Planning Aizu

[Pashina12]

Oh wow, thanks for that link - it's fantastic! I love the then vs now comparisons, this is very helpful, and shows me several areas that I had no previous information on! And you're right, the track arrangement does look rather different at the Wakamatsu end of the station.

 

You raise some interesting thoughts with your track plans.

 

The red lines - I thought about doing that, too, but I rather like the prototypical arrangement with the semi-S curve in the approach, so from that perspective your second plan is more appealing. The radii shouldn't be an issue - by the mid 1960s aside from DCs the only locomotives on the line were C11s, and even before 1963 the only other power on the line post-war was C10s and C12s, and occasionally an 8620, 9600, or C58 in the winter pushing snowploughs; after 1975 only DE10-0 were used.

 

Taking the second plan into consideration, I think I'd still want to delete Down 2 (second track from the top) to save on width to give more room on either side to develop the fore- and background scenery, but there are a lot of options to think about. I'll play around with ideas for a while and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the insights, they're super useful!

[Junech]

I personally wouldn't remove Down 2 from the plan. I just know it would bug me forever when I get more space someday and could just add segments for the landscape. Is there another smaller station with options for shunting on the line? Or something like a factory with enough tracks for shunting that is connected to the line?

[Pashina12]

When I get more space someday, it'll be a big enough space to build the large-scale dream version of the Aizu Line layout, a 4m x 4m room in which I'm envisioning a G-shaped layout that will include an all-tracks representation of Aizu-Takinohara at the terminus - at the opposite end of the line from Nishi-Wakamatsu, and which will include the now-under-water section at Kuwabara somewhere. Nishi-Wakamatsu will be represented only together with Aizu-Wakamatsu as hidden staging. Kuwabara and Takinohara are the two *must model* locations for me on the line, with Aizu-Tajima and Yunokami being "would be nice" spots; anything else would be just icing. The main purpose of this project is to get me working on something finally, to have something to play around on with some shunting, and to refine my skills and experiment with various techniques, so that when I do get around to building the Real Thing, I'll have had plenty of good practice to do my vision justice. So I'm not overly concerned about losing one track on this one.

 

This station, though, is (aside from the much vaster Aizu-Wakamatsu) the best spot on the line for shunting purposes, in the sense of having a reasonably wide variety of sidings to shunt. Aizu-Tajima is the second best spot, but to do that real justice I'd need a good 20-30 cm more width, which I just can't do right now.

[Junech]

Sounds like a really nice plan.

 

I would rather remove 2 other tracks for the current layout to keep the Down 2 one. I also just threw in the 3-way switches from Peco code 55 track to gain some additional length. Each square is 100x100mm, so you got close to 100mm on both sides for landscape.:

 

[MeTheSwede]

Here are some thoughts:

 

Modelling an imaginary station along the Aizu line would solve A LOT of your problems. Real life station areas are BIG, but an imaginary place can be just the size that fits the rectangular space you have available. If your version of Nishi-Wakamatsu is shorter, has a bit fewer tracks, straightened curves, buildings that are different and so on, aren't you already kind of modelling an imaginary place? If you instead decide to model an imaginary neighbouring station from the start everything can look Aizu Line, you can still operate with prototypical rolling stocks, with a prototypical time table and so on, but you won't have to think about how to attempt to shoehorn in items that don't really fit in your available space. Also you are free to add things. Operating would be more interesting with a rail served industry? No problem adding it. You think some particular kind of scenery would look nice? You've find a Tomytec building you like? A shrine? A bambo groove? No problem, just add them where there is space.

 

 

Using sectional track and not gluing it down (at least not for a long time) is SO flexible. You can have a station layout up and running within an hour and be shunting trains. The next day you can modify the track into another station layout. The day after that you've found something else to improve. Maybe a year later you have room for something bigger more ambitious, then everything is easy to disassemble and everything can easily be reused for your new project.

