Lacathedrale

Very helpful indeed @Wickham Green too and @Nearholmer - thank you kindly. Is there an obvious source I'm missing for detail on SR postal and newspaper trains? I'm thinking of the period from about 1960 to 1985.

The reason I am considering the background at this early stage is to try to visually balance the layout and determining what impact if any that will have on the track plan. While I have mapped out the original station, studied OS maps, etc. - I think some artistic license is going to be required. If you are at all interested in hearing all that do let me know, but for the sake of brevity I am going to omit it for now. Here's a rough render of my first pass at sketching in the environs in the Blue period: The purple and cream buildings are the long office block and the SEGAS buildings as pictured in the previous post. The large ochre building between them is the post office from East Croydon transposed to this location, all are dimensionally accurate. On the right hand board there are no equivalent structures - so rather than an expanse of nothingness I am leaning towards emphasising this by tapering the board in width. In the Green period, this parade of looks quite different. While the SEGAS building is brand new, the arts and crafts building is adjacent, there's a munipal office then fourteen buildings - I assume these are town houses or shops, before the Kings Arms hotel and the pub on the corner: In this era the GPO platform would have to exist either hard up against the retaining wall (no conveyors here!) or in the foreground of the runaround track. For both eras, as the railway passes under Park Lane it enters a cutting in Fair field before the ground slopes away to allow a level, sweeping curve to the main line. Fair field was slowly excavated, initially as a gravel pit and then as an engineer's yard. In the Blue era the gravel pit workings behind the running lines are abandoned and returned to nature and the engineer's depot has been closed but I will absolutely be modelling an isolated section of track covered in buddleia and an abandoned wagon or two in the foreground. In the Green era, one might be able to get away with the depot track snaking off the foreground of the board. The red rectangle is a footbridge - though unexpected there is solid justifcation for this: Fair field had a public footpath that bisected it which was removed when the land was purchased by the LBSCR at the same time they sold Central Croydon to the council. Since in my timeline Central Croydon is still extant this transaction obviously didn't happen, and so there is a need to maintain safe public access across the Fair field. The squat building could be the Croydon Rifle club, who had a premises and range in the field (albeit on the near rather than far side) until it was taken over for the development of Fairfield halls. It is also something of a frustration that 'carpark in the foreground' is well worn because Fair field was used as a car park too! Maybe the spectre of the Nestle building in the backscene? @justin1985 has as usual made a sage point with regard to "industries" - having too many will spoilt the plausibility of the layout. Frankly, it's something of a shame that 'industry on a kickback of a Minories' is such a well trodden trope, because in this case there really would have some! So, while I dearly do love the Class 37 and want to have a rake of gravel carrying PGA's and MSO's - they may well be incongruous visitors rather than part of a typical operating pattern. There are rich veins to investigate by doubling down on the postal services and all the tasty NPCS action that I could desire - so I will not be short of visual or operational interest in that regard.

This looks like it's taken from the end of Platform 6 - in the background you can see the Pub, and the corner of the loading dock past the scissor crossing - it does not very much look like a Post Office spur to me at all! https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=57657&search=East+Croydon&page=7

There was a loading dock on the track outside of P6 which was for Hall & Co after it morphed from a ginormous coal wholesaler into builders merchants, but it seems few have taken photographs of the Post Office corner of East Croydon! I would be grateful if anyone could provide a snapshot of the photos in the Middleton Press books - I'm quite happy to buy them, but I'd like to know what I'm getting beforehand if possible!

Good morning all, EDIT: I am researching prototype information for a what-might-have-been layout based on Central Croydon, and one of the aspects I'm eager to cater for is newpaper and parcels traffic. I haven't 100% tied down my era but seems to be the post-steam BR Green era, or the late BR Blue era prior to sectorisation. This thread started off asking about East Croydon's GPO siding, but may better be described with the new title. Original post below. I have spent a good deal of time staring at the Royal Mail building at East Croydon while waiting on Platform 6 for a train to the Caterham branch, as well as the curved roadway overhead and the various subterranean buildings underneath. When I came across this picture of LBSCR H2 421 in 1911, it looked like the loco had pulled up at my usual spot waiting for the front of the 455: H2 421 at East Croydon in works grey 1911, credit: Brighton Atlantics The half scissors perplexed me - the only gap between platforms I could find in the usual maps was the through road between 2 & 3 (now lifted), and this one has a half scissors in the foreground. After more digging the half scissors opposite Platorm 6 came to light and the Post office spur: 1913 OS Grid Map Without the post office elevator and elevated walkway, this is what the site looks like now: Google Maps 2021 This is what the scene looks like now - although the curve of the elevated cab rank roughly follows the line of the spur, there is no meaningful correlation of any items except the re-clad platform canopies. Does anyone have pictures or details of this area of track? The OS-map suggests there were no buildings except a small office (?) by the station. The only thing I have which even remotely indicates this area is a 1961 shot across the station which shows the pub, but little else masked by the station: https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=89240&search=Croydon+area&category_id=148&page=1 and this shot showing the opposite end of the platforms: https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=87287&search=Croydon+area&category_id=148&page=3

