Pacific231G

It still is! It was exhibited in terminus mode at the MRC's "mini exhibition" during the Christmas period. and was just as good as ever (though I still think the retaining wall is too high as the bridge doesn't then break it so well into two separate scenes)

That reminds me of the enlarged version of E.R. Carrroll's Victoria.I recall it had the Terminus (Victoria) then a very long convoluted run with a couple of holding sidings that eventually brought trains back to Victoria (though there was a branch)

PM with of CJF's plan should be with you. That B&W photo really seems to capture the atmosphere of the lines around there and the widened lines. For my money, the best model railway to have captured that atmosphere was Geoff Ashdown's EM Tower Pier. Operationally a Minories (with a separate goods line) and all fitted into two metres of scenic and one of cassette fiddle yard. The longest loco hauled train it could handle was a Quad Art but good use of two overbridges and an overall canopy means you never reailised just how short it was . A SAD UPDATE While trying to find out a bit more about Geoff Ashdown and Tower Pier just now I discovered very sadly that he died on the 24th March last year. I wasn't sure if it was the same Geoff Ashdown but he was an officer n the Salvation Army and talking about his retirement in 2020 he mentioned exhibiiting Tower Pier 11 times. Geoff had invited me to one of his operating evenings near Southend but unfortunately circumstances and the Covid pandemic meant that I was never able to take him up on that.

He did! There's a complete plan for it in his 1993 book "Model Railway Operation" ch 10 The City Terminus. In fact, the plan includes (from South to North) the south bank approach to Blackfriars, Blackfriars (formerly St. Paul) Ludgate Hill (original and new) and High Holborn, which for some reason is what he called Holborn Viaduct, with the tracks down to Snow hill and the Widened Lines. There are actually only three double slips in the entire three station complex (one of them at Holborn Viaduct but a lot of scissors crossovers. Holborn Viaduct has a very Minories like set of loco spurs off the easten end of platform one which presumably is where he got the idea from. . He didn't turn the complex into a dimensioned layout plan because he reckoned the whole thing was far too big- even in N, but did say that any of the three stations would be eminently modellable though his preference was for Blackfriars. That chapter them went on to include three plans for city termini, one of them Minories (with a kick back goods shed) followed by two five platform types one of them a Southern Railway/Region north of the river terminus straight off a viaduct over the Thames and clearly inspired by Charing Cross and Cannon Street. There is an excellent image of the Holborn viaduct approach amongst others including some very interesting then and now images of Farringdon and the Snow Hill tunnel her http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Holborn_Viaduct_station.html The odd thing about Holborn Viaduct is that I must have seen it and the approach bridge over Fleet Street a hundred times but never noticed that it had gone when it did. There's absolutely no trace now that there ever was a railway there. Is the Thameslink Station actually on the site of Hoborn Viaduct low level and it is very pleasing to actually be able once again to travel through the Snow Hill tunnel and onto the widened lines (I last did it to get from Blackfriars to St. Pancras and it was also very strange to get to Blackfriars from the entrance on the South Bank.

The trouble with that is that Edwardian era stock already does the space saving job without having to go down a scale. It's worth looking at Gavin Thrumm's Great Moor Street for that- though his Minories is set just after the grouping. https://thrumlington.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-moor-street-minories.html

Cyril Freezer's objective with Minories was to demonstrate that you could build a busy urban terminus in the sort of space normally only considered appropriate for a small branch line affair where, in reality, the same train would trundle up and down the line all day relieved only by the daily goods train and just maybe a through coach. Minories by contrast is based on a suburban turnover operation which could be very busy. Oddly, the most Minories like terminus I personally remember n terms of busyness was Ryde Pier Head. I went there on a family holiday when I was about five ot six and vividly remember four trains lined up on the platforms when we arrived on the ferry (we stayed in a guest house on the Esplanade so travelled on the pier tram but did take a train from Esplanade to Shanklin There was not though much variety in the trains on the Island's railways. There are other excellent reference plans for compact main line termini. With Borchester Market, you could lose the colliery branch and the junction to make a simple L or U main line terminus with planty of operation, or a real example in Ramsgate Beach/Harbour which had inrtense passenger operation, a small goods yard, a turntable release, a tunnel mouth just beyond the station throat all on a very cramped site on a shelf between the cliffs and the beach. With Minories, if you single the main line and lose the loco spur you are left wiith two points accessing three platforms. It couldn't be simpler but, as Fort William, a reversing terminus, it had an incredible variety of often fairly short trains (the Hogwarts Express is five coaches) complete with sleeping cars, diners and observation coaches coming on and off as train from Glasgow and Mallaig - sometimes with summer reliefs, cross there, tail loads of fish, even an early motorail service and all providing gainful employment for not one but two pilot locos. You could choose to operate Minories as that sort of station rather thana as a city suburban affair. I think another plan worth eyeing up is John Charman's Charford. It was very much a branch line terminus (albeit with through coaches off the ACE and Bulleid light Pacifics) but, if you take the basic plan and simply lengthen it somewhat with the loco release and cattle dock road turned into a third platform you'd get a perfectly good secondary main line terminus.