 

Also for the majority of us who aren't super experienced layout planners, track planning software is only useful up to a point. Doing actual shunting on an real life track is the final test of what works and what does not. That's when you find out that something doesn't look quite right, if there isn't enough space somewhere for your trains do what you want them to do, there's some unecessary track, the yard lead is too short, or whatever. I spent A LOT of time with anyrail planning my Yamahama layout, but it wasn't until I had physical track pieces to play around with that everything fell into place.

 

 

Tomix Finetrack is great. You'll find it has some types of turnouts and other track pieces that are useful for complicated station layouts, that aren't available for KATO Unitrack. Tomix is DC plug and play and everything is super easy to plug together and use with fully power routing turnouts and there are plug and play solutions also for more electrically complicated requirements. Standard turnouts with wooden sleepare are currently sold for 2050 yen on Amazon Japan.

 

 

Anyway, as you've been in the planning stage for 7 years I think it's time for you to get some track and start playing with trains now. 😊

 

 

 

 

[cteno4]

11 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

Using sectional track and not gluing it down (at least not for a long time) is SO flexible. You can have a station layout up and running within an hour and be shunting trains. The next day you can modify the track into another station layout. The day after that you've found something else to improve. Maybe a year later you have room for something bigger more ambitious, then everything is easy to disassemble and everything can easily be reused for your new project.

 

Also for the majority of us who aren't super experienced layout planners, track planning software is only useful up to a point. Doing actual shunting on a real life track is the final test of what works and what does not. That's when you find out that something doesn't look quite right, if there isn't enough space somewhere for your trains do what you want them to do, there's some unecessary track, the yard lead is too short, or whatever. I spent A LOT of time with anyrail planning my Yamahama layout, but it wasn't until I had physical track pieces to play around with that everything fell into place.

The Swede advises wisely here, especially in this sort of shunting layout. Playing with sectional track and some trains can give a very different dimension you will never get from track planning software, especially when you are trying to compress a lot into the layout. Also gets you thinking in new ways as I find after a certain point fiddling with a plan in layout software I find I sort of paint myself into a corner many times. Playing with track can help bump you out of those corners as well as find some gotchas that don’t work well with real track/trains to just alway avoid in your track planning exercises.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Pashina12]

Hm, the point about playing around with sectional track is well taken, since you're both right that it would let me get some actual running happening to figure out the best sort of arrangement for the track layout better than any software can... but sooner rather than later I'd want to affix it permanently, since part of the objective of this project is to get some practice with doing scenery work.

 

16 hours ago, Junech said:

Sounds like a really nice plan.

 

I would rather remove 2 other tracks for the current layout to keep the Down 2 one. I also just threw in the 3-way switches from Peco code 55 track to gain some additional length. Each square is 100x100mm, so you got close to 100mm on both sides for landscape.:

 

 

Hm, I rather like this arrangement. Although it is quite different on the Up end, I think it still captures the feel of the arrangement quite well...

 

13 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

Here are some thoughts:

 

Modelling an imaginary station along the Aizu line would solve A LOT of your problems. Real life station areas are BIG, but an imaginary place can be just the size that fits the rectangular space you have available. If your version of Nishi-Wakamatsu is shorter, has a bit fewer tracks, straightened curves, buildings that are different and so on, aren't you already kind of modelling an imaginary place? If you instead decide to model an imaginary neighbouring station from the start everything can look Aizu Line, you can still operate with prototypical rolling stocks, with a prototypical time table and so on, but you won't have to think about how to attempt to shoehorn in items that don't really fit in your available space. Also you are free to add things. Operating would be more interesting with a rail served industry? No problem adding it. You think some particular kind of scenery would look nice? You've find a Tomytec building you like? A shrine? A bambo groove? No problem, just add them where there is space.

 

 

I read this post this morning, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Since this layout won't end up being incorporated into the Big One when it comes time to build that, it doesn't matter if it's not a real location... I have a few small kit bits like a Nittsu office and loading area and similar things that I have no real use for on the Big Layout, that I could make use of here... and I'm already envisioning one end having a tunnel mouth, with higher scenery in the back, a retaining wall, with a road coming over the tracks on a bridge and down to foreground level to the station... I think I'll spend a bit of time exploring Senrohaisenzu for inspirational ideas. Yes. I like this.

