Looking for something small to model.

[Unit basher]

Over the years I've picked up a number of french bits & pieces, I have a few different autorail models & a couple of small diesels. I've been thinking a lot recently about actually making a layout of some sort & i would like to start with something small. I was thinking of doing a cameo type layout around 6ft long maybe less as i am not blessed with space for much more. 

I have tried to look for inspiration on the internet & something small to model, I'm not coming up with much. I'm looking for some inspiration & wondered if any of the group might have a few ideas, links etc that might help in my quest to find something to tickle the taste buds.

I've been to France a number of times but most if not all the places I've travelled to are a bit bigger than a rural backwater. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bash

[Gordonwis]

France has a huge number of rural railway backwaters, these range from stations still extant but on freight only lines through wayside stations still open to passengers on rural single track passenger railways, to the same thing on double track main lines. 

 

There have been quite a few 'compact' HO layouts over the years produced by modellers (talk to the French Railway Society), and I have been creating the same sort of thing in N Gauge since the early 1980s.

 

There are at least three possible model scenarios that work

 

1) through station on a single or double track line with a short fiddle yard at each end

2) small terminus station with one fiddle yard

3) 'through' station which has become a terminus - so you only need one fiddle yard, but the old 'line continuing elsewhere can be represented by a short stub at the end of the layout opposite the fiddle yard  

 

Scenario 3 is extremely common in France, because a lot of rural railways in France connected to main lines at either end of the route, but between the 1930s and 1980s the passenger service on many such lines was truncated to a point somewhere 'half way' . In other words your line runs A to C via  B, whereby A and C are junctions on main lines and B is your station somewhere along the route.

 

In terms of rolling stock, these French 'rural line' scenarios are greatly helped by the fact that railcars were introduced to French railway very early (1930s) and in rural areas these were often single units, most famously the X3800 'Picasso' railcars.

 

Freight can be catered for by pick up trip freights comprising three or four wagons, for example you could have a steel scrap siding served by short trains of open wagons, or a grain silo service by a few cereals hoppers 

Edited June 2 by Gordonwis

[Gordonwis]

 

This shot of mine in 1990 shows the wayside station of Aix-la-Marsalouse on the now closed (much to most enthusiasts' disgust) Ussel - Eygurande railway. I am on a train formed of an X2800 railcar and trailer, and I am passing a single car X2800 travelling in the other direction

 

 

 

[Gordonwis]

Members of this forum who know me may already know my life story and thus why I am using the example that follows: The Bellegarde - Divonne Les Bains line in the 'Pays de Gex' region between Geneva and the foot of the Jura mountains.

 

My dad's relatives lived for 70 years in this area of France for working at the UN / WHO in Geneva, and I grew up holidaying in the area three times a year, which is why I am interested in French railways. Slightly further from the house was the Bellegarde - Annemasse railway which was famous for its 141R steam trains until 1972, but the closest station to our family house was Chevry, a station about half way along the SNCF line from Bellegarde to Divonne.

 

From the 1960s onwards the passenger service was single car X3800 Picasso railcars, and the line was served by short mixed general freight serving various customers along the line.

 

My photos herewith show the Picassos in the last fortnight of passenger services, late May 1980. The mixed freight trains continued to run - after closure to passengers - until the mid 1990s

 

 

Chevry station looking East

 

 

 

 

Chevry station looking west. The track in the foreground leads into the grain silo which was - very usefully for modelling purposes - pretty close to the passenger station 

 

 

 

 

Looking east from by the station building

 

 

Edited June 3 by Gordonwis

[Gordonwis]

Divonne line Picasso near Tutegny

[Gordonwis]

Picasso arriving at Chevry from Bellegarde (ie camera  looking west)

[ianp]

The well-known modeller Peter Smith has written and published many books on narrow gauge and secondary railways in France. They are available on Amazon. I think they are excellent and should give you much inspiration:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=peter+smith+railways+France&crid=3U0654A49PLRZ&sprefix=peter+smith+railways+france%2Caps%2C208&ref=nb_sb_noss

