Pacific231G

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.

For my own possible layout, which will normally need to fit in a 4m long room, I am looking to be able to extend it when possible so probably would go for parallel lines at each end. I'm also looking at another plan that would allow for longer trains but that wouldn't be a Minories derivative so probably off-topic here. Within the four metre constraint I agree with Joseph that your latest design is excellent.

Hi Jane Bastille is certainly a good source of inspiration. Designing an angled approach with no reverses is fairly straightforward if you simply want to connect each platform to both of the main lines. For the equivalent of Minories the angle is double the crossing angle of the turnouts you're using which I think would be 24o for Peco Streamline. The challenge with Bastille,as an increasingly busy commuter station was to redesign the approach to enable simultaneous arrivals and departures between both main lines and any two platforms in an abnormally short space. That meant using very short points ( about 1:7.5) which in turn meant that trains couldn't be subject to any reverse curves such as a normal crossover. . This was the final version of the approach- based on a 1950s SNCF plan and checked against photos. I drew this up using Peco large radius points which are similar in length to the off-the-shelf turnouts used by SNCF. They achieved the whole thing in the equivalent length of eight turnouts which was an amazing piece of design. My reduced four platform version of Bastille only saved the length of a single turnout and is seven long. just two more than the minimum of five required to connect four platforms to both sides of a double track mainline if you don't need every parallel route. For a more intense commuter operation you can have parallel moves between all three of Minories' platforms by adding a direct connection between platform three and the the up (inbound) main but with no reverse curves using an angled approach you lose a bit more than the length of a turnout from platform three What's really frustrating about Bastille is that the original design records seem to be lost including those that appeared briefly in SNCF's film made just after it closed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwn8DzI0rpU The original passenger terminus was just an arrival and departure platform either side of the main train shed with four tracks between them. The narrower and nastier (in terms of finish) second shed used after about 1879 for platform one and its loco release was built for something else. It may have just been a carriage shed but typical terminus design in the mid 1850s suggests a goods depot of some kind and if so I'd love to get hold of a track plan for that.

Hi Jane Do you mean this one? or this slightly reduced version with four platforms and a smaller loco shed based entirely on Peco medium radius left and right hand points with NO reverse curves. I'm actually extremely familiar with Bastille (though I missed seeing it in operation by about nine months - curses!) . Three reasons I don't want to model it. . 1. It's all passenger with no goods facilities . 2.Though very compact as a prototype it would still be a large model. 3. Except for one brief period immediately after the occupation when it was the terminus of the Mulhouse main line because a viaduct was down, it ran an intense but purely suburban service with a fleet of identical tank locos. I do know someone who has modelled it though. Bastille really was the original Minories writ larger. However , you could cut it down to four platform roads and use the second shed as a goods depot (rather like the other original Minories plan) possibly losing the loco shed .

Hi Phil This has a nice flow to it and, though most of the reverses are immediate, they do all involve a larger radius turnout on at least one side. It also preserve CJF's principle that "every train just has one wiggle". The immediate reverses do still give what would be buffer locking if I weren't using Kadees but with my H0 stock any immediate reverse that includes a medium radius (nominal 3ft) point will have that problen. I suspect that something like a pair of BR Mk 1s in 00 would be perfectly happy even with non-buffing couplers. I'm probably not looking at a traverser or sector plate (and certainly not a 7 road one) so the position of the main line track is not so critical and in any case the wall in question has a firebreast. Given that what you have as a loco servicing track would actually be a bay platform for autorails and postal/baggage cars, I'm seeing the headshunt and therefore the TJD (double slip) behind platform 3 as probably unnecessary unless the terminus is also marshalling local goods trains, That is possible and a reversing terminus like Fort William or Tulle or one serving a secondary or branch line as well as a main lne such as Deauville-Trouville, Weymouth or Lowestoft may provide some interesting working.