 

Quote

 

Tomix Finetrack is great. You'll find it has some types of turnouts and other track pieces that are useful for complicated station layouts, that aren't available for KATO Unitrack. Tomix is DC plug and play and everything is super easy to plug together and use with fully power routing turnouts and there are plug and play solutions also for more electrically complicated requirements. Standard turnouts with wooden sleepare are currently sold for 2050 yen on Amazon Japan.

 

 

Anyway, as you've been in the planning stage for 7 years I think it's time for you to get some track and start playing with trains now. 😊

 

Well I'll find some geometry drawings and play around in SCARM with track arrangements and see what I can come up with! I'm familiar enough with the Aizu Line and the Tadami Line that I should be able to come up with something that fits the locale. 🙂

 

... and you're right, it would be nice to finally get my trains rolling, too.

[Pashina12]

So spent a bit of time this evening playing around in SCARM with the Tomix track to come up with a fictitious spot on the Aizu (or Tadami) Line that I think has some fun shunting potential:

 

 

The grey lines are the approximate location (not width!) of roads, the dashed brown line is the limit of the hill/cliff face, and the straight brown line is retaining wall alongside the track (retaining walls are a very Aizu Line thing, heh). The road across the tracks on the left I'm thinking to be a bridge, the one on the right, a level crossing.

 

The 1 marks the entrance to a tunnel.

 

2, 3, and 4: this area is a paper mill, the building will be represented in partial relief; track 2 is for the unloading of wood chips directly into the building; track 3 is for unloading of tank cars supplying necessary chemical; number 4 is an area for loading finished product onto train or truck, and perhaps a car park for employees of the paper plant.

 

Number 5 is a small yard for Nittsu, with an office building and a sheltered area for transferring cargo (packages/consignments) from a boxcar to trucks for distribution in the area.

 

6 is the station's own freight track, 7 is an island platform, 8 is the area of the station building.

 

To the right end, on the right side of the up/down road, will be various town structures, shops or residences or suchlike. Probably including a filling station, as I really want to model a Kyoseki filling station *somewhere*... (because I constantly have their old jingle stuck in my head: 心のかようおつきあい 共同石油 ... don't ask lol).

 

Anyways this is a preliminary idea, I'd really appreciate any feedback! 🙂

[Pashina12]

Well I pulled the trigger and ordered in all the track I'll need for this last plan. Once I've got it I'll lay it out on my surface and see how it looks/works. Now to start looking around for inspirational photos of paper mills...

[Junech]

Looks like a good plan so far, I think.

 

For the paper mill, since it is only a relief, you can probably use pretty much any industrial facility from that period. Since it will mostly be big machines in big halls doing the work (at least with a paper mill that has so much track supporting it). You could also combine some different styles of older and more "modern" buildings to show that it grew bigger over time.

I would also add a place to unload coal. The machines want their power source after all. Even if they switched to electricity at some point there may be still an old track left and overgrown in the old place.

[Pashina12]

Ooh, coal is a good idea, once I get the tracks I'll try to play around and see how I can fit it in best. At a glance the one straight piece between track 3 and the turnout leading to the paper mill could be swapped out with another turnout... and maybe have the new track lead to the chemical unloading, and make track 3 longer leading to the coal dump spot. Did they use gravity-fed coal trestles at factories in Japan? Thinking maybe could put one of those in their, to dump the coal from the coal hoppers onto a conveyor belt...

[Junech]

My knowledge about Japanese freight cars isn't big enough to know about that. But since you need to unload wood as well you could use a raised gantry crane (something looking like this but older: https://www.twin-tech.nl/en/product/gantry-crane/).

 

You can place it in two ways.

