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!!!

Branch goods operation

Found a very useful little snippet of information while reading an article by Ian Rice in Model Railway Journal issue 39:

"On branches, the intermediate goods yards are, perforce, laid out to be shunted in one direction only - indeed, a great many branches have all the goods sidings liad out for shunting from the same end, very often the juntion end. The corrrect modus operandi was to run the branch goods direct to the terminus, run round there, shunt the terminus, and then shunt the intermediate stations on the way back to the junction."

The reason I find that so interesting is because it casts a little more light on prototypical goods operations. Goods trains entering the terminus, according to this procedure, would consist of all the wagons destined for all the stations along the branch, not just those left over after all the intermediate stations have been served. After shunting the yard, the departing train would include both empties from the terminus and loaded wagons for the other stations.

Also, it is feasible that if there were an industrial facility (or more than one) served by the railway somewhere beyond the scenic break of the layout, trains destined for there might well run into the terminus first in order for the loco to run round so that the train is the 'right' way for accessing/shunting the sidings. This provides an excuse to run more than just those trains destined for the terminus itself. Some thought of course needs to go into what rail-served facilities there might be in the vicinity that would necessitate such workings...

Goods

There's an interesting section in the EM Gauge Society manual looking at prototypical railway goods handling in the 1950s. I read it with interest as I'm keen to find out as much as possible about prototype operating practise - both to inform the way I construct the model and also, later, the way I operate it.

Currently my plan, as the track plan shows, is to have a simple two-road goods yard adjacent to the station platform. My initial thoughts were that I would incorporate a goods shed, some coal stacks, and a cattle dock, with a yard crane for general unloading. The question is where to position these things in a way that allows for prototypically correct operation.

I had sketched in on my plans to have the coal stacks adjacent to the goods shed road, but I'm wondering how realistic this is - I don't know how long coal wagons would be left here for unloading comparative to vans in the goods shed, or on the other hand whether goods sheds were still used for unloading of railway vehicles by this stage?

Is the positioning of the cattle dock adjacent to the loop spur a realistic location? I have seen similar positionings on prototype track plans of terminus stations. Were cattle still being transported by rail in the 50s/60s?

Basically, there are a lot of details I still need to find out about before I start attacking the model. One thing I am aware of is that the yard sidings need to be spaced far enough apart to allow vehicle access between them for loading and unloading. I need to take this into account when laying the track.

I'm also still concerned that the goods yard may look a little cramped as laid out on the track plan. Ideally I'd like the yard entrance to be moved further back along the approach line, but this also means pushing back the engine shed, and so on, which encroaches on the second basebaord, means more tracks crossing the baseboard join, and also reduces the perceived lenth of running line from the fiddle yard to the station throat. I know it's got to be a compromise - I don't want the entire layout to just be station without any 'run-in' but at the same time I don't want things to look artificially cramped. (Mind you, compared to the initial ideas I had of squeezing all this onto a 12" wide baseboard this is already spacious!!)

Thoughts on prototype operation

One of the things I'm keen to do from the outset is ensure that everything fits reasonably well with prototypical railway practise for the period and location I'm modelling (actually, my current idea is to keep these reasonably broad - rural location jointly operated by the Western and Midland regions, around the 1950s/early 60s... I may get more specific as things develop!), at least to the extent that it satisfies my own desire for realism if not always being strictly accurate down to the last detail. The extent to which you take this is obviously a matter of personal choice.

In coming up with a track plan one of my concerns has been operational realism as well as interest. For example,I knew it was essential from the outset to include a run-around loop on the main platform road so that passenger trains could be pulled into and out of the station. However, I wasn't so sure about the procedure for goods trains. And what about passenger trains using the second platform which doesn't have a run-around loop (a problem of my own making - I wanted a second platform to allow for a little more interest both visually and operationally and already knew from looking at a number of prototype station plans that run-around loops where not provided for all platforms)?

Chris Nevard, creator of Combwich, helpfully provided the information I needed: "All trains coming in would have come into the main platform line, the engine would then run around its train, pull it out again then push into the sidings - this would be the same for the platform without a loop. Lines like this in real life would have only had a few trains a day."