I just love the detail you put in on each area you model. Your patience and dedication to getting each area just so produces great results. Thanks for sharing. Roy.
Hi Julian. I'm loving the goods yard area; you've captured the compacted and heavily used area so well. The little details like the discarded sleepers and rail bring extra realism. Many thanks as always for your inspiring & engaging episodes. Cheers.
Thank you for the great videos that you produce. I think the loading gauge would be placed on the exit of the goods yard so that any wagons loaded in the goods shed were checked for height before entering the main line.
When it came to signals in a 1950’s - 60’s Goods Yard the simple answer is “There wasn’t any” the only signal to be found was at the junction onto the main line or right of way The signal could a simple as a ground signal or a post drop arm or light aspect under the control of the signal box Of course there is always the “Expert” so hopefully he or she or it will contribute to your project as always Julian thank you for taking the time to build film edit & post 🛠️
And if the yard has a headshunt the arm should be yellow or the disc have yellow bar (both should show a yellow light when on and green when off. If you're modelling multi-aspect signalling then the calling-on light signal should show yelow/white horizontally when on or diagonal white/white when off. This will be enough to release trains onto the mainline upto the next full signal.
I agree. These are most likely to be hand operated points rather than operated from a signalbox. Also, whilst PECO bufferstops come with lamps, you normally only find a lamp on a bufferstop if it is on a running line and not a siding. @@neiloflongbeck5705
Thanks once again for taking the time and effort to put this video together, it contains a wealth of weathering and detailing information and techniques that I will be referring to again and again. Those Inktense pencils look interesting and I’ve already ordered half a dozen!
Hi, I'm a British railway modeler who watches your video's, I am modeling a fictional G.W.R railway in N Gauge depicting the period just after the war through to the demise of steam. I love your weathering, very nicely done. I may be wrong but iI think you have put smoke grime above the doors of your goods shed, just to point out that it was a rule that no steam engines were allowed inside the goods sheds as it was a fire hazard and the smoke could effect some of the goods. having said that I know thit if the bosses were not looking some of the drivers did sometime coast their engines in. All the best David Shillito.
Hi Jules. Those ink pencils look awesome. I bought Clair a set of the watercolour pencils you mentioned and it seems these work essentially the same way. I like the general detritus too as it does show how untidy these areas tended to get especially as cutbacks were made and staff were no longer used for jobs seen as an unnecessary expense, such as cleaning the place up! 🙄 The shed looks really good now and will look even better when the crane is in place. As for the loading gauge, I used a Ratio one I picked up at an exhibition years ago which looked fabulous. It came with variations and I used the GWR/LMS joint version, purely cos it looked nicer 😂 Not sure if it’s the same kit these days but I was well happy with mine 😉 As for the ground signals: it really would depend on how busy the shed was. As there is the suggestion that it’s less important these days with the disused livestock facility, it could even be that the old signalling system was abandoned and handed over to a simple shunter controlled operation. There would still be a signal at the head of the sidings to protect the main line of course and possibly a simple signal controlling movements into the shed area. If only one dedicated engine was to be used, they’d possibly use a simplified version of the ‘one engine in steam’ method of working fir the yard area 🤔 Cheers mate, look forward to the next one 🍻🍀👍😎
Looking good. On signals, I know virtually nothing, but I suspect in such a small yard area, there wouldn't be any, except for controlling access to the main line out of the goods yard. I'd go for semaphore, rather than colour light. I'm in the UK, and remember the local lines near where I grew up all being controlled by mechanical signal boxes. That would be towards the end of your layout's period.
It's highly unlikely that any of your points would have been controlled from a signal box, so some kind of local switching needs to be installed. Dependent upon region, some were controlled with short and heavy over-balance weights, others by long arms that "toggled" the switch positions. For safety reasons these stood out by being painted white, often maintained by the local shunters themselves using whitewash, especially where any trip-hazards in dark areas were known. The only signal, if appropriate, would be to control the exit. If the road divided ahead, like into a separate yard, then there were multiple arms on a single pole. Note that no yard shunting move, especially a loose-shunt outward, would ever be allowed to pass any arm at danger on pain of dismissal. Normally there would be a trap point just beyond the arm and then track circuits, all designed to protect any trains controlled from the box. Generally, yard exit signals were short-arms. However, if there was not another signal ahead to protect main-line access, then a full "starting" arm would be used. In that case it would be protected by the track circuit for at least 50 yards of its approach. Generally, an exit from a goods yard would be toward a either a headshunt or departure siding with its own "start" signal and a yellow face black-banded disc for when the road was set toward buffers. The ground signal could be passed at danger depending upon local instructions.
Hi Julian, you are a man of many hidden talents, and a stunning recovery from where you left off in the last clip. I was looking at the 9mm layout yard last night thinking how can I give it a lift and add some "life" into it, and here you've provided a possible solution. Thanks for sharing as usual. Best Rgds Brent
The semaphore groud signals (disc) would most likely used in the area you are modeling Julian, more proable would be hand shunt levers for points local movements within the yard with hand signals, by the shunter to the loco crew. Exitig the goods yard could be ever colour light or semaphore due to upgrades. Also Colour light signals have bee around a years, There is a LNER search light signal lamp in use on the Great Central Railway at Quorn & Woodhouse statio also the Colne Valley Railway in Essex has a couple to be installed at sometime, so we are talking of pre WW2.
disc signals were used much much later than your time period and would be the norm at smaller signal boxes , they were controled from the signal box as they were clearance to go from control of the shunters to being controled by signal men on the main line so placing is usually near the points that enter onto the main line , we had 3 for the sidings at the box i worked in ,, ratio do a nice kit of ground signals that will be what you want
Stick to disc signals. A good book on signals is Mick Nicholson's Mainline Modelling 1: Constructing and Operating Semaphore Signals published by Challenger Publications. It has full chapter on shunting discs both the red bar kind and the yellow bar kind.
Great stuff as always. I would assume only the entrance/exit to the goods yard would be controlled by the signal box, that would be the only signal, ground or other wise. The internal movement within the yard would be down to the shunters. That being said the point work would be controlled via ground frame, either in block or individual at each point. Hope this helps
You correctly said that the internal yard movements would be controlled by the Yard Shunter. However, there would NOT be a ground frame, merely a point lever at every set of points so that the Shunters can set the road that they want the loco or wagons to go onto. Exit from the yard would likely be controlled by way of a semaphore stop signal. Sometimes this was a miniature semaphore signal or a disc. I drove BR trains for just over 35 years and saw these setups regularly; even in small, local carriage sidings (that no longer exist.)
