HERCULANEUM DOCK
'00' GUEST
Herculaneum Dock was the last of Liverpool's South Docks to be built. It was closed in 1971 and in 1984 filled in to provide a car park for the Garden Festival.
The layout includes a comer of the dock where hydraulic coal cranes were used mainly for bunkering ships. The double track railway nearest the front of the layout is the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MDHB) railway which ran the whole length of the docks to Seaforth in the North. In addition to the coal traffic to Herculaneum the dock railway also served the Dingle oil depot to the South.
The Cheshire Line's main line from Manchester to Liverpool emerges from Dingle Tunnel at this point, passing sidings, Brunswick loco shed and Brunswick goods yard before going back into tunnels on its way to Liverpool Central Station. The model includes most of the tracks in this area with some compression, particularly of the length of the goods yard. Brunswick shed is modelled complete - it was one of the most cramped sheds in the country and certainly the only one which was curved to fit the site.
The CLC line carries local passenger trains between Liverpool and Manchester and some through services including a boat train to Harwich. Freight traffic is mostly coal and oil with more general goods trains to Brunswick and via the MDHB system to the rest of the docks. BR locos are also to be seen on the dock railway hauling trains between various other goods depots.
The layout has now been backdated to the early 1950s with the addition of the Liverpool Overhead Railway above the MDHB line. This is the southern end of the LOR where the trains emerged from the tunnel leading to the underground Dingle station, across a large girder bridge over the dock lines and heads north towards the Pier Head and north docks. Two stations are modelled, Herculaneum Dock, with its small car shed, and Toxteth Dock.
With the addition of one of the hydraulic coaling cranes (the other one still presumed to be off stage) the layout is now almost complete, only a gantry crane for Brunswick goods is still missing.