 0-6-0 (SNCF class 3-030C) For some reason the Gooch development of Stephenson was far more popular with French railways than with ours. If you saw the Burt Lancaster movie "The Train" it was one of these that was deliberately derailed to start the crash sequence at "Rive-Reine" (really Acquigny) This class of originally over 300 locos had a remarkably long life with the first batch built in 1867 and the last of them still in service in the mid 1960s.

Do you have any more details of that? The early French four wheel "Bidels" with separate "slam door" compartments below and an upper saloon had very limited headroom. Only about 1.7 metres (5ft 7ins) for the lower compartments and a maximum, in the centre aisle, of 1.6m (5ft 3ins) in the upper saloon Definitely not suitable for Texans! .

Worth remembering that the immortal Douglas DC3 originated as a DC-2 lengthened to accomodate bunks for overnight travel (based on the original curtained sleeping arrangements on American trains) called the Douglas DST- Douglas Sleeper Transport. It was identifiable from mainstream DC-3s by four very narrow windows above the normal ones to help passengers using the upper bunks from feeling claustrophobic . The principle of interlocking compartments on more than one level used by Bulleid was also quite widely used for sleeping compartments both in the the US and in the CIWL P type sleeping cars. where pairs of lower compartments alternated with pairs of upper compartments reached by a three step shared staircase. The P type did strike me as being a rather claustrophobic experience that I'd not have wanted want to pay the price of a sleeper for. OT, I used to use BR sleepers quite often and always found them very civilised as well as offering some useful cross-country routes such as Newcastle to Exeter and far preferable to getting up early for a morning flight. I've also travellled a few times in couchettes where the uppermost of the three bunks was a permanent fixture under the curve of the roof, the other two being made up from the seat and back of the seating. They had the advantage that a couple of people could sleep on them during the day but in daytime mode the actual seats always seemed rather uncomfortable.

This is absolutely fascinating Bloodnok. I'd seen this artists impression but was this done by you? (and if so I hope I've not breached your IP) Was your design exercise comissioned by or for BR or was it a private initiative? Just looking at it tentatively I concluded that it was just about possible within UK gauge but unlikely to be worth doing. The only other approach I did wonder about was to use Bulleid's idea of interleaved compartments but with access from a common corridor (centre for saloon seating or side for compartments) I remember a restaurant, I think near Waterloo, that had interlocking upper and lower booths rather like this but I don't think the diners thought much of it. It's worth noting that when the closed saloon double deckers were first introduced by the CF de l'Est, the Parisian commuters immediately nicknamed them "Bidels", likening them to the double deck travelling animal cages of the then famous menagerie of François Bidel. The nickname remained for the carriages long after the menagerie was forgotten but suggests they were less than well loved. Obvious question having only seen pictures of them. What were they actually like to travel in and did you prefer upper or lower, or possibly waitng for the next train.

I suppose you could do it by having side steps up and down to door lobbies at conventional height from each level and still have two continuous decks but even within a width of 10ft you'd end up with some rather narrow corridors. The type of double decker originally introduced by the C.F.de l'Etat in 1933 has become the norm in most countries that used them with single decks at conventional height at each end providing the entrances and some seating I never travelled on one of these but even as a visitor I do find the VB2N (double deck suburban) coaches used around Paris and elsewhere a bit claustrophobic on both decks even when they're not busy (though far better than standing when they are ) The Duplex TGVs rely on a somewhat more generous loading gauge. In the Western USA, Amtrak operate a type first introduced by the Santa Fe for its El Capitan service with a continuous upper deck including the corridor connections and the external entrances in the middle of each car at the lower level. It looks from this that the reduced space below the upper deck above the bogies was used for services like air con.but the larger loading gauge in the west would enable a fairly spacious upper deck and still have seating, bathrooms, kitchens and baggage rooms on the lower deck. With almost no or very low platforms on Western US RRs this design makes sense, gives the passengers a much better view and they don't have to constantly go up and down stairs (or disability access lifts) as they move through the train something that is far less important on commuter trains. There are interrmediate carriages for connecting these cars to regular single deck equipment. This is wandering a bit from imaginary locomotives.

