Takahachikawa

[railsquid]

12 hours ago, valkyriepm said:

Great scenery! Love the feeling of it. Specially the last pic.

 

Martin

 

Thanks, I think the angle (more-or-less human eye level) and the truck lend it a sense of reality.

 

Meanwhile, the original layout I started a while back:

 

old-layout-final by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

It's gone:

 

old-layout-removed by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

For various reasons it was impractical and had to go. But bits of it will live on, one of the road sections will fit just nicely in front of the farm:

 

recycled-road-section-1 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

recycled-road-section-2 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

Edited June 10, 2018 by railsquid

[railsquid]

Random scenic picture from messing around with my smartphone.

 

ef58-scenery-2 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

(Obvious non-prototypical mistakes are obvious, like I said, was messing around...)

[railsquid]

Now here's a mystery... Sometimes I will pretend bits of the layout are actually the Minobu Line, as early on in my N gauge addiction I acquired some Tomytec models without really knowing what they were and it turns out they ran on the Minobu line, which connects with the Chuo Line at Kofu, which fits quite nicely into my Chuo Line theme.

 

steps-painted_3 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Somewhat less prototypical is this MicroAce "Kansai colour" 101 series, which I also acquired early on as it was cheap and I liked it:

 

microace-kansai-colour-101-series_1 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Anyway while researching what else ran on the Minobu Line, I stumbled on this page: http://jigyourin.web.fc2.com/toukaidou8-3.html; 6th picture down is a 101 series with this same colouring at Shinagawa in 1982 with the destination blind reading "Kofu"...

Now, the reason it was at Shinagawa was that there had apparently been some sort of flood damage in the Osaka area causing a shortage of trains, so a few redundant Tokyo area 101s were moved down that way. What intrigues me is why the destination blind is set to "Kofu", and whether any 101s in this colour scheme ever made it that way. I do know Chuo Line 101-800 series (with "low roof" pantographs) did, but have yet to find an explanation for this set.

[Socimi]

1 hour ago, railsquid said:

 

Anyway while researching what else ran on the Minobu Line, I stumbled on this page: http://jigyourin.web.fc2.com/toukaidou8-3.html; 6th picture down is a 101 series with this same colouring at Shinagawa in 1982 with the destination blind reading "Kofu"...

Now, the reason it was at Shinagawa was that there had apparently been some sort of flood damage in the Osaka area causing a shortage of trains, so a few redundant Tokyo area 101s were moved down that way. What intrigues me is why the destination blind is set to "Kofu", and whether any 101s in this colour scheme ever made it that way. I do know Chuo Line 101-800 series (with "low roof" pantographs) did, but have yet to find an explanation for this set.

 

It could have been a former Chuo Line set repainted either at the Shinagawa or Mitaka yards into Kansai green (wich is similar to the green of the Yamanote line and the stripe having the same tonality of the Chuo-Sobu yellow), and then travelled the Tokaido Main Line all the way to Osaka...

 

In 1982 they were being replaced by the 201 series (fully replaced by 1985) so some were surplus.

 

Wikipedia actually mentions that some 101s used in the Kansai Area were transferred from the Chuo-Sobu Line in 1982 due to flooding at Oji depot, wich damaged 60 veihcles.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/国鉄101系電車#関西地区

 

[railsquid]

A bit of scenery work around the "tram tunnel" (so named as trains emerging from it will enter the street running section):

 

Tram tunnel progress by Rail Squid, on Flickr

The arches are for a "half-open" tunnel (is there a technical term for that) which will be roofed over with a continuation of the hillside, to tone down the number of near-vertical concrete walls in this area.

[gavino200]

14 minutes ago, railsquid said:

A bit of scenery work around the "tram tunnel" (so named as trains emerging from it will enter the street running section):

 

Tram tunnel progress by Rail Squid, on Flickr

The arches are for a "half-open" tunnel (is there a technical term for that) which will be roofed over with a continuation of the hillside, to tone down the number of near-vertical concrete walls in this area.

 

Very nice! Is that an old British Rail Mk 1 I see in the background?

[railsquid]

5 minutes ago, gavino200 said:

 

Very nice! Is that an old British Rail Mk 1 I see in the background?

 

Bingo, more precisely a new-ish Graham Farish model thereof.

 

Graham Farish Class 46 (46053) by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[gavino200]

5 minutes ago, railsquid said:

 

Bingo, more precisely a new-ish Graham Farish model thereof.

 

 

Graham Farish Class 46 (46053) by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

I love it! I need one of those for ol' time's sake. After the ICE-4 comes out, I'll switch from my German phase to a British phase for a while. I love that Blue and yellow British Rail era.

