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That is what caught my eye. Seems to be a double track main line and a single track minor line.

I think we've seen this one before; it's inspired by the Chuo Main Line, which was originally single track but has been doubled over the years, so has a lot of sections where the running lines wander away from each other.

Nice. I like the double track splitting apart in the front, nice feel over totally parallel tracks everywhere. Trying to recall if I’ve seen something like that in a prototype, sure there is! jeff

Religious Pilgrims and tourists enjoy the beauty and serenity of the Temple.

Uh oh, beginning of the end when you start planning additions to the house for your layout! Downside of a sectional layout is you can too easily expand! yes wood prices are still skyrocketing. I went to buy a small piece of premium, clear dimensional lumber to make a specialized bridge Ttrak module for a club member the other day and I was shocked at the price! $9 for a 1/4”x4”x4’ piece of clear poplar! Poplar! sorry wasn’t making my self clear there, I was curious what all your modules sit on (some sort of legs or cabinets?) to hold them up.

Weel-done rural scenes. 2700 x 1500 mm Double main line and a minor private raileay line.

What I imagined is starting to come more into focus.

hey dude! Was gong through your thread this morning! What a build. Nice to know I’m not the only self professed amateur going and just ‘blagging’ it 😂 My Mai. Concern at the moment isn’t the size of the build (even though the wife will likely kill me if I add an additional board) it’s the cost of man man wood In the UK. 6mm ply is almost £15 for a sheet of 2x4!… I mean, if I’m going stead at 12’, then I can always go to 16’ right? 😂😂😂 I might need to build a larger hobby room at the bottom of the garden 😂

A nice thing with modular, is that it's possible to expand later on. Or not to expand later on. Yesterday I was track cleaning and cursed myself about the amount of track I have. 😅

Install anywhere. But you still gonna need to open it up for power supply of chip and possibly power routing depending on the switch.

can this decoder be installed EX-ternally to a kato #6 turnout and mounted under the layout? Not excited about opening up my turnouts. Ron

I love how its got twin air horns. And it need thoses, so you can hear the horn over the rattling lawn mower of an engine those crazy East Germans put under their.

modules are supported by 2x4 strips of pine around the edges and the battened with the same material. The V15 and V4 sets arrived today so I’ve mocked up what the centre section will look like. if I’m honest, I feel like another 2x4’ is required to get the most out of the V4 and V15 set only because I get the feeling to fit it all on, my station is going to look really pokey 😂 do you know off hand how long the 23-200 series station platforms are going to be? Certainly not long enough for a 10 coach long Shinkansen without increasing the length of the centre section. 😭 seriously! Those sidings wouldn’t catch a cold, let alone a decent amount of rolling stock. FML 😂 I hate that I’m considering an additional 2x4… what’s wrong with me 😂😂😂😂

His idea of a weekend drive, up and down the parking lot a dozen times… jeff

Dan, yeah I don’t think track near the edge is a worry. In over 25 years I’ve never run a train off the edge and I’ve put track right up near it. The plex is a pain and just ruins the view. We have only had one train in the club go on the floor and that was due to a stalled train in the big shinkansen yard. The operator had the power pack going the wrong direction and throttle cranked up and tapped the train and it shot off towards the stub end and got enough momentum and all wheel pickup to run the train off the end of the table. Happened so fast the chap didn’t have time to shut off the throttle. Shinkansen couplings we’re strong enough to drag a lot of the train over. Amazingly little damage to the train! This did lead to the installation of a deadman’s switch to the yard power feed! sldering your power to the bottom of the rails works well. Just rototool a slot thru the roadbed right under the track. Tin the bottom of the track and the wire the fuse solder then together. If you want ultra secure drop a dollop of epoxy over it. All hidden and you can use heavier gauge wire. Yeah it’s worth the testing before things are fixed down and keep track simple and clean where you can. For the first 5 years of our club here we did all build on the fly display layouts with Unitrak on top of portable modules like yours. It was great as we could evolve out problem track pieces and situations (like the expansion tracks) so when we went to a sectional nailed down layout we had relatively few track/train fussiness. what are all your modules supported by? great work! cheers, jeff

Thanks for the comments. I’m installing the new temple on the layout and will finalize scenery to integrate it in. Stay tuned.

Excellent job with putting snow cover on the scenery! : 3

Thanks! Here's a brief update. I had posted a photo of an earlier sign printing in another thread, but might as well put one here too. It's been many years since I've bothered buying expensive inks for a home printer that dry out long before I use it up, so when I need to do any printing I bring my thumb drive to Staples. It's just a flat rate of 70¢ a page; so unlike home printing, I cram the page with a ridiculous number of duplicate images so if I make any mistakes in cutting or gluing, I don't have to run back to the store to print another. Last week's print run included extra signs, menus and posters for the restaurants in addition to what I had printed for them earlier, plus a bunch of flags for 15mm Napoleonic miniatures. I've also learned that the colours I see on my screen often print out darker, especially blues. So I've taken to laying out variants with brighter colours. I don't have any fancy dancy image software, I just open the image in Preview on my Mac, crank up the Exposure level and then tweak the Contrast and Sharpness levels. Repeating if necessary to push the colours even brighter. Then I can choose the printed version I like best.

GDR Trabant in Japan, with British numberplates? Go ahead (though probably not on a public road):

@JackNo expert here but had the Loco at hand, given the simple shape of the lightboard (Kato EL1) I could not say what replacement board from Digitrax would fit tbh, maybe an SDN144K0a although not sure with the lenghtened lights. EDIT: Its an DN163K0a as people here used it for conversion:

I say on Youtube that this engine is DCC Ready. But since the video was in Japanese I could not see what decoder was used. Can someone give me a digitrax item number? Thanks

The Koi ponds are incredible!

Hey man! some lovely scenery work you are doing! have just been through the thread and looking forward to more updates.

Morning Jeff, as I have mentioned above to the other contributors, I will likely use thin ply to add to the extreme outer edges of the build, I plan to have a hill/mountain(s) at the rear so will likely use ply at the back of the raised area to add strength to the build. If needs be, I can add 10/20mm extra along the sides in addition to the height of the scenery to ensure the trains don't disappear. it wont take too much from the piece either and the trains will remain the central focus. It might be worth adding as well that all of the corners on the build are using Kato's banked corners (which were a nightmare to get right) so even when the train in travelling at some speed, it is always turning into the board and far more likely to fall toward the board if there are any accidents! In respect of 'overhangs', thankfully I think that comes down to my poor photography more than anything else. both ovals fit perfectly on their respective 4x4's, the only overhand is on the 2x4 section which is separate and as mentioned in my earlier comment, my intention is to trim the track and then secure it down using screws and solder. I completely agree though that trains can be very 'choosey' about which track they want to run on and which tracks they don't! Between a Hayabusa Shinkansen and an old '86 electric freightliner I have, there will be plenty of testing with both of the fussy Bas**ds! Lastly, in terms of the sectional board, the majority of the turnouts will be in the central section and therefore very little wiring required if the two outer boards are joined. I will likely sent power to the track x3 on each side (6 in total) , either by way of soldering wires to the track itself or using the genuine Kato powered track pieces and then have a 3/1 splitter for both sides feeding to 2 controllers for independent analogue control of both trains. Similarly, I will run a similar amount of power to the previously mentioned commuter line to connect up to a third controller. The fun is going to be getting the wiring correct for the sidings on the centre sectional so it all works correctly in analogue so that trains can be stored whilst others can go about the track! thanks for taking an interest in the build! the sidings/turnouts and station splitter arrives today so keen to update more photo of the centre section with the yard and line mocked together.