Stoat's Nest LB&SCR (was: Your challenge...)

[Lacathedrale]

 

EDIT: The ideas behind this thread have solidified a little further down the page

 

Hello there,

 

I really enjoy building track - I'm not very good at it, but I do enjoy it. I've not built a three-way or a diamond, and I have put together a little track plan which includes both. Normally I am really against the idea of putting a track plan and then building a layout around it, but in this case, I want to build this particular arrangement, and I want to challenge my preconceptions of what a layout design should entail.

 

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it (oh, please do) - is to see if we can find any plausible reason for this track layout. Ideally I'd like to have the setting fairly elastic in time with the replacement of detail parts if at all to move the layout from 1900's-1950's

 

 

Rather than a screenshot of templot, I scaled the plan to match my 2FS stock and have posed some of it on the plan. If I were to proceed, the size in which this will be modelled would be S-scale - of which I have a single P.O. wagon yet!

 

The extent of the plan is illustrated below in plan form:

 

The depicted track occupies about 4'3 - keeping the visual area to 5' in length and overall (for satisfying operation) to a total length of 8' would be ideal. It seems an obvious choice for the threeway to be an inglenook!

 

A few ideas are bubbling up, but really I'd like to go into this with no preconceptions- I would appreciate your thoughts greatly!

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Lacathedrale

[StuartMc]

I was reading a book about GWR in the valleys of South Wales and there were some cramped track formations there; not only were the lines sometimes perched on steep valley sides, but there were also cases of other, rival lines being in the way as well. As an illustration, there was one station squeezed next to an existing building on a curve such that the platform is only something like 18" wide.
And of course docks/quaysides could be very limited as well.

[tractionman]

I've been looking at South Wales too recently but LMS lines and Brynamman where there's a really interesting track layout including a diamond crossing similarish to the op, I've even started playing around with some track lengths in the loft with this location in mind, here's an historic OS map of the station at Brynamman showing the formation

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.931254219776466&lat=51.80942&lon=-3.86750&layers=168&b=1

 

All the best,

 

Keith

 

 

[Flying Pig]

One rather obvious approach is to add a sector plate on the left to make a runround loop: the reception road is lower left to middle right, upper left being the loco release.  The loco shunts from the left, assembling the outgoing train in the middle right road.  The critical lengths (see below) are between the red dots for running round and between the blue dots for the return train. 

 

If you wanted a reversed siding for more tricky shunting, you could add another point to the upper road, just to the left of the diamond, or even just imagine one offstage that required wagons to be propelled along the loco release.

 

 

[Lacathedrale]

Interesting, I'll check out South Wales - certainly an area I've visited a few times and really enjoyed seeing but whose railway history I know little about. The GWR locos and stock in the photographs (just to be clear) are no reflection on any further development in that direction in S-scale, however.

 

As an addendum to the discussion raised here, I was leafing through the 'Urban Layout Design' book by Rice, and saw one of his 'bitsa' plans that also contains a three-way and a half scissors. Please note that none of the timbering is done, no point at this early stage!  As is well known and frequently highlighted by @martin_wynne, lots of Iain's plans are aspirational with regard to turnout selection and location, and this is no different - however, with a little shuffling it seems to fit in a 120% magnification (i.e. P4 to S) fairly well:

 

 

 

This represents the freight rump of a suburban station, the passenger platforms/etc. are assumed to be underneath the roadway and on a little. It too is eight feet, but operation into a hidden siding via sector plate feels like it would get a little tedious in a home environment backed up against a wall!

Edited April 30, 2020 by Lacathedrale

[Lacathedrale]

@Flyingpig so you are suggesting to have a sector plate for the two left-hand roads?

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Another possibility is the remnant of a terminal station - part of the original throat - in some cramped urban location, which has been replaced by a new station cutting across the former platforms; but was retained to handle a vital goods traffic.

[Lacathedrale]

@34theletterbetweenB&D - interesting, maybe the corner of a station like the Euston milk dock?

As it stands, I've printed off the above Rice plan to 2mmFS size and plonked some wagons on - still no runaround, but it has the makings of a setting:

 

A view from the front-left side of the layout. In the distance, the left side is a hidden sector plate, and right side is the headshunt.

 

A different view of the same corner.

 

Although this looks vastly bigger, in terms of operational footprint (as opposed to visual) it's almost identical.

[The Stationmaster]

The only problem I can see with it is shunting in model form that kickback siding if you can't runround.  Easy enough to shunt it in the real world using anything from pinch bars, to a horse. or a chain but they're a bit difficult to reproduce in model form.  That apart it's quite believable,  and a nice track plan for a cramped or awkward site

[Flying Pig]

7 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

@Flyingpig so you are suggesting to have a sector plate for the two left-hand roads?

