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The last couple of posts on Minories have given enough ideas for any number of successful layouts.  But I’ve been playing around with the basic idea, and have a couple of ideas that could have some mileage.

Firstly, Minories on a curve.  This track layout also appeared in RMWeb.

It keeps the Minories track layout, but bends it around a curve.  The end result is an even smoother run into any of the three plaforms with no reverse curves at all.  It does lose a little of the character of the approach tracks, but with the addition of a fiddle yard (perhaps a mirror image of the layout) it would make a fine layout for a small L-shaped corner.

A second thought is the ‘bitsa-station’ approach.  Again, and Iain Rice idea, as may be obvious from the name!  Here we make the observation that the station platforms are often the least interesting part of a station.  All the interest is in the approach tracks and at the platform end.  Here we have the signals, the complex trackwork, loco facilities and often the sidings.  It’s where all the modelling occurs!  The only thing lost is the admittedly often attractive station building.  And the attractive buildings are usually on minor lines with short platforms – city termini can have impressive buildings, but the ones you would want to model are just too big!

Further, nearly all the action on the station platform is human form, especially in an inner city terminal.  Empty platforms are fine for a branch line, but commuter termini are just full of movement, and waves of people filling, then emptying, the platform.  We can hide this to some extent with trains in the station, or by an overhead roof, but it rarely feels right on a model.

I know that this is not entirely true – Gavin Thrum’s platforms and overhead roof shown in the first post of this series show how attractive a station can be.  However, were the terminus a full pre-nationalisation 15 coach length, it might lose some of its charm.

If we apply this to Victoria Park, and put it back into the original Minories cutting we might get something like this.  Two road bridges concentrate the scene at the station throat.  Hidden sections extend to right and left, and if sized correctly, could be made to fold into the main board.  If this were in N gauge, and the 8′ length retained, a sector plate fiddle yard could contain 5 or 6 car EMUs.  I’ve also added a loco spur to the front of the design.  Pity it’s a facing spur, but in the context, this probably isn’t important.

As it is drawn, it would be difficult to keep the original design of Victoria Street on a viaduct, as two road bridges wouldn’t cross a railway viaduct.  But railway crossings at height aren’t unusual – Ewer Street near London Bridge, and Loughborough Junction near Brixton are good examples.  Here’s the Loughborough Junction double crossing, from Google Streetview.  If you move closer to the bridge, the trains disappear, and you lose the evocatively named ‘Tram Close’ on the left.

Then, if you combine the curved Minories, with a ‘bitsa’ Minories, perhaps we have the circular Minories.  I haven’t drawn this up, but it could have potential.  We lose most of the platforms (as in Victoria Street), and they are replaced by one end of a double ended fiddle yard.  If each platform divides in two, we have a fiddle yard with six loops.  At the station entrance, the scenic section is lengthened, perhaps allowing a couple of carriage sidings to be modelled.   The end result is a circular layout.  This could be run end to end, and also has the option of just letting the trains circle.  I think it would be too tight to model it in a 4′ circle, but 6′, in three sections, looks very possible.  Perhaps I may come back to this one!

And finally, if you want a real micro-Minories,  Carl Arendt’s Amalgamated Terminal is a layout that takes some beating….

The author describes it thus:

Amalgamated Terminal combines a pleasingly-intricate yard throat with an impressive three-platform covered concourse to represent part of a shared terminus in a medium sized city anywhere in the world. It’s designed to handle full-length (80-foot) passenger cars in HO or OO.

A key feature is the carefully sited viewblocks in the form of road overbridges. They reveal only two coaches and part of a locomotive in the open spaces they create. As a result, two- or three-coach trains can give the illusion of being realistically long, as the viewer’s eye can never see the whole train at once.

I’ve often thought this would make an excellent interurban terminus.

So, that’s an overview of Minories for you.  Hope it’s given some modelling ideas for the New Year!

If you leave London, and head to the other end of the commuter lines, a Minories like design, sort of ‘mini-Minories’ is another option.  Iain Rice published this excellent design, loosely based, I think, on the outer-London terminus at Caterham.

Notable features of this design are the use of slip points to keep the interesting complex trackwork at the throat and the way that this compresses the classic Minories design and means that the platforms stretch for 4’6″ of the 6’6″ design (in OO).  For N gauge, this could fit neatly on a 4′ board, giving a little more elbow room.  Keeping the full length would allow 8-car EMUs in the station.  Another good feature is the prototypically wide platform – we are too inclined to have very narrow platforms on our models.

Again, the design allows for an intense suburban service, and the occasional goods train for the coal siding.  We do, perhaps, lose the parcels traffic, although one could include a daily service, assuming an adjacent depot.

When one looks at some prototype track layouts on the Southern one sees how Rice has captured the suburban character.  Caterham, Bromley North, and Allhallows all look very similar and modelable.  I like the layout of the crossover and single slip at Bromley North, and Allhallows gives an excuse to use the Peco scissors crossover that you bought, and don’t know what to do with!

Bromley North has been captured in an excellent little layout, that you can read about here.  The layout is now defunct, but captured some of Bromley’s character.  It did, however, have a modified track layout, and far more traffic than seen by the real thing.

Of course, if you want a real mini-Minories, some of Ian Futer’s tiny layouts take a lot of beating.  Here we have Victoria Park, an inner city terminus in OO in 4′.  Although it has a single track entrance, this does allow a visual trick to turn it into a double track terminus.  If the kick-back road is extended under the footbridge and into the fiddle yard, one can assume a double track main line, with the other crossover lying out of view.  It also makes the fiddle yard very simple with two points and four roads to the right, as bi-directional running can be carried out on both tracks.

