Small Layout Plans.

A solution to the 'Not Enough room' scenario in this video...




Gleisplan-TH.jpg



I decided to make a version of the layout so that it looked like a model railway and not a realistic masterpiece.

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Th2.jpg


There are lower level storage sidings under both stations.

No, it does not tilt as per the prototype!

Yet another WIP gathering dust in my archives :o

Cheers,
Graham
 
That's a great piece of work Graham. To tell the complete truth I'm doing my best not to start anymore layouts until I've got what I'm already working on done and dusted. But something based around some of C.J.F.'s Cornwall based BLTs is sorely tempting me.
 
KotangaGirl said:
That's a great piece of work Graham. To tell the complete truth I'm doing my best not to start anymore layouts until I've got what I'm already working on done and dusted.
Click to expand...
I know the feeling... In addition to the plan mentioned above I have a few others in various states of construction (disarray?!) and really shouldn't add any more until at least some of them are either cleared, or binned!

Coming back to the CJF plans, one issue I've found upscaling to TT in order to improve the gradients and clearances is that the track spacing is way off the 3.5m spacing standard for UK rails, leading to more improvisation and adaptation.

May have mentioned this before but as regards good plans, I recall Railway Modeller in the late 70's/early 80's based on prototype locations - a few that come to mind are Maidenhead to Marlow, the Worcester area and Liskeard to Looe. Unfortunately none of these appear to have made it online as Peco seem almost as rigorous with regard to that sort of thing as Kalmbach. Ordering back copies of the actual magazines is still a bit dodgy at present due to Covid.
 
I have an on-line subscription to Railway Modeller, but the only problem with that is the on-line back numbers I can access only go back as far as the year 2000.
I haven't tried using RM's back copies service as so far the RM copies I've been wanting are from the 1950s and I doubt that Peco hold anything for that far back.
Liskeard to Looe strikes a chord as I had a go at building that as a route early in my days as a new chum with Trainz, - only I didn't really have the experience to complete what I'd started and I never finished it.
 
These are the ones I could find, though Magazine Exchange does not have a contents listing for every edition:
Feb 1980 Eridge
Nov 1979 Liskeard
Sept 1979 Bourne End
Aug 1979 Worcester
May 1979 Castleford
 
I scooped up the Nov 1979 Liskeard copy since I still want to have a go at doing the Looe branch sometime. I've always found Magazine Exchange to be very good to deal with. Ebay on the other hand is just about daylight robbery when it comes to buying old railway magazines.

Thanks for the information Vern.
 
I just ordered Worcester, Eridge and Castleford.

All those editions have some other good layouts in them, not just the JG Glover plans. Back then, the model railway hobby was in its prime, not too expensive, with the likes of Lima and Hornby putting out plenty of kit. Talking of kits, I remember the old MTK DMU ones. Not for the faint hearted.

Watch this space...
 
I don't think good old Cyril gave his plans too much of a vetting as to their practicality and left it up to the end user to try and make something of them.
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That is certainly true, Annie. To quote his own words, "Although the schemes in this book appear to be highly finished, they are no more than project plans put forward as a starting point" (PSL Book of Model Railway Track Plans"). He always advised setting out any plan full size, using the dimensions of the turnouts to be used. For this, rolls of inexpensive wallpaper lining paper were useful.

His published plans were also drawn using a much larger scale than the published plan. Track spacing can most certainly not be calculated from the drawing, and to my mind the ruling radius of one foot ten inches (44 metres in Trainz measurements) would look ridiculous both in Trainz and a real world model - except maybe for goods trains and short four or six wheel coaches.

St Pirans is very reminiscent of Cyril's very early "railway in a cupboard under the stairs" (I can't remember the name but it had a detachable fiddle yard which extended outside the cupboard). And that layout in turn was suggested by St Ives - his wife suggested the layout when they were visiting the resort. And the previous plan, no. 20 in the PSL book, is yet another St Ives.

However, Cyril was not much in favour of strictly following a prototype, and quoted Ashburton as an example . He simply retained the track layout, moved the facilities around and gave it a new name - Chagford.

Ray

Found ir! - the layout in a cupboard was called Tregunna.
 
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That's why I normally ease the plans to TT gauge in Basemapz, effectively increasing the dimensions by half. That 44m curve then becomes 66m, still far too tight for a prototype but aesthetically more pleasing. That said, Hornby 1st radius curves were 1' 3" as I recall with 3rd radius being 1' 7", very tight especially trying to run a Coronation and LMS stock around them!
 
Magazines have arrived! Some great stuff in there, not just the JG Glover/Roy Link plans of which Worcester is looking favourite. Also got Bagnelstown and Berkhamsted, Railways Of The Month. Plenty for me to be getting on with!



