I'm currently trying to work out a scheme based in Birmingham in N gauge - the backstory to the (fictitious) route is very detailed and complex (as I would expect from myself), but the practical side of things is less so - I'm still trying to work out the best trackplan for the area I have (about 10ft 6in by 2ft, increasing to about 2ft 6in at the other end), and then get to actually clearing away all the rubbish from the allotted area and get to work. Basically, the story goes that after the GWR had subsumed the Snow Hill lines in 1870, they had looked at building a link in to Halesowen. They had a couple of possible routes for this, one of which diverged in the Smethwick area and ran via Rowley Regis and Oldbury, and one which diverged at Old Hill. They chose the latter option, and the independent Halesowen Railway extended the line to Northfield. The route closed to passengers in 1919, but the track was only lifted in 1964, as the line continued to serve the Austin Longbridge car-manufacturing works until 1960.
So much for the truth.
Soon after the route was closed to passengers in 1919, the LMS and GWR, who now owned it jointly, explored the possibility of reopening it. However, it was eventually decided that it didn't serve enough of the sprawling suburbs of Birmingham. They therefore decided to construct a joint line that diverged near Smethwick and looped round to the north, serving Brades Village (and thereby also Tividale, though they were more immediately served by Dudley Port station), before going through Rowley Regis, crossing the Snow Hill-Kidderminster line again, and go through Halesowen, before joining the LMS Birmingham to Gloucester line at Longbridge. The line eventually opened in 1926, with one of the stations, at Frankley Village, closing in 1943. It provided a useful secondary route for freight, and provided passenger interworking between Snow Hill and New Street, which were both used as termini for the line, and several express services were pathed along the branch, most stopping only at the two principal stations of Halesowen and Oldbury. With the decline of services through Snow Hill, the possibility of running services from New Street along the branch was discounted by Beeching, who recommended the withdrawal of stopping services and closure of all stations apart from Halesowen and Oldbury. This was duly accomplished in 1966, together with track rationalisation - Langley Green junction, where the line diverged from the Snow Hill-Kidderminster line, was converted to a single lead junction, with Oldbury station itself singled. The line fell into a rapid decline and by 1979 was served by only six trains a day, with freight to the Albright & Wilson works at Oldbury the main traffic. There were further whispers of closure in 1981, but the rebirth of Snow Hill led to renewed optimism. The Cross-City line electrification project in 1993 was expanded to include the line between New Street and Longbridge via Halesowen (with the Snow Hill line remaining dieselised) and a regular service started from New Street in 1993 and from Snow Hill (additionally to New Street) as part of the Jewellery Line improvements in 1995, a package which included new stations (mostly on the site of the old stations) and an intensive service.
Being a colossal block of text driven by imagination and ridiculously obsessive detail, naturally it doesn't say much about the layout plan. Basically, I'm going to model Oldbury station. As you won't have gleaned from the text because it was so boring you skim-read it, the junction just before Oldbury station was singled in the 60s. The station lies on the single-track section, and the second track diverges just after it, creating a sizeable bottleneck. Stopping trains run from a new bay platform opened on the site of the old second through platform, and the track layout is further complicated by the existence of a siding for freight trains serving Albright & Wilson's chemical works (which is imagined to be still the site it was at the zenith of industry). The service pattern is extremely intensive, and it is also popularly requested for charters, as it links several of Birmingham's railways, and, in the modern day, it is served by six TOCs. (This is actually because I wanted to basically run everything, not because all the services were feasible, such as the idea of Avanti West Coast running Redditch-Euston.) As I said, I haven't got very far with this, but it's a project that's been in the back of my mind for some time and I wondered if anyone had any historical detail that I've missed.
(Before anyone asks, no, I don't know what to do for rolling stock - I'm hoping I might be able to scratchbuild a couple of inaccurate 323s given their body shape is fairly simple. Does anyone have any ideas as to what to do for Snow Hill stock? (I'm not really bothered about the other TOCs, I can replace their services with others if needs be.))