Model Railway Operations

[mfjoc]

Following on from my latest post in the layout section I thought a general discussion on layout operation would be interesting. Has anyone else on the forum got a layout that has more than one station and runs prototypically based operating sessions? Does anyone go to operation sessions on a friend’s layout? Are people interested in model railway operations?

I love models of any type, ships, planes, cars etc but there is something about model trains that has been etched into my DNA by my grandmother who bought me my first train set at six years of age. I love looking at them, but I also love that model trains can run on a model railway layout.  

One of my heroes was the late Richard Chown. Richard was an Englishman living in Scotland who modeled Irish railways. His 0 Gauge Castle Rackrent layout was amazing, The layout was based on an imaginary branch of the WL&WR that connected with the MGWR and set around 1900. The layout was a single track main line with multiple stations and two branches one to the MGWR and a market branch. During the 1970’s and 1980’s he would take various parts of the layout to exhibitions. Even at exhibitions it was always operated in a prototypical manner with block signals and bell codes.  Later on he built a house with a big enough basement to set up the whole layout on a permanent basis. He used to hold operating sessions regularly and could keep up to 12 operators busy.  I was lucky enough to see the whole layout in operation at one of his famous Ceilidh’s and had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the hall.  Scenery was important to him as well but secondary to operation. Another layout I was lucky to see in operation was Sam Carse’s County Donegal layout. This was purely operational with 3 rail Hornby 00 track but with hand built rolling stock. Sam also operated using bell codes and block working.

I assume that the biggest constraint is that anything more than a branch terminus takes up a lot of space. I am lucky that part of the deal when we downsized was my garden room.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

[Galteemore]

That’s most interesting. I saw Drew Donaldson’s layout about 50 years ago, which was operated to a timetable. Part of the ‘evolution’ of model railways towards more scenery and detail has been a dropping off in prototypical operation. Many show layouts simply run trains - nothing wrong with that - but an older generation (Peter Denny, Norman Eagles etc) emphasised operating. I find it quite an attractive idea - the issue may be finding your staff! You can of course have one station and still run a prototypical operation with proper signalling, bells etc. Some day I’d love a layout with proper bell codes etc going on…  there’s a few books around about how to do this, but as a start, get yourself one of Denny’s books on Buckingham

 

[Mol_PMB]

Some years ago, I really enjoyed a couple of operating sessions on Allan Garraway's layout at Boat of Garten. This was coarse scale O gauge, but huge and complex with several stations, junctions and many route options. It was fully signalled with mechanical interlockings and block working with bell codes. To run a full session required up to 10 people, half signallers and half train drivers. 

I have also spent an evening on the L&YR signalling school training layout now at the NRM in York. Very instructive.

My partly-built Swiss layout (a long-term project) will represent a complete branch line, including the main line junction station, and several stations and halts on the branch. That is also designed for operation.

While I do enjoy operation, unfortunately I enjoy building rolling stock the most. So I tend to end up with lots of rolling stock and series of half-completed layouts that never reach their potential...

[Horsetan]

2 hours ago, mfjoc said:

Following on from my latest post in the layout section I thought a general discussion on layout operation would be interesting. Has anyone else on the forum got a layout that has more than one station and runs prototypically based operating sessions? Does anyone go to operation sessions on a friend’s layout? Are people interested in model railway operations?

There have been a small number of useful layouts meeting these requirements, including:

Borchester Market (OO)

Ambergate (originally EM, but now P4)

and from time to time magazines such as the now defunct Great Western Railway Journal would publish articles on operations at real locations such as Penzance, accompanied by a track diagram.

I still think a FREMO network would give everyone the best chance of operating to a common standard, with trains visibly going from place to place and covering quite a distance in the process.

[Mol_PMB]

I think the nature of a layout based on operation tends to be unsuitable for exhibitions. It is usually very large and requires a lot of people to operate.

One of my favourite features on Allan Garraway's layout was that he had sawn a notch in one of the roof trusses of his house to provide adequate signal sighting - not for the full size human train driver, but for the imaginary bod in the cab of the loco!

Many of his locos were powered by war-surplus motors, oversized but very powerful and controllable. Most of his coaches were basic like Lima Mk1s, but the play value was immense (even for a big group of adults) and there were some beautiful models among them too. Generally the locos had prototypical haulage capacity and speed as well.

[Horsetan]

10 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

I think the nature of a layout based on operation tends to be unsuitable for exhibitions. It is usually very large and requires a lot of people to operate...

...ironically, that's why FREMO works, because it's an exhibition in itself.

[Galteemore]

20 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

I think the nature of a layout based on operation tends to be unsuitable for exhibitions. It is usually very large and requires a lot of people to operate.

 

And unless you are modelling something like a main line running into a big city, you won’t be running many trains! As has been observed elsewhere, on such layouts, movements tend to be sparser and more drawn out than the paying public might like. Imagine a layout based on a typical Irish branch with about 6 train moves a day if you are lucky !

[Mol_PMB]

10 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

And unless you are modelling something like a main line running into a big city, you won’t be running many trains! As has been observed elsewhere, on such layouts, movements tend to be sparser and more drawn out than the paying public might like. Imagine a layout based on a typical Irish branch with about 6 train moves a day if you are lucky !

Sounds like the exhibitors could spend the Sunday of the exhibition in the nearest pub...

[Galteemore]

7 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

Sounds like the exhibitors could spend the Sunday of the exhibition in the nearest pub...