And a good demonstration of how much more you can fit in if you go back to the pre-grouping era. (which, unfortunately doesn't float my boat) Buckingham's two long plaforms are only 4ft 6ins long and the shorter one 3ft 6ins yet the longer ones will take a London express with a main line loco and five coaches.

The original Minories was 5ft long in TT3 but as that also used 12mm gauge track I don't think I'd scale it down from that. I though it worth trying out the same size with Peco TT120 medium points ( claimed to be a B6) and it does comfortably fit onto two 30 inch x 9inch board (this is a 6inch grid) I've allowed an inch between the turnout at each end and the board end. In his original article CJF did say that it would be improved by plugging in another foot (or more) of parallel track at the end so I have . The next step will be to check coach and loco lengths with the Hornby catalogue and see what sort of train it could take. Update, with the one foot extension so 40 inches available (at least on platform 1) it'll take a Dutchess of Atholl (chosen only because, as a child, that was the HD 3 rail loco I had on my very first layout) and four Mk1 coaches reasonably comfortably . Personally- i think four coaches is a bit too short for a Pacific hauled main line express especially in this smaller scale so I'd want to add enough length for a five coach train (Odd numbers 3 & 5 always seem somehow more satisfying than an even number like 4) If Hornby ever bring out a loco (diesel or steam) more suitable for a loco hauled suburban service (or even a smaller loco for semi-fasts and locals- a Hall would be nice) then the origjnal concept of Minories kicks in.

I don't think so but there was a 3mm scale Minories at Ally Pally a few years ago.

Hi Gordon I assumed these were based on SNCF Reseau (ex RFF) access points (for PW etc) There clearly are anomalies with data from different sources- probably from different dates. It does for example show the combined carré and avertissement (as a CLS) on the line into Chinon from the south which has been disused for many years (though the signal post was still there the last time I looked) and the whole of the Chinon-Richelieu line is shown as disused with kilometrages when it is now a voie verte. There are a few places where a disused line is shown but the topographical map shos that it's now the route a residential road. . Nevertheless, I still think it's a useful resource and I like maps that show disused lines as well as those in service.

Possibly slightly off-topic but weren't the reasons that classes on British trains were 1st and 3rd for a long time after the railways went to two classes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, something to do with legislation requiring certain minimum third class services to be maintained? ISTR that there were three classes on continental boat trains right up to the end of third class in 1956 because there were still three classes in much of Europe (I can remember while travelling through and around France in the 1970s learningm in second class, to avoid the ex 3rd class carriages in favour of those that had always been second class)

It's an amazing resource, produced as a personal project by Nicholas Wurtz It does only show passenger trains and their positions appear to be calculated by interpolating from their timetabled timings and the broadcast information about retards (he explains that in the ? pop up) It also shows the position and type of every (?) main line signal (though not their aspect), pancarte and PN notice. It even shows summits. I don't know if the track plans are accurate or just those that come up from the general topographic mapping. There do though appear to be some anomalies- I found a Ouigo whose route was down the main line through Perpignan apparently progressing down an abandoned section of the Narbonne-Rivesaltes line so I don't know how its engine defines routes. I also learnt from this that though we've tended to perceive the Cerdagne line as a touristique (le Train Jaune) it's trains are TERs. Possibly useful for spotters, it does show all the access points to lines (from where there may well be a views available from the public side of any gate or barrier without trespassing) as well as PNs (level crossings) This one is definitely going into my favourites.

Hi Keith I looked at some of my older ones and there were very slight variations but I think the fundamental dimensions and angles have remained the same as the whole lot are cunningly designed to be put together to produce fairly complex track formations straight out of the box without trimming (except for the timbering). I assume Sydney Ptitchard came up with that and they've stuck with it for H0/00 Streamline- even for bullhead. Their US 87 line range is totally different with a range of crossing angles as per the prototype. I've not examined their new TT trackwork in enough detail to know which approach it follows .