It goes down from 9ft to 8ft 8ins. I think this comparison is.a bit out of date and the current widely adopted UIC loading gauge is probably a bit taller than Berne but it illustrates the challenge. I'm pretty sure the Etat's double deckers were within Berne. They were slightly out of gauge for lines with OHE but that was fixed by fitting them with smaller wheels. Anyway, back to imaginary locomotives; I think a steam railcar sort of counts as a locomotive This drawing from 1881 is of an idea mooted two years earlier. The concept behind this improbable looking vehicle was for a steam rail motor that could, on its own, cater for the non-goods needs of a quiet branch line. It would have essentially added half a steam tram loco to a four wheel double deck carriage. Up to twenty four third class passengers would ride on the upper deck, there would be one second class compartment for ten people, a half compartment (coupé) for four first class passengers, a postal coupé that could take another five second class passengers when the posties were't using it and a baggage compartment that, apart from carrying smalls and the guard, would meet the then legal requirement that passengers couldn't be right next to the locomotive, It appears to be single ended so presumably would have been turned at each end of its run. It was supposed to be able to haul a single trailer. Needless to say, such a bizarre concoction didn't stay on the drawing board and two of them were actually built by Fives Lille. They weren't a success, maintenance was a problem as was lack of power and the passengers hated them (but who cared what they thought, lucky to have a railway at all) Following an inglorious career they were scrapped after just ten years and the Etat railway was clearly embarassed by them as there doesn't seem to be a single photograph of one of these in existence. With no photographic evidence I thought that these things were about as real as unicorns until I found a contemporary account of them in service mostly around Chartres and La Rochelle.

At the risk of being a bit OT by looking at imaginary coaches rather than just locos, I'm intrigued by your double deck Mk3 because I think a proper double decker night just be achievable within the British loading gauge. (cc Hugh Llewelyn This attempt by Bulleid using interleaved compartments was one less than successful approach but modern design should be able to do better. We're clearly not looking for anything like this . (crude bur dimensionally accurate Jouef model of a CF de l'Ouest later Etat "Imperiale") This looks like a deathtrap for the very good reason that it was, leave your seat and you might well take leave of your head, but hundreds were built and if you'd been a third class Parisian commuter you might have been confronted by one of these until about about 1930, (CC Patrick Giraud) A much safer development was to use a lowered chassis to make room for an upper saloon. These, were much better and a few were in use until 1952 (CC Claude Shoshany) The upper level was rather cramped but with bogies and modern lightweight construction you could probably depress the lower deck sufficiently (and turn it from compartments to a saloon) to fit a version of these, first introduced in the early 1930s, within our loading gauge (GFDL Didier Duforest) it would be an interesting design exercise. Our loading gauge (4.115m) is lower than that in continental Europe (4.28m) but only by about six inches though with a more rounded maximum roof section. You also don't actually need full headroom over the seats, you don't get that on the London tube or Glasgow Subway, so judicious placement of gangways would probably help. It would be cramped though possibly no more so than tube stock so not ideal for long distances. However, the real downside for the TOCs might be the need to give everyone seats and that might go against the British philosophy for commuter services of cramming more passengers in by making most of them stand and providing fewer seats (Am I being too cynical?) .

Not really any more room Phil because French main line passenger stock from ep III was generally longer than its British contemporaries. The prototypes of the "Bruhats" I used for my tests were 21.1m over body whereas BR Mk 1s were 17.31m or 19.35m so, though H0 is 7/8 the scale of OO, the lengths are probably comparable. If I were looking at a comparable British 4mm scale layout it would have to be GWR/WR with Halls and Castles the longest locos. The crossover isn't really for the longest locos but more to give greater flexibility by facilitating other shunting such as releasing locos from shorter local trains. It's a moot point how much use it would actually get but I notice that Geoff Ashdown included one in Tower Pier and that's only two metres in total plus a metre long cassette fiddle yard. The old Fort William station did have a releasing crossover but it apparently fell completely out of use. Even without it that terminus offered a surprising amount of operational variety with just two points- effectively an Inglenook sidings for passenger trains and some very busy pilot locos Something derived from the Fort with the addition of goods is the other basis for a plan that I'm looking at.as it would enable longer trains with no buffer lock but would be the end of a single track line (which doesn't mean rural branch)

Don't worry Peter. In the theatre, at least in the west, The hero(ine) normally enters stage right (so from the left from the audience's point of view) and that's what your locos will now do. Perhaps you instinctively sensed that when you built the street. This is looking good and I'm really looking forward to seeing this layout.