[Gordonwis]

7 hours ago, ianp said:

The well-known modeller Peter Smith has written and published many books on narrow gauge and secondary railways in France. They are available on Amazon. I think they are excellent and should give you much inspiration:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=peter+smith+railways+France&crid=3U0654A49PLRZ&sprefix=peter+smith+railways+france%2Caps%2C208&ref=nb_sb_noss

 

However they all lean towards narrow gauge, whereas France is also well known for compact rural railway scenarios on standard gauge. Depends on what the OP is modelling.

[Northroader]

Over on my thread, I did a suggestion for a really small NORD branch line station (I model 1900 era):

 

 

Edited June 17 by Northroader

[Pacific231G]

On 02/06/2024 at 12:09, Unit basher said:

Over the years I've picked up a number of french bits & pieces, I have a few different autorail models & a couple of small diesels. I've been thinking a lot recently about actually making a layout of some sort & i would like to start with something small. I was thinking of doing a cameo type layout around 6ft long maybe less as i am not blessed with space for much more. 

I have tried to look for inspiration on the internet & something small to model, I'm not coming up with much. I'm looking for some inspiration & wondered if any of the group might have a few ideas, links etc that might help in my quest to find something to tickle the taste buds.

I've been to France a number of times but most if not all the places I've travelled to are a bit bigger than a rural backwater. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bash

Are you looking at any particular era? Also does your six foot length have to include the fiddle yard or can you add that to it?

I can think of a good number of small H0 goods and passenger terminus type layouts within a six foot length, including my own (5ft 3ins) most of which need a fiddle yard though there are ways of incorporating that into the total length. My own layout was designed to be operable as a shunting layout without its fiddle yard (though in practice I generally keep it attached so that trains can arrive and depart from the outside world. 

Just  to give you some ideas

This is Giles Barnabe's excellent St. Emilie which had a scenic section of 6ft (folded in the middle)x 2 ft . It used a cassette fiddle yard so all shunting was in the visible section and points were Peco short radius. It was a mixed SG/metre gauge layout but, if we assume the metre gauge line to have been closed (as most of them were)  the SG side alone would be about 15 inches wide.

 

I used to operate St. Emilie fairly often at exhibitions, two of them in France, and, though French metre gauge was my main interest at the time  (which was what attracted me to the layout) I actually found when operating it that the standard gauge side was more satisfying as the track plan offered a lot of interesting shunting.

   

St. Emilie was inevitably a major influence on my own small H0 layout Le-Goudron-Calandre

This uses a tapered shape that folds horizontally to make a rectangular box. It has just five points, mostly Peco medium radius (and they all should have been) ,  but like St. Emilie there are three goods sidings with one facing the opposite direction to the others. This combination of three sidings makes for interesting shunting for such a small layout especially if a passenger train is scheduled to come in before he outgoing goods train has finished being made up. 

 

The run round loop will comfortably take a five wagon train. the two goods yard sidings will take four wagons and the private siding three wine tanks or isothermes. It looks much longer than it really is so long as I stick to short passenger carriages.

 

Finally, if you don't have the space for an attached fiddle yard, there are always layouts based on P H Heath's Piano Line. 

This was my plan for one six feet long that will also handle five wagon trains. (the wagons are shown to indicate siding capacity and far more than you'd ever have on the layout at any one time. 

and this is Tim Hill's La Planche Port layout, seen here at the Ely show a few years ago, that he developed from it.

Ports of course provide scope for all sorts of unusual track patterns but, though in other contexts this arrangement, with the trains arriving and departing from within the run round loop may seem rather contrived , I have found several real examples of it in France. Most of these were when the terminus of a local metre-gauge line squeezed into the forecourt of a main line station. 

I hope these ideas give you some ideas for your own layout.

Edited June 21 by Pacific231G