Hi Clive. Your layout looks interesting. Is there any more about it on another thread? There's nothing wrong with Peco's slips and the geometry looks very similar to an SMP double slip that I've just been looking at but it depends on the stock you're using. With my Roco H0 scale "Bruhat" main line coaches- the worst case of my Ep III SNCF main line coaches- I simply do get significant buffer locking when propelling through the curved route. I get the same with any nominally two foot radius pointwork (which Peco slips apparently are) even just taking the branching route through a short turnout with straight track at eiither end produces a massive displacement. Buffer locking through small radius pointwork isn't a new problem. I'm just reading an article in the May 1954 MRN on this very subject The test coaches I'm using are fitted with fairly flimsy scale buffers so clearly designed to have buffing couplers (which in practice they do) and I'm not sure if 4mm scale vehicles the same length with correspondingly wider buffers would experience buffer locking to the same degree. Hasn't it also been common practice for those using scale couplers with coaching stock to fit slightly wide of scale buffers to them? Buffer locking isn't the real issue for me, I use Kadees or Roco close couplers and have no interntion of using scale screw link couplers, it's mainly just a way of quantifying the degree of displacement. What does look bad is for most of the interior of a corridor connection to be revealed every time a pair of coaches goes over pointwork or for one of each set of buffers to line up with the opposite drawhook . Any of our OO or H0 scale passengers trying to find a seat or returning to their own seat after visiting the buffet would end up as a bloody mess in the four foot. Wagons are far more forgiving and even my relatively long wheel base (compared with British10-12ft ) European four wheel wagons are perfectly happy trundling over 2ft radius crossovers with their buffers in good contact. I've laid out the core pointwork of a Minories equivalent using what would be a single slip This shows the maximum throwover and the buffers were completely separated every time . I've had a go at a Minories equivalent plan using a single slip instead of the two back to back points The reduced length of the throat is attractive but two of the six routes have to negotiate the two foot radius curved route through the slip. These include one of the two routes that now include an immediate S and to avoid extreme buffer movement the points switching between platforms 2 and 3 would probably need to be long . In Cyril Freezer's design only one route has an immediate S, the other five all have a straight the length of a point between the reverse curves and with medium radius points that's at least the length between bogie centres of a long coach.

Thanks for this. I've never been that keen on using slips- though SNCF are so it would probably help the Gallic feel- but that might work and a friend of mine has a Code 75 single slip he wants to sell This also produces a significantly shorter throat. However, I've just been trying this arrangement out with a Code 100 double slip and the radius of that is actually quite small, smaller than even a medium radius point* so that simply taking one of the curved routes through it with straight track at either end produces definite buffer locking between my pair of test coaches (I've remove a coupler from each of them so that I can test the actual buffer displacement) Are Peco's code 75 single slips any better? . *Update, I've just checked Peco's site and they quote a nominal radius of 24" for the code 75 single slip so it's effectively equivalent to a small radius point. Not good..

Thanks for this Phil. Using two large radius points for the reverse curve is one of the permutations I've tried before. I've just laid it out again and it does give a very smooth flow with slightly less lateral displacement over the reverse curve than even a single medium radius point with no reverse. That does make it very tempting (and always has since I first started experimenting with Minories) The extra length at an angle does increase the pushover from the main line to the platforms (the sense that the railway's surveyors aimed for the station site but missed) but in fact this is only 18mm so doesn't make a lot of difference. The real catch for me is that using the two long points makes the throat 9cms longer than with entirely medium radius points or my variation including one medium Y (which is the same length as a medium). Though that doesn't seem much it makes the total throat length 38inches or 98cms. which, with a metre long board, only leaves 1cm between the end of the points and the end of the board .It may of course be possible to cut that down a bit by judicious trimming of the points and before seriously working on this particular arrangement some of my clapped out second hand points may well be sacrificed.Of course I could always learn to build my own pointwork. The total length I have to work with is just 4 metres- for various reasons the room isn't suitable for an L- which makes the theoretical absolute maximum train length with this arrangement 150cms. In practice that needs to come down by at least five cms. With the stock i'm using, 130cms is just long enough for a Pacific and four coaches but to be at all convincing it really needs a fifth vehicle that would make it 150-155 cms. This is definitely a quart into a pint pot exercise but, if you've been following Danstercivicman's inspiring Birmingham Hope St. thread, you'll know how good a Minories based layout can be. .