After attending Mass of course  

[jhb171achill]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

And unless you are modelling something like a main line running into a big city, you won’t be running many trains! As has been observed elsewhere, on such layouts, movements tend to be sparser and more drawn out than the paying public might like. Imagine a layout based on a typical Irish branch with about 6 train moves a day if you are lucky !

A typical Irish rural branch would have but one loco out-stationed at the terminus and it did two or three return trips to the junction each day, with the same two or three-sixwheelers, or a single bogie composite and a 6-wheeled brake van (later a tin van if it was a C class diesel). Two trips, typically, would be passenger and the other mixed - so a full day's (one-man!) operation would be three return trips of the same set, with maybe half a dozen goods vans and a guard's van at the back of one of them! On many of these branches (Achill, Loughrea as examples) virtually all the traffic was inwards, with mostl empty wagons going back to the junction. Beet, GAA, pilgrimages and fair days might bring another loco in - very often of the same type!

So, on the negative side, a bit like today's Tralee or Sligo; zero variety, nothing but ICRs coming and going, like a Luas stop. On the p[ositive side, easy for ONE person to operate prototypically, and every operational session can be a fair day or a GAA special day as well.... 

I wondered about this when designing Dugort Harbour.It is a basic end-to-end set-up, with a fiddle yard at one end and a small terminus at the other. In the middle is a "main line" station. This is in place for operational interest. I COULD have had something I could operate like the Waterford & Tramore. If I wanted to be realistic, I'd have a J15 and four coaches, or a three-car AEC set, just going back and forth like a shuttle on a loom. Anyone would get tired of that in 2 minutes flat.

Thinking of Baltimore and Valentia Harbour, where the "main line" stopped short (Cahirciveen & Skib), and what almost amounted to a local service went on through the overgrown hedges a few miles more to a barren and tiny terminus seemed the answer. Westport and Westport Quay would be another example. So, a train leaving the fiddle yard is a "main line" set - a Woolwich and four corridor bogies, or a 141 with later designs. This has come from Dublin, ir Cork, Athlone, whatever, and is bound for the station in the middle, which in my case is a fictitious Castletown West. A separate goods train with a larger engine and all sorts of stuff on it - grain, timber in Bullied opens, goods vans of all types galore. Large cattle town (Castleisland / Newcastle West). There the main line train terminates, with a connecting service of a mixed train from there to the Dugort Harbour.

This gives operational interest - main line goods, main line passenger (with one a day perhaps working through to the harbour), then a branch mixed.

Even a set-up like that in steam days would likely have had a sole diet of J15s like Valentia or Kernmare did, certainly in latter days. From 1955-63, Loughrea almost never saw anything but a J18/19, even on fair days (though earlier it had more variety). In diesel days, you're looking in real life at a system operated by nothing but an AEC set on passenger, and a C on the branch. Even the main line goods might be a C (or an A). Fast forward to the 60s, 70s and 80s, and you've thiry years of little but 141s! (Which is why I've 6 or 7...).

There is a timetable, but this is basically a running sequence, e.g. first movement of the day is main line passenger heading off to the fiddle yard "metropolis". Then the ex-Cork goods arrives, followed by the ex-Tralee goods. Much shunting ensues, followed by the branch mixed bumbling off to the harbour and returning in time to transfer wagons to the departing goods. And so on. 

I had considered full signalling, bell codes, the FULL works in that regard, but in all reality life's too short and I am not in my first flush of youth.  So what I have described does me fine. I have a WTT with the basic timetable, plus as in real life paths for beet, cattle, GAA, pilgrimages, fair day extras, summer Sunday excursions, and the like. When you have a winter day with 2 beet specials and a busy cattle fair day, the shunting challengers are surprisingly complex and an extra pilot loco is needed to deal with everything in a realistic manner.

When operating steam, the branch is a former MGWR 2.4.0 (JM Design), with an ex-CBSCR 472 class 0.6.0ST (00 Works) as station pilot, and the main line has Woolwiches and J15s (both types; 00 Works). When it's late steam days, main line goods are beginning to see (silver or green) "A" class, and I had two Silverfox "C"'s. Into the 1960s and the black'n'tan era, and it's A's on the main line goods, and 141s on just about everything else. Should a RTR "C" class ever appear, I'll be in for a few of those, as such a line would probably have been monopolised by them (think West Cork, especially if the Bantry passenger had remained loco-hauled - the whole system would have been worked by the C class in its final years).

I based operations on the real life 1960 West Cork timetable, where you've two return trips a day from Bantry to Cork and back, plus goods. But in my scenario, it's as if there was a Westport-Quay-like "extension" from Bantry, but with a passenger service, worked as a separate branch locally. I concocted suitable times for that which would logically connect with a real-life main terminus whose arrivels and departures mirrored those at Bantry.

So overall, much to occupy me in the attic on what otherwise is a basic end-to-end single track line.

Each to our own, of course, but that suits me as a good compromise between absolute, 100% fully signalled operation, and just playing trains.

I saw Drew's layout once, and Sam Carse's once. I'd love to have seen Richard Chown's - I recall the article about it in a Railway modeller in the late 1960s - that's one copy I read and re-read from the day I bought it. Sam's sons, Barry & David Carse, were among the extremely privileged few CHILDREN to be allowed to see Cyril Fry's layout in full operation - normally Fry didn't allow children in at all, but Sam was a friend of his! Barry told me that they were warned to stand still, and not ask questions until they were asked if they wanted to!

 

Edited 8 hours ago by jhb171achill