OK Phil I laid it out again far more carefully with brand new code 75 points ensuring the ladder was dead straight and using set squares etc and you are right ..by 1/5 inch ! perhaps a quarter of an inch as I only used one set of insulating rail joiners and it needs two. I would never though rely on any template with a clearance that tight, you always need a bit of wiggle room. I don't think CJF was telling fibs when he gave that dimension- a wooden baseboard is not a precision engineering structure ( even less so when he published it long before laser cut baseboards). In reality, whether the rail ends are flush with the baseboard end or very slightly proud of it they'd still be very vulnerable with a folding baseboard (to which I'd probably add a protective strip to the ends of a traditional frame). I 've generally reckoned on a couple of inches between the end of the last point and the board end probably using copper clad sleepers at the very end though I guess that could come down to an inch.

Well, as I said last night, it isn't impossible as I was able to lay it out on a table with just such points (I should have photographed it but trust me that I did do it and measured the result) Assuming a symetrical pair of boards, it did fit (just) into the 3ft 6ins of the right hand board. Possible yes, desirable probably not because of the vulnerability of the points at either end. In seven feet that would also give very short train lengths just three main line coaches with a loco and a four car EMU/DMU. If I really was trying to cram it into that length I'd face the dilemma of either accepting very short trains or lengthening the platforms by using sharper points and accepting the (very) excessive throwover- especially in the route between the inbound line and platform one. It depends a lot on what stock you're using. Geoff Pitt's Horn Lane uses a Minories throat (with a 3 way point for a fourth platform) made up from Peco small radius points and with Underground stock - both sub-surface and tube- it looks absolutely fine. I think the same would probably be true with pre-grouping stock but, with main line stock a similar throat looks positively toylike. I did a lot of practical experiments with a range of 'Minories Variations' a few years ago and the problem I found with the pure Minories throat with medium radius points was that the at least one point length straight between the reverse curves gave even main line stock an acceptably snaking flow. However, the one route with an immediate reverse curve (inbound to platform 1) didn't look good. I tried umpteen arrangements using Peco long Y as well as medium points (they're the same length) and found that using Ys for both of the back to back points gave a very bizarre wiggle on several routes as trains encountered a double reverse curve. However, if I used one for just the right hand of the two back to back points (and a second at the end of plattform one.) I improved the critical route considerably but at the expense of rather more but just about acceptable end throwover on most of the other routes. That arrangement also had the advantage of a less extreme overall S through the throat and the platform end coming off at a 6 degree angle allowing a single gentle curve to bring platforms 1 & 2 to parallel with 3 rather than the S of the original plan. I di use a large radius point for the entry to the throat but in practice it made relatively little difference. BTW I did try using Ys for both the back to back points but found that gave a very strange looking wiggle for trains coming from platform two or three to the outbound main line. On the critical inbound to platfrom 1 route, these were the worst throwovers I found. It's not pefect but there was no actual buffer lock so I could live with it. I think the best compromise depends very much on the actual stock you're using. The other thing I found was that if you mixed a large radius point with a medium radius in the same crossover you tended to get the throwover/buffer locking of the smaller radius point rather than the average between them. Again, this depended on coach length.

Hi Phil It is possible, though at first sight It appears not to be. Peco medium L&R points are 8 1/2 inches long so five would be 42 1/2 inches and therefore half an inch too long. However, I've just laid the plan out with those points and it does fit... just and with not a whisker to spare. It's the fact that three of the points in a row are at a 12 degree angle that makes the difference. I wouldn't build it though, at last not with those points, as you'd be right up to forty two inches* so would have the toes of the two endmost points flush with the board ends (Ask Danster Civicman why that's not a great idea. He described what happened when the entry point to Birmingham Hope Street snagged when he was moving it from the fiddle yard) It would though work more comfortably with SMP 3ft radius points as the ones I have in front of me are 8.1 inches long with I think a ten degree crossing angle. With those you'd have over an inch of plain track beyond the points at each end of the board which should be enough for some copper clad anchoring. However, with a seven foot long layout you'd have a maximum train length including loco of about 48 inches on platform 1 and 42 inches on platform three clear of the kick back siding point. *So the Great Question of Life the Universe and Everything turns out to be "How long must a H0/00 Minories throat with a kickback siding be with Peco medium radius points in inches." Who'd have thought that was the great question. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Funnily enough, I think some of the original attraction was the "axonometric" projection CJF drew it with (simply the conventional plan turned through 45 degrees with vertical elevations added at the same scale. With this plan it seemed to just bring the layout to life. I'm looking forward to the first folding Minories in TT120 .