Edited June 27, 2018 by gavino200

[railsquid]

It's what I grew up with, so have amassed a fair collection of stuff, some of it in Japan like that Class 46.

 

Here's another one (Class 73 electro-diesel in "large logo" livery):

 

Dapol Class 73 73138 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[Khaul]

How do those Dapols and Graham Farishes run in comparison to your Japanese models? Sometimes I think the British prototype looks so good and with those little trucks I could have a nice switching layout. Then I read horror stories about British model train makers.

[gavino200]

21 minutes ago, railsquid said:

It's what I grew up with.

 

Me too....sort of. I grew up on John Bull's other island. I remember when, at that age of 4, my older brother told me I wasn't British. I was surprised. I had grown up to that point watching the BBC and ITV and just assumed I was somewhere in England. 

 

So, needless to say, my British phase will spawn a sub-phase where I'll paint an English train black/orange and call it Irish.

Edited June 27, 2018 by gavino200

[railsquid]

48 minutes ago, Khaul said:

How do those Dapols and Graham Farishes run in comparison to your Japanese models? Sometimes I think the British prototype looks so good and with those little trucks I could have a nice switching layout. Then I read horror stories about British model train makers.

 

Hmm, put it this way, I'm running my British stuff at the moment partly to test the layout alignment, as some of the locos are less forgiving of minor unevenness than Japanese or German stuff.

 

Until fairly recently, Farish models tended to suffer from split gears; which are easy enough to repair, but obviously not a happy situation (though I've found a few non-runners in Japan such as the Class 46 above going cheap due to said issue).

 

Some Dapol locos have a tendency to lose their directional lighting after a while due to component failure.

 

Don't expect great haulage on inclines; British stuff doesn't come with traction tyres.

Overall I've found it more reliable to purchase second hand from reliable vendors, as that means the loco has survived the initial failure phase.

I love 'em all despite that, but I'm glad I can fall back on Japanese stuff when things get too annoying.

Edited June 27, 2018 by railsquid

[railsquid]

For no particular reason, an EF15 heading into the tunnel at the head of a freight train.

 

microace-ef15 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[railsquid]

And a momentous, nay historical moment as I finally get round to completing the second mainline loop and wiring up two controllers so I can have 2 (two) trains running at the same time.

 

 

 

[railsquid]

I should add that the trains in the video are Kato 103 Kokuden units, as they are relatively expendable should something mishappen. Appropriately the orange one is the first motorized N gauge train I ever bought, which lead me down this rabbit hole... The green one followed shortly after. They will, when time allows, be tarted up with after-market parts.

[railsquid]

We zoom back around five years, somewhere on the Chuo Line between Takao and Otsuki.

 

Chuo Line E233 and 115 series passing by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Chuo Line 115 and E257 passing by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[Das Steinkopf]

If by chance there was a JR East EMU that I would buy it would more than likely be a E257, having ridden on one out to Matsumoto and back I will say they are a very nice train.

[railsquid]

It is a nice train, though I've long felt it's not really suited to the steep curved sections especially west of Kofu.

 

Meanwhile, messing about with some spare space which looks just right for a small loco/rolling stock depot or something.

 

loco-spur by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

loco-spur-bridge by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

103-series-incline by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[railsquid]

slightly better version

 

113 series descending the incline by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[Kiha66]

I really like these perspectives!  The small road crossing is a really nice use of the small space.

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, railsquid said:

slightly better version

 

113 series descending the incline by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

That shrubbery looks very real. I especially like the single long grass plant. 

[Bubule]

The last shot is particulary nice. It is a great scene ! I love colours of that scenery.

[railsquid]

On 8/5/2018 at 3:35 PM, railsquid said:

It is a nice train, though I've long felt it's not really suited to the steep curved sections especially west of Kofu.

 

Meanwhile, messing about with some spare space which looks just right for a small loco/rolling stock depot or something.

 

loco-spur by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

 

Today it's pretending to be a depot servicing the Minobu Line, which is not as sexy as the Iida line but I seem to have acquired the knack of purchasing random stock and finding it's from the Minobu line, including the World Kogei ED17 (representing ED17-1, as preserved in the JR Omiya museum) which was definitely deployed there (4th photo down on this page).

 

minobu-line-yard by Rail Squid, on Flickr

Edited August 8, 2018 by railsquid

[railsquid]

And today we have running on the lower loop as well (though I still need to wire up the provisional block selector switches so I can run trains to and from the other lines.

 

 

[JR 500系]

Really nice Squid san! Nice serene feel to it... Can I ask how you made the yellow and black barriers by the rails? They look really authentic!