Wednesday 7 June 2006

Trailing sidings

Apparently it took Martyn Welch 5 years to come up with the final track plan for 'Hursley', so maybe I can be forgiven for taking ages over mine!

My latest thoughts are that the position of the coal yard sidings, while undoubtedly making for some interesting shunting manouevres, is fairly improbable in real life. Sidings were usually laid out to make shunting as straightforward and quick as possible, which seems to have usually meant from one direction only in branch line situations. Having any 'trailing' goods sidings at all is fairly unlikely, still more so when half the yard faces in one direction on one side of the station and half the yard faces the other way on the other side! Hardly likely unless there was some severe geographical limitation imposed when the railway was constructed.

So I'm now looking at removing the coal sidings altogether (at least in this location) and concentrating all the goods facilities - including coal - in the main goods yard behind the station. I'm now veering away from having a full-sized goods shed in favour or something more like the one modelled on Hursley, or the prototype one at Midford on the S&D - a small currugated iron shed with loading dock, adjacent to the track. This wouldprovide more space and enable me to get a third goods siding in, still with ample room, I think, so it doesn't look squashed.

I'm also thinking of moving the engine shed to the opposite side of the line - trailing off the main platform loop. I'm not sure if this is a more likely location for it - the advantage is locos that are simply running round a train can run on directly into the shed road for water etc. rather than having to perform a forwards/backwards/forwards manouevre across to the other side, then back again.

I might possibly have a short trailing siding on the other side (where the shed road was previously) - the idea being that this would have been the location of a cattle dock and would have been shunted by horse. Of course, there's no practical way the siding could be used during loco-shunting, so it would essentially be a dummy siding - perhaps overgrown with grass and weeds?

I think a headshunt as such is uncalled for in this setting - the station would never have been busy enough to warrant having one would it?

Well, that's that for now - until the next time I open Templot!!!

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