Hi Harlequin I agree with you about the Minories "eye" being the defining feature of a Minories. Three or four platform MLT's with a double crossover have been around forever. It was CJF's genius way of arranging them that made Minories such an effective way of getting round the problem of main line trains lurching across sharp model crossovers with their buffers locking furiously instead of snaking in and out. Your plan is interesting but I think you may be giving yourself a slightly exaggerated problem in trying to fit the throat into 39 inches (aka 1 metre) Though the original plan in RM did quote a length of 6'6" for the layout. It appeared in early editions of 60 plans as 6'8" and carefully measuring the original plan against the rulers shown (fairly easy with a graphics programme) reveals this to have been the actual length- a typo in RM perhaps? it was of course designed as a 5ft folding layout in TT-3 and if you scale that from 3 to 4 mm/ft you duly get 80 inches (That's about right for going from 12mm to 16.5mm gauge as well) . i notice that all of CJF's later plans for Minories were 7 or 8 ft long with three foot radius points; Peco Streamline Medium now but also the nominal radius of the then Pecoway points along with others. The basic Minories throat does fits tightly into three feet and very comfortably into a metre with 3ft radius points but the kickback siding (I've never been sure what that's for operationally) obviously complicates that as you now need to fit five point lengths into the throat rather than four. With SMP 3 ft radius points I think you could just manage it in the forty inches but with Streamline mediums you might have to trim a bit . What coaches did you use with your Minories? I've experiments with various permutations of Minories and found that, with main line stock, using 2 ft radius points in a Minories throat or even on their own gives very excessive throwover between coaches (at the worst point a buffer on one coach tends to be aligned with the wrong buffer on the next coach and forget about corridor connections) so I'd not go below three foot radius.

That wasn't though the track that CJF designed it for and with HD 3rail you'd lose the real virtue of the Minories scheme. For plans like that, he seems to have followed the general guidelines favoured in the 1950s of 3ft radius points. This was the nominal radius of Pecoway points and those hand laid using Peco's track components before Streamline was offered (originally with 2ft radius points). Hornby Dublo 3 rail points were AFAIK about 15inch radius. The whole point of the Minories design was that it avoided the immediate the reverse curves (on all but one of the six routes) that the more usual arrangement of a facing and a trailing crossover would have so that passenger trains could snake rather than lurch through the pointwork. However, that breaks down if you use smaller radius points . I have seen a layout (Horn Lane) with a terminus based on Minories that used two foot radius points but that was with LT Underground stock so the sharp curves weren't such a problem. I've long wanted to see a layout based on such "heritage" equipment but built for proper operation rather than for simply running trains roud and round but, in terms of appearance, I think that for a three platform main line terminus ,with HD track, straight crossovers would actually look better but you may disagree. this is what the two plans look like with HD 3 rail I notice that the straight-crossover version is also rather narrower With Peco streamline "medium" 3ft radius points the comparison looks like this and the Minories version does have more of a flow to it and main line coaches are less likely to experience apparent (or actual) buffer locking. Operationally, and in signalling both versions are identical.

To honour mouse man, haggis for dinner with tatties (not neaps though- I have to draw the line somewhere) with a nice glass (or two) of single malt to help it down. I'm not usually a whisky (or whiskey) drinker but haggis needs it. Bit of a rush though as it needed 45' to boil and I had a Zoom meeting of the photo club at eight. Trouble is, I now have half a haggis that, because it was shop bought not homemade, I'm advised can't be fried up again so it's cold haggis for breakfast or the recycling bin for it tomorrow. It was only £2.50 (Tesco) so chucking it won't be a great loss but I do hate wasting food.

Why on earth would Charles Church's ghost be looking for revenge? He made Popham the brilliant and welcoming place it is today. After buying the airfield in 1978, he developed and expanded it from the small grass strip that the previous owner Jim Espin and fellow members of the Popular Flying Assciation had developed over several years. I actually made my own first flight in a light aircraft there in the early 1980s (when there was still just a single runway (08/26 and shorter than it is now) and you had to drive across it to reach the small car park) I was directing a film for South Today about a Microlight event there and we were using the light aircraft, a Bolkow, as our camera ship. There was only room for the pilot and cameraman but, after we'd finished filming, the pilot took me up for a short flight. That must have planted a seed because a dozen or so years later, having learnt to fly in 1991/92, I eventually became the part-owner of an aircraft based there. Charles Church had his own private strip for his restored Spitfires at Roundwood just outside the Popham circuit and very difficult to find by road. I'd actually filmed him there while covering his restoration of a Spitfire but didn't make the connection with Popham. That was the only time I ever met him as sadly he was killed when his own Spifire (G-MKVC) crashed in July 1989 while he was trying to reach Blackbushe Aerodrome following an engine failure.