I'ver got a plan and a couple of rather faded images of Greenwich Park and though simple it does look fascinating so I can see why you're drawn to it. One small urban terminus with a viaduct approach that's long fascinated me is Hammersmith on the Hammersmith and City and wondering how that might have developed differently if, instead of becoming part of the Underground, it had remained an urban double track branch of the GWR (a bit like Uxbridge Vine Street) .It's also maybe worth speculating on what might have happened if the other lines serving London Bridge had gone elsewhere- probably not very far elsewhere- leaving it as the terminus of a rather self-contained London, Greenwich, Woolwich & Dartford Railway maybe never quite important enough to justify electrification but always having a strong association with seafaring. . Are you set on London or could the equivalent of a Birmingham Moor Street be awarded to another deserving city. Bristol maybe?

Hi Phil Here's my track plan for the seven foor by one foot version of Minories No. SP35 in 60 plans for small locations. The grid is 6 inches. I've used medium radius points apart from the point switching between platforms two and three and the one accessing the long siding. Neither of those should give any problems with buffer locking and this keeps all the pointwork on the one board..This arrangement does put the platform one and two tracks rather closer together at their right hand end so you need to watch the clearances though the two inch (50 mm) separation that Peco track normally gives is wider than it needs to be for British stock in 4mm/ft scale. The alternative is to make the first point at the entrance a small radius Streamline, use the same for the siding point and keep everything else as mediums. I don't know that you really need the joggle in platform three. Presumably Cyril Freezer wanted to avoid a boringly straight line but he didn't do it for plan SP36. Even with ths narrow baseboard and just seven feet of length I'd still be tempted to put in an extra point on the siding to make it a two road yard of some description. If you're being pernickety there should be a trap point protecting platform three from the siding. . In either case, because the critical back to back points are now three foot radius, I think you'll probably avoid buffer locking in OO unless you're using long modern coaches. 56 ft coaches would I think be fine. I'm in H0 so everything is correspondingly smaller (vehicles may be slightly larger the other side of the Channel but the height size and positioning of buffers and drawhooks is the same. This is the version of Minories i'm currently looking at. It uses one Y in the main throat to ease the apparent buffer locking problem (apparent because I don't actually use scale couplings) and is a total of four metres long - the longest wall of the potential room.- including the fiddle yard. The grid for this is 25cms. a short but apparently longer goods shed would view block the entrance tracks and there would possibly be a road bridge to separate the entrance trackwork from the platforms so hiding how short trains really are though an overall roof might achieve the same result. . For minimal use it could be confined to the middle three metres (one for the platforms, one for the throat and one for the fiddle yard, but that would mean very short trains.

I too have been looking at this and the conclusion I came after a few experiments to was that, so long as you couldn't see anything associated with the front end of the train at the same time as anything associated with the tail end, the suspension of disbelief worked fine. That's probably easier with British trains as, apart from the loco at the front and probably a brake second at the rear, the other coaches don't usually suggest whereabouts in the train they might be. It's a bit more difficult with traditional American or European expresses as they tended to have head end cars (baggage car, TPO, at one end) so all of those have to disappear from sight before the last car appears. In O gauge even a four coach train can look convincing even without view blockers probably because you simply don't take it all in at a single glance as you would with 00/H0. The famous pre-war Maybank layout of Bill Banwell and Frank Applegate- probably the first terminus to fiddle yard layout- was thirty two feet long but that included about twelve feet of main line between the tunnel mouth concealing the seven foot traverser fiddle yard and the start of the station throat. From the first set of points to the four platform buffers the terminus itself was about thirteen feet long. Trains were limited to four 56' carriages behind a Robinson 4-6-0 (corrected from Paciific) and the terminus had four platforms. Up to the tunnel mouth the only view blocker was an overbridge leading to the loco shed that sat on top of the fiddle yard. Maybank at its 1st showing at Wealdstone in November 1932 signals were added before its next appearance, at the MRC Easter show in 1933 but by 1934 the high level goods sidings had gone. Also in O scale, I really enjoyed Brian Thomas' "Newford" which was a Southern Electric Minories with one additional storage road and a plaform capacity limited to a four car EMU plus a small loco but, when the 4PUL came in, it felt like the proper Brighton Belle not a truncated parody. Newford was fourteen feet long plus a ten foot fiddle yard (just two points to give a four track fan) and twenty inches wide. Brian sold it in 2005 and it became part of an extended layout called Littleton but the actual terminus remained unchanged. There's another really good example of this principle of not seeing everything at once in 1:1 scale near the beginning of the movie version of Murder On The Orient Express. After seeing a lot of platform activity and little vignettes of people around the train at Istanbul, we get to the shot where it leaves. We're looking from a fairly low angle alongside the track towards the train as the last doors slam, the guard's whistle blows, the headlight comes on, the locomotive sounds its whistle and the great train approaches us slowly but with increasing speed. After the loco has passed, the camera pans slowly round and we see the sleeping cars, restaurant and pullmans slding past. As the last Pullman passes the camera continues to pan round till we see the tail lights disappearing into the distance. It's all done in a single shot with no cuts so we know we've seen everything and really experienced the departure of one of Europe's great trains. Watch the scene again a little more closely and what you've actually seen is a relatively small mixed traffic 4-6-0 (SNCF's 230G353 now sadly no longer in steam) at the head of a train consisting of a baggage car, a single sleeping car, a restaurant car and a single Pullman car for non-sleeping car passengers. Needless to say, in the rest of the movie we never really see the train as a whole so don't quite twig just how short it really is. With a model we'll never have the same control of what the viewer sees as a film director but the basic theatrical principles should still hold. I prefer the idea of the main throat over the front couple of carriages only appearing at the buffer end as you then get to see the main action of the station.