1. Parallel to tracks 2 and 3 with unloading behind the bumpers.

2. At a 90° angle spanning over tracks 2 and 3. and unloading to the side. It will run into the background and you will only be able to show either coal or wood being unloaded.

 

But you will need to find another place for your liquids to unload. If you choose the second option you could just stretch out track 3 to fit the additional space needed.

[Pashina12]

The wood will arrive as wood chips in ToRa90000s, I've seen photos of those being unloaded by scoop machines, and shovels for the last little bits the scoop couldn't get. I'm thinking to actually have that track enter the building (that is, track 2 goes into the building, but either way, that's how I'll have it unloaded, adjacent to a platform that's at the height of the side of the car/bottom of the cage on the car.

 

I need to look closely at how tank cars are unloaded, but it will in all likelihood be pipes running from where the car is parked, into the building.

 

For coal... well I'll look around more when I have free time.

[Pashina12]

Rather to my surprise, Amazon showed up already today with my package - all the track I need for the last track plan, minus the 280 mm pieces; Amazon had none, so that's on the way from HS, along with a few other small pieces. I don't have time this weekend to do it, but I look forward to putting the track up onto the shelf to see how it actually lays out in the physical form. Exciting!

[Pashina12]

Hopefully Canada Post won't go on strike before my package from HS arrives... anyways in the meantime I've been moving the track I do have, around on the shelf, and trying to gauge ideas on how things will be positioned etc. The track arrangement is pretty much fine, though thinking about a few minor tweaks - putting the exit track on the left side on a curve, just for the visual effect of not having the tunnel portal parallel to the end of the shelf... that mountain end, still got a retaining wall and road bridge over the tracks, and I've got a little Sankei shrine kit I'd like to put on the mountain somewhere - thinking of having a footpath up to it, either from a gravel layby at the foot of the bridge, or up from the Nittsu building parking lot...

 

For the paper mill, thinking that in the space adjacent to the end of Buffer 4, the loading platform of the building will extend a bit further for an extra loading door for a truck.

 

Now the bigger thing: I'm thinking to maybe make track 2 on the diagram longer, and build something like this there for unloading the caged Toras:

 

http://butsuryu.web.fc2.com/chip.html#4

(scroll down a little for the pics)

 

... but I may just go with an earlier thought, that the unloading of the pulp happens inside the building (with the lengthened track, still) - which also made me just realise it'd be a good way to implement Junech's idea: that part of the paper mill is a new construction of modern 1960s design, with the rest of the building where the boxcar/truck loading areas are, are of much older design, maybe Taisho era - with the truck loading platform being a recent addition onto the original building (new door cut into the wall, concrete loading deck instead of the wooden deck at the railcar loading?).

 

Track 3 for the chemical unloading would stay as it is, with the unloading stuff on scaffold to run to a (new) storage tank adjacent to the new building...

 

Plenty of time to play around with this and plan, though. Next serious step is, once the straight tracks arrive from HS, is to finalise the location of all the track, then drill holes through the shelf to run the turnout wires through to the underside. I'll keep them manually operated, at least for the time being, and just tape the wires to the bottom of the shelf. Then I can fix the track down and start the scenery work!

[Pashina12]

So here's an updated form of the diagram:

 

 

The entire station area, the road in front of the station, and the Nittsu facility (where the siding on the lower left is) are omitted here. The light grey is a street, the dark grey is a paved area adjacent to the paper mill where the truck loading area and a car park for employees of the mill are. The red is the facade of the original mill building (brick or wood), the orange is the loading dock - it may all be of recent concrete construction, or maybe the part beside the track is the old wood deck, and the extension for the truck bay is new concrete. Green is the outline of the newly built annex, inside which is the unloading area for the wood chips, and pink is the unloading facility for the tank cars and an overhead pipeline running into the new building.

 

Brown is the mountain area with tunnel mouth and retaining walls. Up on here will be the little shrine area and a road, with a concrete arch bridge coming off from somewhere on the right side of the mountain across the tracks to the front edge of the layout (the bridge model itself will be only half a bridge...). In the small area at the bottom right there will be a Kyodo Oil filling station, and residential/light commercial buildings on the other side of the tracks to the right of the street.