I get about three like that a day. I normally forward new ones to report@phishing.gov.uk before deleting them. I don't know what they do with such reports but preumable it helps them to build up a picture. Though the local plan has been around for a few weeks, I've only just heard the very worrying news , that Popham Airfield in Hampshire, where for thirty years I did almost all my flying from, has been designated in the Basingstoke & Deane revised local plan as a site for the development of 3000 homes in "Popham Garden Village- a healthy and sustainable place with a strong, clearly defined and coherent village character, which maximises the opportunities presented by its attractive rural setting in a sensitive and positive manner”. In reality, by the time the developers have muddied the water, that usually ends up meaning an isolated housing development with few facilities. The airfield runs along the north side of the A303 dual carriageway (a very attractive rural feature!) with only narrow country lanes providing any other access and a fifty minute walk (on a country road I'd be very reluctant to walk down) from Micheldever Station. There's no mention in the plan of current aviation activities on one of the most popular airfields for grass-roots flying in the country (the sort that ordinary people like me could afford that are disappearing rapidly) as if they don't want to admit that they'd be destroying it. There is a mention in the plan of a "brownfield site near Overton"which presumably means the airfield. If this is a brownfield site* then so is most of the British countryside (the site to the right of the main runway on the A303 is a filling station and cafe - nothing to do with the airfield). The only permanent buildings on the site are the three hangars on the left of the picture, another hangar used by an aircraft maintenance firm and a small clubhouse and cafe. *I've delved a little and apparently airfields ARE automatically defined as brownfield sites, and therefor "preferred" locations for development, even if like Popham they're basically large grass meadows with some strips of the grass carefully mowed and no more buildings than an average farm. Agricultural buildings dont apparently count as "previous development" though so if that large area of grass had been the site of a row of intensive farming sheds then it would be less favoured for development. For developers of course, a flat, open, well drained site with access, ninety five percent never built on and almost no buildings to demolish or industrial pollutants to remove is something they drool over.

I go to see layouts with trains operating on them and for me at least, the layout is probably more important than the details of what is running on it. I couldn't agree more. For me- and this is obviously a personal thing- I don't find the vast layouts with long trains simply running through them as engaging as smaller (but not necessarily small) layouts with a lot of operation. What i don't like, whether as operator or visitor, is the situation where the operators are too busy keeping constant movement going to interact with anyone. If I see a layout that inspires me I want a chance to talk to the person who built it and, for a visitor who is shyer than me- perhaps just getting into the hobby- it's very easy to get the idea that they're simply not allowed to talk to the builders/operators. The MRC's mini exhibition at Keen House just before Christmas was very good for this and, though I specifically went to see Minories (GN) once more, there were at least two other layouts that I got a lot from by talking to the builder.

But is the downsized show helping to inspire fellow modellers and create interest in others? Possibly it is in which case that's fine. The problem I was referring to in that post wasn't that clubs need exhibitions to survive, they shouldn't, but rather that they may think they do and seeing their annual exhibition primarily as a fund raiser was getting in the way of what I think should be its primary function, which is to share the hobby with others both existing and potential (that includes the general public!) It's not really an either/or but more a matter of emphasis. I agree with others that the hobby is probably healthier now than it's been for quite some time but the emphasis may be changing- as it often does. Modelmaking has after all been a human fascination forever and railways do hold their own fascination. As a side note: I was always a bit doubtful about the sign at one exhibition which had two halls with the words "More Trains" . Not "More layouts" so giving the impression that the interest in an exhibtion is just seeing trains running (so trains must always be running) and not appreciating the art and craft of creating a layout.

It's a blurred distinction but I'd see "real steam" as fulfilling a real transport function at normal rates rather than primarily providing entertainment. in other words getting people or goods from a to b rather than the journey between a and b being their main purpose. I doubt if many people use the WHR just because it's a convenient way to travel from Porthmadog to Carnavon. The dead giveaway would be whether they're fulfilling that transport function midweek in winter. I'm not sure what the current status of the Darjeeling Railway is in that regard.