Apparently referred to by some airline aircrew as SLF (Self Loading Freight). When did railways ever care about passengers? I was going to say never but the truer answer is only when a rival was trying to snaffle them.

Hi Jane That would eliminate the S curve buffer locking problem as each of the back to back turnouts would be effectively separate* and I agree with St.Enodoc that the bogie centre length would be long enough to achieve that*. That's really the secret of Cyril Freezer's Minories for all but one route through it. However, if that were applied to that one route (inbound to platform one) it would rather defeat the aim of creating the shortest possible throat. .For that we're looking for the best compromise. AFAIK any normal crossover will include some straight between the V noses but, except possibly for high speed crossovers, that's not going to be very long. The straights between back to back turnouts can also be fairly short though "as long as possible" is recommended. I used to travel fairly often over the junction at West Ealing between the slow lines of the GW main line and the Greenford Branch. That consists of a facing crossover and a branch turnout and on a down train you got to experience both of them. Looking at it on Google Earth, the distance between the toes of the two back to turnouts on the up slow line is no more than 14 metres and the straight between the frogs of the crossover is only about10-11 metres, both far shorter than the ~ 23M overall length of the class 165 DMUs that run the branch service (now normally terminating in its own bay at West Ealing) and Mk 3 coaches in the class 43 HSTs that regularly work ECS over the branch. I'm no expert on PW design but I've been looking at the NR Track Design Handbook, a fascinating document. For a reverse curve (S bend) in plain track there are rules about the transitions required which should be a mirrror image of one another but for normal transitioned curves there doesn't have to be any actual straight track. You can see this quite clearly on a number of lines, my favourite being parts of the Tattenham Corner branch south of London, that look rather as if the builders had run out of straights and were using up their spare curved track just like we did with our trainsets as children .(51019'12.89 N 0o08'48W is a good example) When a reverse includes a curve of less than 160m (just over 2m in 00 and 1.8m in H0 so almost all curves on our layouts ) then there must be a straight track at least 3m long between the opposite curves. In the case of two back to back turnouts forming a reverse there are rules about the length of straight track between their toes related to speed (actually based on the time to pass between toes) For 15MPH it would be an absolute minimum of 3 152mm and for 40MPH 12 875mm. In practice the minimum would normally be 6 140mm for 15-25MPH and 10 640mm for 30-50MPH. The normal lengths would be about 50% greater than these and the desirable length greater still . The other factor is the need to avoid buffer locking (or exceeding the maximum allowable lateral movement between corridor connections) The maximum allowable vertical displacement is normally 300mm (~1 foot) and there are rather complex mathematical formulae that relate the two curves, the length of straight track, the length over buffers of the vehicle and the distance between bogie centres. I reckon the lateral movement between the two halves of the Greenford Branch train sometimes got quite close to a foot! * update. If you tried to use a vehicle length straight and compensated with very sharp points that itself could give buffer locking. I've just tried running a pair of the coaches I used to test the throat across a simple small radius Peco point with straight track off both ends so no reverse curve. The buffers stayed in contact so no buffer locking but the lateral movement was about twenty inches in H0 with the corridor connections about 50% out of alignment ; with Setrack points I think you really would need buffing couplers.