 

So this is where the planning is at the moment... slowly taking shape.

[Pashina12]

Yup, strike notice is out, Canada Post workers can go on strike pretty much in 24 hours... my package left Japan on the 8th, so I know it's within  100 km of me. With my luck they'll try to deliver while I'm away from home today, leave a "pick up at the post office" notice, and then by the time I could pick it up on Friday they'll be on strike... eii.

 

If that happens, I guess I'll start working on such things as putting building kits together, weathiring rolling stock and road vehicles, etc...

[MeTheSwede]

I hope the post situation will short itself out for you. Atleast you've got the most important stuff to play with now!

 

You haven't told us much about how you plan to operate your layout...

 

Just about the same time that you went about ordering your stuff, I was playing around designing a possible layout for your space (below). Here I was thinking that if the layout can be moved (assuming mainly using foam rather than more heavy wood) to a large enough table or the floor for operating, track could be temporarily added to form a loop for doing operations, so that trains can arrive to and depart from your station to a staging yard hidden behind a backdrop. I hit the 50 track pieces limit of the free version of the Anyrail track planning software, so the staging yard was just drawn schematically. Here I used 177mm radius curves, just to make a point of that most Japanese (non-shinkanzen) rolling stock will handle that curve (allthough your's might not) but if there's space on the table/floor a larger radius can of course be used.

 

 

Today I got inspired to play a bit more with the Anyrail. My assumption here is that if you've got space for an 8x2 you've probably got space for two 8x2 modules stored over eachother. Thus I made a scenic staging yard section with the line going through a landscape with a steap mountain in the background, which serves as a scenic divider (scenic backdrop).

 

 

Here I incorparated your threeway turnouts which allowed for a very long passenger platform. I put the freight yard at the front to allow easy reach during the shunting. There's also a little bit more space for the yard lead and industrial spurs when they are not located inside the loop.

 

Both this plan and the one above is operated with two train controllers, one for the freight yard (with the power feeder connected to the yard lead) and one for the loop (with the power feeder attached to the loop just above the yard lead). That means a passenger train can circle the layout during shunting. When the freight train is ready to leave, the controler for the freight yard is turned off and the loop controler drives the freight train away after the relevant turnouts are switched.

 

I haven't put too much thought into the storage tracks on the staging yard. I choose to make them stub ended, because driving slowly into a bumper stop is a good way to know that the train has cleared the turnouts and been parked in the correct spot while not actually seeing it.

 

I'm not sure how practical it is for you to move around layout modules of this size. I guess maybe the main takeaway here, is that the way your track exits the board might allow for an easy (or difficult) expansion in the future should you opt for one. Or maybe you'll find some other kind of inspiration from my ramblings.

 

[Pashina12]

38 minutes ago, MeTheSwede said:

I hope the post situation will short itself out for you. Atleast you've got the most important stuff to play with now!

 

You haven't told us much about how you plan to operate your layout...

 

Just about the same time that you went about ordering your stuff, I was playing around designing a possible layout for your space (below). Here I was thinking that if the layout can be moved (assuming mainly using foam rather than more heavy wood) to a large enough table or the floor for operating, track could be temporarily added to form a loop for doing operations, so that trains can arrive to and depart from your station to a staging yard hidden behind a backdrop. I hit the 50 track pieces limit of the free version of the Anyrail track planning software, so the staging yard was just drawn schematically.

 

 

Yeah, hopefully the strike, if it does go ahead, won't last too long, cuz without the straight pieces in the package, I can't really do much with fixing anything in place!

 

As far as operations go, for this I'm just planning to use it to do shunting puzzles and such - single DC controller with a C11 doing the work, with passenger service represented just with an unpowered Kiha trailer sitting at the island platform.

