Scalefour Forum

BrockleyAndrew wrote:but a terminus layout where an 0-6-0 sorts out coaching stock doesn't really exist does it?

Not now, but in the past it would have done, certainly until the end of steam on BR and a bit later. The parcel or mail vans that needed to be removed for unloading elsewhere. The horse box and/or carriage truck or vans carrying motor vehicles that needed to be treated in a similar way. The dining car that needed to be extracted for servicing or use on another train. When milk was carried by rail, some tankers would have run in passenger formations and would have needed to be shunted elsewhere. The order of course would depend on where in the train the vehicles were but it might be that passenger vehicles would need to be removed from the train first so the shunting engine could then couple up to the other stock.

In an earlier age when trains were formed up for special purposes much of the shunting would have been done in carriage sidings which would have been away for the station but a bit of modeller's licence might see some coaches brought into a platform in a terminus and then later some non-passenger carrying coaching stock added to the train. Some larger passenger stations would have had a siding or two between the platform roads to assist with these tasks.

Bob Essery's books on railway operation show numerous examples of these types of movements

Terry Bendall

Andrew surely coaches need cleaning, repairing and overhauling which would give reason for some movements.
Also in steam days you would have strengthening coaches for say market days and excursion trains.
Parcels coaches may also be attached and removed from formations.

Gordon A

On the LNWR (at least, probably many others) there were large numbers of passenger sets, far more than were required if they simply ran in and out of the main termini. Instead sets were often only worked a couple of times a day. An example diagram for a Crewe-Holyhead set in October 1913 spent eleven and a quarter hours overnight at Afonwen, three hours early afternoon at Liverpool Lime Street, thirteen and three quarter hours overnight at Llandudno, six hours mid morning to late afternoon at Liverpool Lime Street, then back to Afonwen for eleven and a quarter hours overnight. The overnights could just as easily have been at the main terminus, and the afternoons out in the country. In 1921 a Birmingham-Liverpool-Manchester set could be diagrammed from 1500 to 1110 at Llandudno. So the presence of an 0-6-0 special tank to move carriages around could be justified at any LNWR terminus. (Yes I know Llandudno is a junction, but there are people who model just a portion of a larger station)

BrockleyAndrew wrote:But it did make me wonder about proper layouts - steam age stations would have been busy busy, but a terminus layout where an 0-6-0 sorts out coaching stock doesn't really exist does it? Rakes of coaches don't make for shunting puzzles and what's the point of your mainline locomotive only appearing briefly to steal the stock away!

How about Liverpool Lime Street or Bournemouth West, to name two that I've seen recently?

Also, shunting coaches is a lot more interesting if there is NPCS to be dealt with.

Photographic evidence suggests that at Bath Queen Square/Green Park the dining/kitchen cars on certain long distance trains took on gas from a gasholder truck which the station pilot had to position adjacent to the car in question. I have no idea whether such 'en route servicing' was exceptional, but it might offer an interesting vignette to spice up passenger train operations.

Topping and tailing of passenger trains used to be commonplace and even survives today in the operation of the Caledonian Sleeper, which is divided at Waverley into portions for Aberdeen, Inverness and Fort William in the wee small hours, the up train being correspondingly assembled from the return portions at the same location. Sort of reminiscent of the LNER pattern of working...

Hi Andrew, when convalescing after some surgery a few years ago I found on You Tube a channel by John Elliot called The Bradford Chronicles depicting the day in a life of Bradford Gloucester Square which were all about shunting and sorting coaches and vans from a terminus station. Here's a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLjYkFkbIZk

I hope this is of help and interest.

Dave

Guy Rixon wrote:How about Liverpool Lime Street or Bournemouth West, to name two that I've seen recently?

Both were large, sprawling stations, which could see well over 100 coaches over 24 hours...

My choice of Okehampton as a prototype was partly because of the interesting workings of the passenger trains. Long ones (Brighton - Plymouth) used to draw up twice, trains would be split and joined up again in both directions, and the shunting of the various sets and light engine movements involved was quite complicated. Freight was pretty boring by comparison!

Philip

Tim V wrote:I think you have to consider if you are representing what happened on one day, on say 12 September 1932

That would make an interesting model. It poured with rain all day.



Martin.

Thanks all,

I did mean does anyone actually model station movements, a shunting puzzle with coaches rather than trucks and have been provided with examples - so many thanks!

Andrew