Hi Phil Given Peco Streamline's particular geometry it shouldn't make much difference with a crossover occupying the same overall length but I've just tried it with the critical back to back points 1. with two medium radius points connected directly and 2. with two small radius points separated by a short piece of straight track to give the same overall length. What I found with two pairs of identical coaches (Roco Bruhats) just over 10 inches long and fairly close coupled was that the throwover was significantly worse with the separated small radius points than with the back to back mediums . This is interesting as NR's track standards do call for a certain amount of straight track between reverse curves with less than a certain radius Using a pair of coaches without their vestibule connections, the relative positions of the buffers themselves are perhaps a bit clearer. All these photos show the point of maximum deflection. with the small radius points separated by a short straight the buffers are well out of contact so you would get buffer locking but with the two mediums it's just on the edge. To do this test really thoroughly I'd need to remove the couplers and push the coaches through the two back to back points.With Kadees (or any other "buffing" coupler) I wouldn't actually suffer buffer locking but the amount of throwover with almost no overlap between the vestibule connections does look rather silly. I don't know whether this would be quite so obvious with 00 coaches with wider vestibules. The best results I could get in the same length as four medium radius poiints was by subsituting a medium Y for the right hand of the two back to back points. This definitely produced no buffer locking with these H0 coaches and the vestibules overlapped by at least 60%. This is a slight variation on the classic Minories plan but still meets Cyril Freezer's own description that "the trains only have to wiggle once" . I should say that this isn't an academic exercise. I'm trying to cram a mainline terminus plus fiddle yard quart into a four metre pint pot and the shorter the approach pointwork the longer can be the trains (but I don't want to use slips). I'm looking at a Pacific with four or five coaches and a four wheel baggage car (and various view blockers to disguise the shortness of trains). I'd love to base this on Minories but am also looking at a main line development of John Charman's Charford which seems in turn to have been inspired by the old Fort William. There were a number of single track termini that handled main line expresses in France but the busyness of Minories seems more suggestive of a city.

Thanks Tom. I've been looking high and low for my notes of a conversation I had with you about Minories GN a few years ago. I couldn't remember what points you'd used but B5.5 does sound familiar. I don't think you'd need to go down as far as set track to get the original Minories into the length Setrack didn't exist in 1957 though Tri-ang's own points were probably equivalent but the "scale" track available for TT-3's launch the month before the Minories article appeared included Gem and Peco spiked track. Gem's Universal Turnouts for TT-3 (twelve shillings and sixpence) were 15" radius and 4 1/2" long, while Peco's Spiked track included a standard 19" radius point kit (eight shillings & sixpence needs no soldering) which was 5" long. Sydney Pritchard would have surely wanted a plan that could be built with his new TT-3 track and Minories certainly could. Measuring the two original Minories plans against the scales shows, for TT-3, a length for the pointwork of two feet from the end of the board so either Gem or Peco would have fitted comfortably. In 00 the pointwork is about 32 inches long from the scale and you can assemble it with Peco Streamline small radius (2ft nominal) points in 28 inches so again a comfortable fit. I happen to have a few of the then current Pecoway BRMSB 00 points which were nominally three foot radius and with those the Minories throat would have required 34 inches. Since the final set of points is nowhere near the board end,the plan could certainly have been built using any of Peco's OO gauge track (or any other scale track come to that)

Hi Phil I'm looking at the two plans in the 1989 60 Plans for Small Locations now and the simple four point throat arrangement is shown as fitting into three feet. For buffer locking trials, I've got this laid out on a board with Peco medium radius points, using insulating rail joiners where appropriate. The total length of the actual pointwork is thirty four and a half inches. On the 7ft simple version (SP35 in my copy) the right hand board is 42 inches long and, if you use medium radius points straight out of the box, the point for the kickback siding won't quite fit. However, with a little judicious pruning of stock rails to bring the frogs of that point and the one controlling access to platforms 2 & 3 point closer together. it will fit but only just. So, the minimum three foot radius quoted on the plans is possible . Keeping all the pointwork on one board would also simplify the wiring along with any mechanical way of controlling points from a single "signalbox" such as wire in tube or even working point rodding. The only interboard electrics required would be for traction current. Laying out the Minories throat with small radius points gives a total length of pointwork of 28 inches.