 

The layout will be built on one half of a bifold closet door - light enough to take off the shelf if needed

 

Quote

Here I used 177mm radius curves, just to make a point of that most Japanese (non-shinkanzen) rolling stock will handle that curve (allthough your's might not) but if there's space on the table/floor a larger radius can of course be used.

 

If my rolling stock doesn't fit through those curves, I have a problem: the biggest equipment I have to run are Kihas (which won't run because DCs don't shunt about a station), an 8620 (which won't run because tender locos aren't really used for shunting), and Taki25000s (which might run until I get some older-style tank cars, otherwise they're too new for my theme)...

 

Quote

 

 

Today I got inspired to play a bit more with the Anyrail. My assumption here is that if you've got space for an 8x2 you've probably got space for two 8x2 modules stored over eachother. Thus I made a scenic staging yard section with the line going through a landscape with a steap mountain in the background, which serves as a scenic divider (scenic backdrop).

 

 

Here I incorparated your threeway turnouts which allowed for a very long passenger platform. I put the freight yard at the front to allow easy reach during the shunting. There's also a little bit more space for the yard lead and industrial spurs when they are not located inside the loop.

 

Both this plan and the one above is operated with two train controllers, one for the freight yard (with the power feeder connected to the yard lead) and one for the loop (with the power feeder attached to the loop just above the yard lead). That means a passenger train can circle the layout during shunting. When the freight train is ready to leave, the controler for the freight yard is turned off and the loop controler drives the freight train away after the relevant turnouts are switched.

 

I haven't put too much thought into the storage tracks on the staging yard. I choose to make them stub ended, because driving slowly into a bumper stop is a good way to know that the train has cleared the turnouts and been parked in the correct spot while not actually seeing it.

 

I'm not sure how practical it is for you to move around layout modules of this size. I guess maybe the main takeaway here, is that the way your track exits the board might allow for an easy (or difficult) expansion in the future should you opt for one. Or maybe you'll find some other kind of inspiration from my ramblings.

 

This is an interesting idea! And theoretically, I would have space in which to store the second half of the bifold door... except for the way the wall on which the shelf is built precludes the extension of the shelf supports upwards - there are no studs into which to drive screws.

 

Inspiration, however, is that perhaps turning the track plan around 180 degrees might be a good idea, to be closer to the shunting spots and not have to reach over the town/station area all the time; downside of that, is that I wouldn't really be able to show much of the paper mill being served along the front edge, then... hmm... but something to consider!

[MeTheSwede]

4 hours ago, Pashina12 said:

single DC controller with a C11 doing the work, with passenger service represented just with an unpowered Kiha trailer sitting at the island platform.

 

It sounds like your layout will be very spacious for that equipment. The Kato C11 is happy with 140mm curves.

 

 

4 hours ago, Pashina12 said:

This is an interesting idea! And theoretically, I would have space in which to store the second half of the bifold door... except for the way the wall on which the shelf is built precludes the extension of the shelf supports upwards - there are no studs into which to drive screws.

 

I presume that with some smart solutions with regards to scenery, two modules could even be stacked directly on top of eachother, although that might be asking for trouble.

 

 

4 hours ago, Pashina12 said:

Inspiration, however, is that perhaps turning the track plan around 180 degrees might be a good idea, to be closer to the shunting spots and not have to reach over the town/station area all the time; downside of that, is that I wouldn't really be able to show much of the paper mill being served along the front edge, then... hmm... but something to consider!

 

This is why I advocate hands on experimentation when designing layouts. Test it both ways and you will find out which you prefer.

[Pashina12]

So I spent a bit of time turning the tracks around 180 degrees and... yes, I lose the facade of the older part of the paper mill, but I like this way better. The newer part of the building (green square) will still extend over the track, but it's even better turned around like this, as I'll have a reason to detail up that part of the building interior, since that's the front of the layout. And at the older part of the building, I'll still have the loading docks there, just not the building wall. The Nittsu track and the station freight track are still accessible, and this way we get to see the trackside of the station building more than the street side, which is the more interesting view, I think... so yeah, thanks for the idea, @MeTheSwede!