I did a 1/5 mockup of the layout boards below as shown below: 1:760 Mockup of Katharine St. The station building, stationmaster's house, pub and hotel (the two buildings at the back) and the row of buildings are all as per the 1890 OS grid map. The forecourt of the station slopes down to tree filled garden, and Park Lane bridges over the station throat. I do however, have mixed feelings of a large and substantial embankment and short tunnel capping the platform from the throat. Any thoughts on that would be gladly. Obviously, the line past Park Lane has no scenic treatment defined yet - in reality this was the gravel pit or engineer's sidings, but in my plan the throat is much longer so there is empty space to fill. When one researches this station and the surrounds, one thinks of a scene like this showing Park Lane under which the railway throat plunges:https://www.francisfrith.com/croydon/croydon-park-lane-1936_c201312 however, by 1965 it looked like this: https://www.francisfrith.com/croydon/croydon-the-underpass-c1965_c201168 . Indeed, a backdrop of Katharine Street from the era would look something like this (the station would be in a cutting to the left of the shot): Another shot shows a rather incongruous arts-and-crafts style red and white glazed building nestled between the South East Gas Board offices and the new offices built on the site of the old Kings Arm Hotel and Pub.

You may be right @Nearholmer - but thankfully I need to justify nothing with this layout plan for it to work in vanilla mode with 3rd rail EMUs and 33's and 73's. I can on a whim decide that the ELR connection is still in place because I want to run a 31, maybe tomorrow a 2PAN (can't wait to research that one). @justin1985 you are a hero as always. I have 5 tomix underframes compatible with BR Mk.1-sized chassis, only one of which is earmarked for a 4Sub. I am happy to use a Farish unrefurbished 4-CEP to fill out the roster easily, which leaves four motor units and lots of prototype options to choose from. I am happy to squash and stretch a few mm here and there to fit the commercial chassis.

Thank you @Nearholmer - I am trying to keep things as realistic as is feasible. Reducing Central Croydon down to three platforms to increase capacity wouldn't have been the first time particularly in the face of electrification (Holborn Viaduct). I imagine in reality a 50% increase in capacity for such a minor station wouldn't justify the cost, but don't tell the Southern that! One of the most interesting things about Central Croydon, as alluded to in the intro blurb, is the bizarre service patterns that it had. During its second period of operation it could boast GER services from Liverpool Street and LNWR services from Willesden LL and Kensington as well as shuttle services by the LBSCR to New/East Croydon. While it may be a stretch to justify an ongoing connection at Liverpool St. with the East London Railway for the modern equivalent of the GER services, very much less justification is required to reinstate ex-LNWR services to Kensington - after all, the Kensington service originated at Central Croydon and continued in some form as a loco-hauled Kenny Belle until the late 80's as is well known. It appears East Croydon was host to lots of 47-hauled services bound for the WCML so a gentle massaging of history to have these run on into Katharine St. does not feel forced. Peak services for East grinstead and Uckfield were laid on with Class 33's in the 1980's, so I find it hard to believe that these too wouldn't have been seen in Central Croydon. For inspiration on some of the locos and trains I'm referring to, see this thread: Given the intensity of services on the Brighton Mainline and congestion at Windmill Junction just to the north, offloading loco-hauled services to a vestigial sub-station like Katharine St. doesn't seem unreasonable.

Thanks @njee20 - I've a large stock of Easitrac plastic bases and rail sitting in my cupboard and was most definitely planning to use it here. @justin1985 - There's an interesting bell-curve of acceptability of runaround-less platforms - acceptable in the early period, not very from about 1900-1980 - and then perfectly acceptable again with widespread EMU usage and the cessation of all remaining freight services. Happily, I feel that the use of loco-hauled cross-regional trains, the engineer's siding/gravel pit and/or Royal Mail parcels facility justifies the runaround well enough. I do also agree that a station pilot managing four platforms without runarounds for loco-hauled stock in the 80s would be a little ridicolous.