First job is to get the fiddle yards done, adding an extra track or two, then work out the heights and gradients.
 
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Of course you can just see from the above why we need support for more complex pointwork in Trainz. Double slips, diamond crossings and notably points on curves. With a bit of bodging I have managed to adapt things and still maintain the quintessential look above, but life would be so much easier if N3V could evolve the track system a little.
 
Vern said:
Of course you can just see from the above why we need support for more complex pointwork in Trainz. Double slips, diamond crossings and notably points on curves. With a bit of bodging I have managed to adapt things and still maintain the quintessential look above, but life would be so much easier if N3V could evolve the track system a little.
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That Worchester plan is looking interesting Vern. Keep us posted with your progress on this project.

The only real attempt at a complete track system was Andi06's JK series of track parts, but that's looking pretty much coarse scale these days. Good for me and my 'O' gauge clockwork habits, but not so good for anyone who wants something looking a bit more finescale. Peter Flindley made use of these parts in his huge GCR project and I've got his latest version of GCR V15 in TRS19 SP3 where they still seem to be working Ok, but they really could do with a serious update.
The trouble is procedural track is the current wonder child of Trainz, only it doesn't work properly in all situations and track formations. It's also awkward to lay as well.

St Pirans is very reminiscent of Cyril's very early "railway in a cupboard under the stairs" (I can't remember the name but it had a detachable fiddle yard which extended outside the cupboard). And that layout in turn was suggested by St Ives - his wife suggested the layout when they were visiting the resort. And the previous plan, no. 20 in the PSL book, is yet another St Ives.

However, Cyril was not much in favour of strictly following a prototype, and quoted Ashburton as an example . He simply retained the track layout, moved the facilities around and gave it a new name - Chagford.

Ray

Found ir! - the layout in a cupboard was called Tregunna.
Click to expand...

I couldn't find Tregunna, but I did find Chagford. C.J.F. certainly worked the problems out of Ashburton with Chagford. Mind you Ashburton certainly need it as it was an awkward terminus to work back in the day if you didn't have a friendly shunting horse to hand.
I also see that C.J.F. sanitised his version of Seaton as well with changing the position of the engine shed. Having built Seaton myself using an OS map as my trackplan source I noticed the change right away.

LpIz9zu.jpg


Both the St Pirans and St Ives trackplans interest me because I'd like to do Broad Gauge versions of them. Not at the moment though as I want to finish getting my Norfolk layout sorted out after transferring it over to TRS19.
 
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I've lost count of the number of red or flashing red spline points I've had to deal with doing the model plans.

I looked at some of the double slips on the DLS, but as you say not many and most go back to 2006 era or thereabouts, don't adapt to the connected track etc. And yes, anything with scripting is vulnerable to version changes in the existing version, let alone any future new release of the programme. I'm going to have to use an IT on the north end junction with that diamond crossing and I'm sure I had issues with a previous layout, done in TRS19, after one of N3V's nefarious updates botched the IT's.
 
Decided to start over with the plan scaled to TT. This will make life easier at Shrub Hill, allow slightly longer trains and four loops in each fiddle yard. I'm also going to extend into a fiddle yard beyond the fictional "Malvern" to represent the through trains to Hereford, which can then go off stage for a bit as necessary.
 
That sounds like a plan Vern. All of the magazine trackplans I've done so far needed some kind of adjustment in scale to make them work.
 
Chagofrd was the inspiration for my 1:76 Glavenford model railway, slightly larger than the plan at 9 feet 6 inches x 3 feet 3 inches. The track plan is followed exactly but I have developed frontages of a small town behind the station with a street and pub at the right-hand end. Track at present extends some way beyond the loco shed and baseboards were prepared some time ago to the end of the room and round the corner to allow test running.

Glavenford – Ray's Trainz (wordpress.com)

Maybe it will be finished one day - maybe not - maybe I'll try to import it into T:ANE or TS19 -I woner how many missing dependencies there woule be?

Ray

I must be getting old! I had already imported it into T:ANE with no problems - so no excuse for not finishing it, with maybe a temporary fiddle yard and later two more stations - probably frm the same PSK Book of Model Railway plans.
 
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Well I have just fired off Worcester in the direction of the DLS. Not 100% detailed but hopefully recognisable as the RM plan. As I posted elsewhere, as so often with the model projects the demo session ran into issues with stubborn AI and signalling stopping things working as hoped.

Considering what to work on next - possibly Bagenalstown but I also fancied a crack at a Russian take on one of the Kalmbach plans. We shall see!
 
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