Finally, returning to the city centre, I can recommend the London Reconnection site, that contains excellent articles on London rail past and present, and often very interesting maps and track layouts.  The series on what is now Thameslink, through Holborn and Farringdon is most interesting.  This 1916 map shows the complexity of the lines, mainly underground, in this area – and linking with Moorgate and the original inspiration for Minories.  Perhaps most interesting is the numbers of goods depots tucked below ground behind London streets, belonging to the various pre-grouping railway companies.  These hidden lines could make excellent models, much as the little New York City yards do.

Finally, for the track-builder, how about Smithfield Sidings, just north of Snow Hill and Holborn Viaduct station?  To quote from the site:

As the GN depot plan makes clear, the Smithfield Sidings ran alongside the GN depot but were not connected to it. There were four sidings, and were mainly used by London & South Western Railway (LSWR) stock after working the Richmond to Ludgate Hill services, which ran via Addison Road (now Kensington Olympia). The empty trains descended to the sidings, two of which had a turnplate for reversing locomotives.

If you modelled this, no one would believe the track design.

Later this month, I hope to write a final post, with a couple of new Minories ideas, based on the last couple of posts.  Maybe a Christmas job…..

There are few model railway plans that can be deemed ‘classic’.  One surely must be the late Cyril Freezer’s ‘Minories’ plan.  The plan was the result a flash of inspiration whilst waiting for a train, then some doodling to try the recreate the Metropolitan station at Liverpool Street.  The classic design that emerged was a three platform terminus.  The terminal throat is an interesting pair of crossovers which mean that any movement only involves one reverse curve.

Over the next few days, I would like to post on the ‘Minories’ plan and delve into variations of it.  I’ve gathered a number of track layouts from RMWeb posts and other locations – I am not sure of the copyright on some of these, so I ask the owners patience if I post something I shouldn’t.

The original Freezer design was for TT gauge, to make use of the then new Triang ‘Jinty’ and suburban coaches.  It was on a pair of folding boards, set in a cutting with retaining walls, like the original Metropolitan line.  He later redrew the plan for OO and larger radius points, as shown below.  The simplicity, yet charm, of the plan is clear….

Despite the simple track layout, an intense loco hauled commuter service would provide a lot of operating fun, especially with small tank engines and 4- or 6-wheel coaches.

The kick-back siding wasn’t in the original design, and provides additional train storage, or room for a parcels or milk depot.  Another of Freezer’s original Minories design had a two road parcels depot to the left of the platforms, linked to the kick-back siding.  This would give more entertainment, but makes the layout wider.  The narrow boards of the above design makes it look longer than it really is; this illusion is lost with a wider board.

The basic track plan can be modified, but change it too much, it loses some of its original genius.  Three bits of plan from RMWeb show some ideas.  Add a third running track as below, and you have easier access to platforms 2 & 3.  However, I wonder whether loop would be better as second loco spur, or as the parcels depot.

Then it’s possible to add a loop, so that the kick-back doesn’t need a second locomotive to haul the train back out of the station.  Perhaps better operationally, but I feel that it does lose a little of its big-city image.

The strength of Minories is using basic pointwork to give a visually interesting and complex station throat.  If you like making track, how about the layout below.  Note also the addition of the carriage sidings/parcels depot.  Somehow this looks better than in the Freezer original, perhaps as the layout itself is longer, so the proportions still look long and thin.

For comparison, here’s the layout of Marylebone, the Great Central Railway’s London terminus.  If you simplify the four-track approach, it’s almost a Minories – even down to the milk dock next to the platforms.

And this is the kernel of a Minories/Marylebone plan with large radius pointwork.  A neat way of getting four platforms, but I miss the loco spur.

Finally today, I’ll give links to a couple of classic Minories layouts.  To mark the 50th anniversary of the design, in 2007 a group of MRC members looking for a new project thought they would try to recreate the plan closely as possible but to aim for a high standard using modern modelling techniques.  Built in EM gauge, the layout is a little larger than the Freezer original, to allow for the larger radius points needed in 18mm gauge.  The site is here.  The layout:

Our layout is built in EM gauge, and our main compromise has been to slightly lengthen the points to give slightly more generous curves making the scenic area about a foot longer and 2″ wider than Cyril envisaged. This allows loco + 4 coach trains – a small reduction from the real thing. Whilst the over-bridges are ideal scenic breaks and joint-coverers, we have avoided the middle hinge device to allow for a deeper back scene, more accurate alignment and to make the boards more manoeuvrable. The baseboards are mainly plywood with some softwood to strengthen the corners. There is a 6-road traverser fiddle yard built from heavy duty filing cabinet sliders and more ply, which allows for a wide variety of trains. Operation is conventional DC control with Kaydee buckeye couplings.

The second version comes from Australia, and can be found on Gav’s Workbench, Gavin Thrum’s site.  It also appeared in the Railway Modeller in 2015.  Whilst the MRC got rid of the hinged joints, Gav has hinged the fiddle yard to make the layout a single, foldable, unit.  It’s a very fine variation on the classic Minories design.  I note that in order to maximise the length of the fiddle yard roads, the station throat tracks are bi-directional.  An acceptable ruse to save space, and I doubt whether you notice when operating.

Next time, I’ll post on some variations to the basic Minories theme.