I realise that there's no major need for a curved approach track to if the yard headshunt is in the foreground, so I have straightened them. Plopping a signal box between the running lines like Crystal Palace would be nice, but I'm also satisfied to have it in the foreground as an additional view break past the throat. I have also rotated the layout slightly, and accounted for an additional 6" to the length of the scenic board to allow the rear platform sawtooth canopy, retaining wall and station building to be modelled in full. Lastly, the implementation of a crossover on P3/4: Trackplan v2.0 - Crossover, lengthened and straightened approach The crossover would allow SOME trains to runaround. On one hand, this reduces the immediate operational complexity because the pilot isn't required for some moves, but would add some variety to the movements - Multiple units and trailer car sets can arrive and reverse out, loco hauled stock and freight can either leverage the pilot or use the runaround if that platform is available. I think visually it balances the layout a little better, too. I have also determined a canon justification for the altered track plan - the original track layout consisted of two outside brick platforms with two inner runaround loops. With the introduction of push-pull services and (relatively) higher frequencies in addition to cross-regional loco-hauled stock with longer dwell times in the post-1890 period, there was a need for more platform faces. To achieve this, P4 (front) was demolished, the space providing room for P3 to be shifted south and a new runaround loop laid on the site of the old platform. In the new gap provided, a narrow timber island platform was provided. In time Platforms 1-2 were electrified with third rail and the runaround removed, and the island platform now fully dilapidated was replaced with a standard SR concrete design. This amendment opens up the front of the layout visually, and allows both ancient LBSCR and merely 'very old' SR infrastructure to cohabit. A truncated part of the original P4 at the front of the layout can remain as a loading dock of some sort to hint at this change.

Good morning all! Having slept on the design, I see a small area for improvement. One aspect of Central Croydon I'm keen to replicate is the continued operation of Fairfield Yard (accessed via a kickback headshunt from the station throat) as an engineer's siding and sand/gravel pit which it operated as in real life until the 1930's, taking direct inspiration from and effectively transposing the facility from Purley. This will give happy justification for any hodge-podge engineer's train, or short rake of MSO/MSV's/PGA's seen on stone traffic at Purley, and the Blue period will permit Class 37's on these workings. All of this can operate in the layout as-wrote using reverse-running on the up line, with the facing junction assumed off-scene, but there is also space for a turnout to connect into the throat to allow the in-and-out workings to circulate rather than shuttle: Trackplan v1.1 - yard junction added, pilot siding made parallel to platform roads The area of the throat in which the new trailing point is added for the yard connection was previously just plain track, so it does not interfere with any other geometry - feels like a no-brainer? I was aware of the post office bay @Nearholmer at the south end of the station, but had not considered the elevator and overhead conveyor! In either the Green or the Blue period I can still have newspaper trains, and I wanted parcel trains too so that's a great shout. I'm aware of an ancient Southern CCT languishing at the back of Norwood Junction yard, and now we know why! @KeithHC I have Worsley etches for a "Sheba" all-steel 4SUB as a starter for ten, and five Tomix TM-17 motorised chassis to go under MLVs and EMUs. It's not a perfect solution, but we'll see. I do not think I can stomach the cost of a new 319! @JohnR Glad to have you aboard.

You're totally right, of course. I was at Beech Hurst (miniature railway) over the weekend and one of the guy's there said: you save 15-20 hours by buying laser cut frames. Maybe two hundred hours on buying a pre-made boiler. It's not so much a question of whether you can do it, but rather 'can you afford the time to do it yourself'. It made me think alot, part of that result was to offload all of my 'never going to happen' stash - and turn that funding around to buy some shake-the-box turnouts and get started on something that I can bring to completion within my natural lifetime. With that in mind, it is commenced...