Well spotted. It was indeed 2nd March 1945; 1944 was a typo now corrected. Apart from being called tram-trains and using the presumably now extended electrification do they have any other differences in how they're operated compared with the EADs that were still operating services out of there in 2008? Looking at Google Earth's timeline the goods shed was demolished sometime between 2002 and 2005. It had certainly gone by the time of my second visit to Lyon which I thnk was in about 2003.but the trains were definitely still EADs then.

I'm not surprised; when I first visited Lyon, St.Paul station wasn't even marked on the tourist map. I don't know about the use of a station pilot at St. Paul. I've got detailed rush hour timetable graphs and platform occupancy diagrams for Bastille from the 1920s and all trains seem to have left behind locos that had arrived at the head of a different incoming train three or four movements before and there's no sign of a station pilot being used. My impression, though I can't be certain, is that except at the largest termini with separate carriage sidings French railways were far less keen on using station pilots than were ours, possibly because of a general shortage of motive power. It wasn't unusual at some smaller termini to find a large express loco shunting its own train. That certainly happened at Dieppe Maritime where only train locomotives seem to have ever appeared on its quays and I've a picture of a 231G Pacific solemnly shunting the restaurant car of the express it had just arrived with at Croisic.

Very neat Phil. I think my only comment on the design would be to avoid making the terminal end of the layout too much of a structural solid wall as you'll then have the option of adding a lengthening section to both this and the fiddle yard for exhibitions. I've noticed that Tom Cunnington and Co. have now added a short loco release traverser to the end of platforms 1&2 on their EM gauge "Minories GN" hidden beneath the "Optional Station Building & Scenic Feature" of the original 1957 plan Before With short release added This possibility of extension was always intended by Cyril Freezer "Should additional length be available at any time the platform can easily be extended with a short section of baseboard carrying three parallel tracks: even a foot would be a valuable addition." Structurally, if the end board has a rectangle cut out of it to allow such an extension, especially if it's only platforms 1&2 that can be extended, that wouldn't weaken it significantly and it would also afford you a lovely end-on view of the station.As here on Bradfield Gloucester Road I'm still a bit doubtful about the use of small radius points but Peco's pdf templates are free so you can always print some of them off to lay it out and try a few items of rolling stock before you commit to serious carpentry. I've measured CJF's original plan and it's between twenty eight and thirty inches from the main line entrance (from the fiddle yard) to the far end of the trailing point leading onto platform one. Laying it out with Peco Streamline small radius points I got a total length of twenty eight and a half inches which, if you allow an inch or so for the entrance tracks, is about right However, running a pair of 10" long coaches over the critical route between the inbound track and platform one (the reverse curve through the two back to back points) gave this much throwover .I don't know what points Cyril Freezer based the 1957 design on, Streamline was still several years in the future and, in the "Peco Topics" article on the next page of that edition of RM, Peco's spiked track is quoted as having 36" radius points. I'm pretty sure that Pecoway points and Individulay components such as cast frogs were also nominally three foot radius point. As a design for the just announced TT-3 it was possibly based on the fifteen inch radius points that GEM were already advertising for the scale.

I thought I had a plan for St. Paul somewhere. Here it is I don't remember where it came from but it's consistent with the not very clear plan in my previous post. a thick line represent a voie principale a running lines that trains carrying passengers can use; a thinner line represents a voie de service a siding or other line from which passenger lines are protected by a derail, trap point or in this case by the track layout. The lines perpendicular to the running lines connect the various tracks and sidings via wagon turntables including the apparently unconnected sidings in the goods yard and it's possible that those at the terminal end were used to release the tank locos that operated the station's main commuter traffic. Measuring it using Google Earth I make the track length of the station from the tunnel mouth to the buffers 248m - less than three metres in H0 scale and the platforms are 160m long so from the ends of the platforms to the tunnel is about 85m. On a diagonal corner site you could model it completely to scale, including the station building in three metres by one and a half metres Clearly quite a lot of shunting into the tunnel was required ...eeek!!