I hadn't really thought it through that far but yes it could. I'm a bit dubious though about leaving open voids at the ends of tracks. My idea was that the kickback into the goods yard would look visually like one end of a longer goods yard running in front of the main line with the modelled end of the goods shed acting as a view blocker for the main line exit. Operationally though it remains a short two road yard. . If you weren't using a traverser (or even if you were I suppose) you could use the front of the fiddle yard to re-arrange wagons. I've operated a few layouts whose off stage has effectively been a fiddle table on which cassettes can be shuffled and I've seen others that combine conventional sidings with cassettes. One good thing about using Kadees is that vehicles can be lifted out of trains very easily.

That would have cost real money, far more than building fifty steam locos to replace others that in any case went on to other jobs. I believe also that for strategic reasons the Est was discouraged from electrification. The physical changes to the approach trackwork weren't really a rebuild, the changes were relatively modest as these signalling diagrams show. The first was before the rationalisation and the second from after. The third is my update to reflect the slighlty simplified final track plan still in use at closure in 1969 after passenger numbers had decreased from their peak in the 1920s. Note that the square signals are absolute stop "carrés" and the diagonal ones are "avertissements", in this context roughly equivalent to our homes and starters and distant signals. You can see from the diagrams that the changes between 1920 and 1925 were no more than a couple of extra crossovers but that was enough to enable parallel moves between any pair of platforms. That wouldn't have been possible between platforms II & IIIwith the older scheme . The real work was done by the traffic department (service d'exploitation) in rationalising the entire service into a rhythm. During the evening rush trains always left in the same order from V to I with arriving trains and ECS movements replacing them in the same order so thst the whole cycle could be repeated. Also, instead of simply running semi-fast and stopping trains, the trains going further down the line ran fast to a particular station then as stoppers to their final destination. As a bonus these normally left from the same platforms so regular commuters didn't clog up the narrow concourse waiting to see which platform their train was leaving from. In the morning, where the rush was a bit more spread out, a similar rhythm worked in reverse. This wasn't very different from the intense steam hauled suburban services that ran from several of the London termini long before electrification and having a fleet of identical locos would have made for far more predictable operation with any loco able to haul any service. Bit boring for modelling though with Minories Cyril Freezer did suggest identical tank locos pulling identical trains* with a simple reverse loop to get them back. . *In the original TT-3 version presumably the Jinties and suburban coaches that, with a few wagons, constituted Tri-ang's initial offer.

I wouldn't describe it as easy but perhaps easier than an equally short straight approach would have been, it was a fiendishly difficult exercise to push 20-25% more trains through the already struggling terminus without major rebuilding. They'd already installed electric traversers similar to those at Birmingham Moor Street to maximise the length of the trains of four wheel double-deck coaches that ran on the line but that hadn't been enough. Tweaking the throat design was only part of the process and a lot of work went into completely rethinking the rush hour timetable for the whole line and the movement of locos from arriving to departing trains at Bastille itself. My latent interest in the station was rekindled by getting hold of a paper presented by the Est to a couple of professional bodies in 1931 describing the rationalisation in some detail. . Had the approach been straight (like Fenchurch Street) then I suspect they would have had to widen the first couple of hundred metres of the viaduct to enable pointwork with a far shallower crossing angle to be used . That would have been both expensive and difficult and given that there was a major hospital on one side and a oublic road the other I'm not sure how they would have done it. The railway's directors also wanted to avoid spending serious money on the line - commuters weren't the most profitable passengers - though they did order a fleet of more powerful Prairie tanks (later SNCF Class 1-131TB modelled in H0 scale by Hornby-Acho) to give better accelaration .

Sorry to hear about the injury Dan. May I join everyone in wishing you a speedy and successfull recovery and it's good to know that you're back at work if not behind the wheel. I have to say that your account of Birimingham Hope St. has been and is one of the most inspiring recent threads on RMWEB so definitely looking forward to whatever comes next.