Central Croydon was a hopeless station. It opened to little fanfare, and was closed three years later with few passengers and fewer to mourn its passing. Forlorn and unused, the trackbed littered with detritus and the windows dirty, the canopy sagged and iron railings rusted for fifteen years. By happenstance, a brief spark cast forth: brown and cream trains pulled by blackberry locomotives of the North Western, and prussian blue Great Eastern promised the capital - but that ember died quickly, and the station returned to its quiet, dark, and untroubled repose before fading from memory entirely. Nowadays, the only thing left of this sad story is a small plaque and a retaining wall along Katharine Street, an epitaph to the abject failure of a station that nobody used. What I am building exactly what I am interested in - passenger and NPCS operations, signalling and interlocking: a (sub)urban terminus. Where South London is the only choice and as per the intro blurb - if not the exact setting for Central Croydon, then one representative and emblematic thereof - Addiscombe, Bromley North, Greenwich Park all tell similar stories to a greater or lesser extent. When For now I can I only say with absolute authority that I want to model a post-steam, pre-privatisation era and within that I am currently looking at 1985 +/- a few years, which will allow me to run a wide variety of stock and services. Setting the layout much earlier i.e. the 1960's would give greater scope for head and tail traffic, as well as bolstering/splitting coach rakes for loco hauled stock. I'm undecided on this point. How Having dabbled in 2mmFS, N, TT, 00, EM, S, 0, S7, G1 and G3 - I feel qualified enough to say that I want my track to look good enough, I want my locomotives to move without undue prodding, and I want to be able to fit it into my house/garage/workshop without having to knock through a wall. I have some stock and a future joint project in 2mmFS, and that is where my effort for excruciating accuracy and detail will go - the aim of this layout is to get something moving, soon. Happily, setting this layout in the diesel-era - with huge bogies, dangling valve gear and side frames to mask the over-scale wheel width - is a perfect justification to go with finescale N and the FiNetrax shake-the-box N gauge turnouts. Trackplan of the (notional) station and throat: The platform lengths are sized for an 8-car EMU - though the likelihood of that being used on the layout is almost nil. It would be possible to crop the station length down by 1/3rd and still be able to host four carriage EMUs and four Mk1's on a loco hauled train, but I feel that the extra length will make the station feel much more natural. The whole scenic section then breaks neatly into a 4' + 3' module pair. Notional trackplan of Central Croydon platform roads: One of the characteristic features of Central Croydon is that the terminus had two outside platforms with sawtooth canopies, and two central roads used for runarounds and/or carriage stock. Although it could be easily implemented on this plan, I don't think I'll model this - without crossovers it looks quite bare and with them it would negate the already limited use of a captive station pilot for loco hauled workings, and it would also cut the number of platforms in half. Any thoughts? Trackplan of the throat close-up: This section is non-negotiable - I have already bought the track kits for it! Any thoughts or opinions gladly taken on any aspect of this!

I have nascent plans for a victorian 2mmFS urban terminus with another member of this forum which is not Minories, but very much of the ilk - double track, commuter services powered by steam locos with a quick turnaround - and I am hopeful that this comes to pass as a long term project, but I must say that I am so fatigued with having nothing meaningful to show for literally years of attempting to bring a layout to fruition, I am very close indeed to getting back on the horse with an RTR layout!

Ah HA! Thank you! I think a discussion of what those services might have looked like in the 1980's would fall outside scope of this thread, so I will start another. Thank you!

I've often been fascinated by the vestigial branch to Central Croydon. The station was granted leave to be built in 1864, was completed in 1868 and passenger numbers were so bad that it was mothballed in less than three years in 1871. The initial LBSCR failure was to require changes at New/East Croydon for services to Central Croydon - where the wait for the infrequent and slow shuttle was frequently longer than the meagre 29 chains distance would take to walk. After sitting derelict for fifteen years, it was reopened in 1886 for use by the GER (via New Cross and the East London Railway) and LNWR (presumably via the WLE Railway) for terminating services. These too were an abject failure and the station closed for a second time after another three years of operation and the land was sold in 1890 to Croydon for their new town hall. Having a grand total of 5 years operational use across three decades - none of which were anything other than an abject failure in both revenue and utilisation - I'm mulling over a fantasy scenario in which Central Croydon continued to exist in-situ, and those cross-company services becoming inter-regional ones in the BR(s) days. If we also imagine the junction to Central Croydon was a wye instead of a down facing junction then all manner of interesting stock may have found its way to the station. My question is - whence did these GER and LNWR services operate?

For the sake of three point beam compensation, then could you please tell me how to determine the pivot height in relation to the axles? I assume that the pivot point should be equidistant between axles (or hornblocks on perpendicular), and that with the beams horizontal, the axles are level!

@Regularity just pinging you in this thread FYI

@ScottW I know that there are no instructions - I am comfortable with the idea of 'doing what must be done', but as @Regularity has said - there are many options. I have so much choice that I don't know what is simplest - I assumed CSB but I see Simon is using torsion bars instead.