I'm afraid that awkwardness was down to Cyril Freezer. The BRM project layout Cannon's Cross was closely based on the goods warehouse version of Minories from the 1957 article but widened slightly to be a goods yard rather than a covered warehouse. For an "other end of the line" SR terminus (I was reminded of Littlehampton) that seemed entirely appropriate. However, I always thought Cyril Freezer's original addition of goods to the basic scheme was a bit of a last minute bolt on (Were Peco's TT-3 Wonderful Wagons already in preparation in May 1957?) His subsequent versions of Minories that included goods/parcels faciltiies all AFAIK had then as a kickback from platform three or a headshunt alongside it. The narrow goods warehouse isn't a bad idea for a City terminus as it occupies less width than a goods yard and there were prototype examples. There was also a good example of this in the P4 layout Clarendon. I think the original plan might work with no extra length by adding a crossover between the goods headshunt and the inbound main line You might though have to assume a crossover beyond the scenic section for goods departures Not looking clearly enough at my own plan. So long as the goods siding next to the platform 3 track can be used as a goods departure road then a short goods train can reach the outbound main line. For a smallish goods yard we're probably looking at trip workings to a marshalling yard. The other thing that did seem a bit odd with Cannon's Cross was to have both a small MPD and a separate loco layover siding but others have turned that spur into a short parcels road. This was Brian Thomas' original O scale "Newford". A very nice Southern Electric version of Minories that was later sold to become part of "Littleton"

A cynical, but probably often too true view, is that experts invent new names for things to ensure that their expertise isn't shared by too many people thus reducing its apparent worth. It is perhaps a bit like the wartime farmer told by the ministry bod that he should be referring to fertiliser and not manure. The farmer's wife immediately commented that it had taken her twenty years to get him to call it manure. BTW, is a common crossing a working class frog? Whatever failings BR might have had, the quality of their restaurant car breakfasts was certainly not one of them.

You'll find plans for an eight foot version of both the original goods yard plan and the later version with a kickback goods yard here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/78492-minories-holborn-viaduct/page-2&do=findComment&comment=1223211 You can obviously lengthen the platforms to take longer trains if you have the space. The original version requires the use of platform three as a goods reception siding which I don't think is very prototypical and a lot of see-sawing to shunt the goods shed. The plan was used as the basis for a BRM project layout called Cannon's Cross which was a Southern Region 3rd rail themed terminus. I saw it in operation at Alexandra Palace a few years ago and shunting the goods yard did seem a bit convoluted but not in a problerm solving way.

Geoff Ashdown did something like this in a length of just three metres by 50cms (including a cassette based fiddle yard) with his superb EM gauge Tower Pier; More on this layout in posts #44 & #48 in the Minories Holborn Viaduct thread and eight excellent photographs by Ian (Kings Cross Suburban ) here, http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/30204-expoem-bracknell-14-15-may-2011/page-5&do=findComment&comment=401955. Rather than an actual goods depot - wihch would have required more space- Geoff Ashdown came up with the effectivel idea of the goods sidings, at a slightly higher level than the passenger station behind, representing "Tower Hill Yard" the final sorting sidings before a goods line into a very cramped St. Katherine's Dock (actually two hidden sidings under the road wihch hinges up for access) and have their own two roads in the fiddle yard so are completely separate from the passenger operation. Something similar was done by Roy Emery with Fenchurch Cuttingsin 00 though here the high level section behind the three platform passenger terminus was an MPD. Again it was operated effectively as two separate layouts. This was a much larger layout than Tower Pier at 14ft x 2ft including the fiddle yard. Though I'm personally not keen on separating the layout into two this way it does enable different levels to be used and, if you don't mind the fiction that the goods junction is a box or two down the line, can be effective in representing a busy urban environment. Tower Pier in particular seems to really capture the feel of what the Widened Lines must have been like in grubby steam days. I agree about Minories not being quite enough. I've operated a couple of fairly pure versions of Minories and did find that I craved the variety that a goods yard would have added to it. . .

I don't think Cyril Freezer did in 1957 either, though he obviously knew the street. He always said he chose the name simply because it sounded like a good generic City of London station name. It was only the terminus of the London and Blackwall Railway for twelve months until Fenchurch Street Station opened in July 1841 though it remained in use for another twelve years before becoming the line's goods terminal from 1858 until 1951. Its site is now occupied by the Tower Gateway DLR terminus so it was just to the side of the present line into Fenchurch Street. There have been other mythic but credible names for London termini.The BBC once did a radio drama series set in a city terminus called London Wall. Tower Pier also sounds typically Londonish as well as being an excellent model with a credible location. I also quite fancy St. Brides as that would have served Fleet Street.