 

Yes.

 

7 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

This represents the freight rump of a suburban station, the passenger platforms/etc. are assumed to be underneath the roadway and on a little

 

I think it would be more convincing as an inner city yard or conversely, somewhere very bucolic.  It would work well in an industrial context too of course. It certainly doesn't say suburban to me: they tended to be neat and rather conventional irl.

 

A high wall with the line off disappearing through a gate and across a road would probably be better than the raised diagonal road trope which Iain overuses, I feel. 

[Lacathedrale]

@The Stationmaster the kickback is really just a headshunt for the loading dock. I decided (since I'm getting the hang of this thing now) to scale the plan down to fit on a single sheet of A4 and then build a mock-up, in 1:550

 

Similar to view 1 above

 

Similar to view 2 above

 

Overall view

 

@Flying Pig we are coming across a number of things I would poo-poo in a normal context - exit-under-a-diagonal-road being quite high up that list.

[Flying Pig]

22 hours ago, Lacathedrale said:

@Flying Pig we are coming across a number of things I would poo-poo in a normal context - exit-under-a-diagonal-road being quite high up that list

 

I like the plan, regardless of imagined context, and your mockup is a very effective tool for visualising the layout.  In fact, the headshunt right allows all shunting to be done on stage, which is definitely a plus.

 

As regards the diagonal bridge, my point was that you aren't restricted to that, as there are alternative and possibly more effective scenic treatments.

[Lacathedrale]

Thanks, Simon - I re-jigged it a little, with the tandem now single-sided  - it's a much nicer line through the curve (this is a full size template, but if you compare the right hand road there's no reverse curve, and the leftmost road has a much wider angle:

 

 

[cypherman]

Hi all,

Looking at your plan I do not see the point of the diamond crossing and kickback. Surely they would have just put a righthand point going directly into that siding. This would reduce the complexity of the point work as they would be able to dispense with the diamond crossing and the extra point on the kickback. It would also give them an extra siding for storage where the kickback point was. No railway company would willingly spend more money than it had to in the cost of the track and it's maintenance. They may possibly consider a double slip in place of both of the points and diamond crossing in the yard throat. This is just my opinion of course.

Edited May 2, 2020 by cypherman

[Lacathedrale]

You're not wrong, @cypherman - I can't deny however, that it is attractive even if a little ridicolous.

[The Stationmaster]

I can now see the point (sorry) of the kick back if the layout is set in the context of being a few sidings divorced from the main part of a terminal or yard for whatever reason. (which to be honest was not what I originally envisaged it to be as I had the impression it was a freestanding terminal of some sort) .  As everything has to be propelled in the lack of the kickback would mean that all shunting has to be done under the bridge and while that is not impossible it would not be simple so the kickback was added as a shunting spur apart from giving access to the dock siding.

[Lacathedrale]

I decided since I was quite a distance along anyway, to flesh out the model-of-a-model like so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doesn't look too bad, huh?

 

[Lacathedrale]

The full size stuff looks lovely and sinuous:

 

 

 

[Lacathedrale]

So, having thought about this a bit I went quite far in the direction that it might be better to dedicate this kind of space to a larger plan, with less fidelity to reality - that is, an urban terminus of some kind. After doing research on Caterham (see my other thread here:

 

I came to realise that the kind stock required would be probably draw out into the 2030's - eight to ten locomotives, half a dozen rakes of carriages, plus goods wagons. It's something I would love to to, but definitely not a project that can be realised in normal timescales and far better suited to the Holborn Viaduct layout I've already got going in OO:

 

 

So with that in mind, thoughts return to S-scale and the plan above. Having spoken to Mikkel and debated the relative merits of open vs. cameo and snippet vs micro - it seems as though a plan like this really does have some mileage. More importantly, I've realised that the left hand side of this layout (containing the goods shed, coal yard and the end of the loading dock) can be built first and operated with a temporary sector plate, entirely 'operationally complete'. Obviously, it is intended to be part of the layout as a whole, but there is no reason why it couldn't be built, operated, displayed or exhibited as a standalone, either.

 

That's my current thinking, and in the meantime I'm going to pore over some of the Iain Rice books I've got laying around to see if I can dice up any of his other plans in this manner.

 

[Lacathedrale]

I was mooching around the LB&SCR and SE&CR lines around Stoat's Nest and found this little track arrangement coming off opposite the main station platforms - the following depicts the route to a chalk quarry (top), lime kilns, a coal yard and some others. No doubt this was a private concern, there were many private industrial railways in this part of Surrey - but if one hypotheses a road crossing the little yard over the milepost , it’s not wildly divergent from my plan!