I figure it's probably about time that I either get busy with S or mothball it indefinitely. I have a Terrier that's half built with castings, etc. but missing a chassis. Sketching over a scale drawing of one, I've come up with this: This is using a High level loadhauler gearbox since it has a 120 gear reduction, and a 20k rpm coreless motor - the maximum speed would be 24mph, well under the prototype - but this loco isn't going to be running laps around a large layout, primarily dealing with station piloting and shunting. I am considering the use of high level hornblocks and CSB straps. The CSB pivot locations seem a bit strange to me but that's what got spat out of a calculator on CLAG.org.uk Does this make sense? My plan is to turn solid spacers from tufnol, and fixing points for the other components with gapped PCB strip. The idea would be to run the loco dead-rail with battery RC, but provisioning for split frame pickup would permit testing at an earlier stage.

Good mornig Simon! I have indeed managed to fit a Minories throat into 4' board (see the theory of general minories thread, here: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/60091-theory-of-general-minories/&do=findComment&comment=4539228). Working from the Maybank pattern I was expecting three-four full trains of coaching stock and locomotives. Using HV as a basis permits small, short trains as well as the 'cheap & heavy' workmen trains. Either I'd like to buy a working chassis / loco with a broadly southern theme - or alternatively get some concrete guidance on the chassis for the part-built TerrierI have waiting in the wings. I'm going to update my Imperial Workbench thread with the idea for the Terrier there - but if there's any other solution - a tram loco running on a proprietary bogie/etc. ?

Hi Phil, I am so pleased you've got this layout on the go - it is somewhat bittersweet that we both had the same idea way-back-when, and you're striding forward with it with such competence and confidence and I'm still prevaricating. I can only applaud you, and hope that one day I can get my act together long enough to do something similar! Bravo!

Good afternoon all, It's now been approximately 18mo since I joined the S-scale Society and I've very little to show for it other than one half finished P.O. wagon and three in progress SR-derivative wagons. I feel like I need to make a decisive leap in S-scale, or mark it up as a fun, but stillborn experiment. I understand this is not a unique outcome for first-time joiners to the SSMRS and bears no reflection on the support, encouragement and comradery found there - but to quote Mike Tyson "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth". 2021 is the year that I am going to start building my Minories layout. Whether it is in N, TT, H0, 00 or G3, it is going to happen. I dearly wish that this could be in S-scale, but I feel like I am just too far behind the curve to do everything at once. I do not expect this to be a quick layout to build if executed in S, but what I do need to know that it is possible - and it seems that the major stumbling block - more of a yawning chasm - is when it comes to building locomotives. I have built a couple of 2mmFS chassis with rigid axles, and I am prepared to learn the process of compensation - but torsion bars, CSB, etc. are all well beyond me currently. I need someone to TELL ME how to do something. I need a set of instructions, or a plan or drawings - just for the first one - to set me on the right track. Saying "There are lots of ways to achieve X" does not actually help me achieve X as I have no meaningful frame of reference particularly if I have to design the components myself. I need to get over this hump now, or never. I do not think I can sustain an interest in the scale with nothing at all moving, so I humbly ask if there is anything at all that I can do to get something moving under its own power. If not, then I think my time with S has drawn to a close.

At the complete other end of the spectrum from tinplate Dublo, is S-scale. It's something I've dabbled in from time to time and has the attraction of being quite tangible. Building in anything other than N gauge would require multiple baseboards and if you're going with early-era stuff then likely 90% will need to be be scratchbuilt anyway, so why not do it in S-scale and reap the benefits of the huge mass and much greater volume? Here's a Minories throat in S-scale in 4' x 18" using B7 geometry. It JUST fits with my usual dodges of slips instead of plain pointwork. The first version uses a tandem turnout and a single slip: The threeway can be omitted and replaced with a double slip on the 'P1' road turnout. While I appreciate that it has more operational flexibility with departures from platform's 1 and 2 (topmost) able to occur simultaneously with arrivals into 3 and 4, I'm not sure if I like it as much, maybe because of the repetition of the same kind of pointwork so close to each other: Were I to build this, I'd for for late 19th century - ballast over the sleepers and yellow london brick everywhere.

@Joseph_Pestell I am not really interested in scale modelling for this particular experiment. I also went down the route of joining the 3mm Society a while back but found it rather barren. Looking through there catalogue there are no conversion bodies for existing chassis, only kits. Thank you for the clarification on 3 vs 4. I think the draw for 3 is that it's distinct from the H0 Hornby and Peco that we've had to deal with for decades! Is it possible to use the Gaugemaster/Peco point motors with Series 3 turnouts?