Sanriku Floor Layout

[disturbman]

2 minutes ago, katem said:

 

None of my cars have bogie-mounted couplers so this wouldn't help. The cleaning car does have them but I'll need to cut them off to mount 0374 or 0336 couplers.

I meant on the cleaning car, if you wanted full compatibility with Kato.

[roadstar_na6]

1 hour ago, katem said:

Thanks a lot, looks much harder than I thought though..

Hm it‘s just some careful drilling really 🙂

 

1 hour ago, disturbman said:

Interesting. But he had to drill a hole in a specific Kato coupler (the double-headed coupler) to allow coupling. Can't call that compatible. Would have to see if you can do the same with an out of the box Kato shibata coupler.

The way the double-coupler works is the same as the single ones on EMU/DMU cars I guess, so I don‘t see any issues in that regard.

[KateM]

4 minutes ago, disturbman said:

I meant on the cleaning car, if you wanted full compatibility with Kato.

 

I do not 🙂 My ultimate goal is to run Tomix KiHa 100 and Kato KiHa 110 together.

[disturbman]

Not a possibility I had envisioned. Then drill, drill baby 🙂 

[KateM]

Late night layout building - finished ✔

 

Little brother of my partner wanted to run a train on a layout but only depot and a half of large station were prepared. Both of us pitched in to build the whole layout, at least in some kind of temporary state. Then we were running a train for two hours straight 💜 Most stuff, including turnouts, is not connected yet, so I acted like a live turnout controller when shunting. Some photos of current state after we parked the train in depot:

 

  

 

looking at the photos now, I realised that I connected the part with wheel cleaning device the other way around 😄 

[KateM]

Here's a video from our little youtuber 🙂

 

 

 

[KateM]

Big cleaning day ✔ Today was the first day I tried both cleaning rail and cleaning car. Some manual cleaning is still required but most dirt was removed and all trains now run much smoother. The cleaning car is really the best Christmas gift I got 💜 Two 36-700 are pretty ok when wet-cleaning, but I run with three of them, they had much smoother run. TN couplers work really great, no problems so far. There is now no light flickering on motorized cars and just a little on trailer cars.

 

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by katem

[KateM]

Kato shibata couplers came in today. Altering them to work with Tomix shibatas and also with just a little smaller coupler pouch than needed was difficult. Turned out I'm not that handy with small stuff which resulted in 9 of 10 couplers being destroyed in different parts of the process 💥 Some of them at least served as a learning material. One coupler made it through all the modifications needed and it works pretty good! Equipped it into my non-motorized KiHa 110 to act as an adaptor car, see video for a first test. I will look for some more couplers to "destroy" 😄 I'll do some How-To in the future when I get more experience destroying some more couplers or even slightly different couplers.

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by katem

[KateM]

I'm currently working on this stuff:

• Programming station software – Turnouts are done, sensors are next. Currently no progress as I'm kinda burnt out from programming at work and school.
• How-To guide for connecting Tomix Kiha 100 and Kato Kiha 110/111/112 together – Introduction part is ready, but progress is slow these days. No ETA for now.
• Switching layout – Two more tracks are on the way, will be added as soon as I find some spare time during day (to not bother neighbours with drilling at night).
• Modelling first module – Thinking about moving my depot set onto a board and create my first real module with modelling and stuff. Currently thinking about the layout. Five or six different-purpose tracks, depot building, using bits from 91036 Depot basic set and 91017 Yard extension set.

Went through different iterations of the layout while trying to fit onto 95 × 25 cm board.

1) Original layout of Depot set with an extra track added at the top.

2) Added a sixth track at the bottom. This one actually has shorter tracks in total than the previous, 5-track layout.

3) Changed the leftmost turnout to PY-280, as a result the layout now fully fits onto the board. Tried using WP pieces from the yard set at the bottom.

4) After trying to build something like the layout above, it turned out that the geometry is a little broken as the two middle tracks using S99+S35 are 1 mm shorter than other tracks which means the tracks are little warped. This plan includes these ~1° warps. Calculation: C541-15 (140 mm) + S99 + S35 = 274 mm vs. S140 15° (135.2 mm) + C541-15 (140 mm) = 275.2 mm. Also includes changes in bottom right - catwalks from Depot set and Yard set are moved to the right so they end exactly in the same place where tracks end (LED PC ending 1427/1428 is 80mm long but includes only exactly 35 mm of tracks). Unfortunately the top track had to be removed as it no longer fits because of the geometry problems. If I wanted to fix the geometry problems, I'd have to move the pathway 70 mm to right, but then the tracks to the right would no longer fit two Sanriku cars. Even though there are just 5 tracks, this iteration looks quite good 🙂 

 

5) The (for now) last iteration moves the leftmost S35 to the right to make the tracks longer. Unfortunately it seems that I don't have enough S70 pieces on hand to accommodate this layout. Includes a possible spur in the middle. Will definitely continue to think about that.

[disturbman]

Did you try all your trains on the wye turnouts already? I love them but some trains don't play nice with them.

Like the track plan, but I don't think the two stub tracks of your fifth iteration make a lot of sense. If you look at pictures of JR East Niitsu yard (the KiHa part of it) or the Sanriku Railway yard at Miyako station, the track plan is much leaner, without this kind of tracks.

[KateM]

12 minutes ago, disturbman said:

Did you try all your trains on the wye turnouts already? I love them but some trains don't play nice with them.

Like the track plan, but I don't think the two stub tracks of your fifth iteration make a lot of sense. If you look at pictures of JR East Niitsu yard (the KiHa part of it) or the Sanriku Railway yard at Miyako station, the track plan is much leaner, without this kind of tracks.

Thanks for info, most of my stock runs fine on it but I'll do another run of all of my stock on it to find possible problems. To be honest I did not think at all about that as I'm used to most of my stock (that is mostly compatible with mini curves) to run fine on various turnouts.

 

Leaner as in simpler? Agree that the yellow spur is weird, moreover it's too short to fit a DMU. The top spur is part of the Depot set and is fake, some small machinery has home here, as shown on box art:  I quite like this detail even though it is not featured in real yards. Thanks a lot for directing me to Niitsu yard, it seems full of inspiration. Really like its layout almost next to the actual station. If I had more space I'd go for something like that. 

[disturbman]

Niitsu yard is great.

Yes, I meant "leaner" as in "simpler and more efficient", with no unnecessary turnouts. This kind of small machinery is normally stored on normal tracks, not on dedicated spurs. You probably could stored them at the back of the shed if you could extend the track a bit. But I totally get the appeal of having small details such as this.

If you are looking for more inspirations, @Kamomehad posted a video from a Japanese modeler that built a scratchbuild locomotive depot: https://youtu.be/GhzwBi5VbFY

Edited September 25, 2021 by disturbman

[KateM]

On 9/25/2021 at 9:29 AM, disturbman said:

If you are looking for more inspirations, @Kamomehad posted a video from a Japanese modeler that built a scratchbuild locomotive depot: https://youtu.be/GhzwBi5VbFY

 

Pretty impressive video, thanks a lot 👍 Little out of my league so far 🙂

 

Went through several new, different iterations with the depot track plan. Yellow pieces are S72.5.

 

6) Two input tracks instead of one? Kinda sparks joy.

 

7) Save some space with PR280-30? Doesn't save much space and adds 280mm radius S-curve.

 

∞) Curved double track? Sparks joy a lot, provides the longest tracks while being very compact.

 

10) Three-way turnouts? Would rather not use these.

 

13) Would be nice to not have any rails sticking out of the board. What about using PXL140-15 to help with the geometry (it is 145 mm long on the longer branch)? Probably not, seems out of place and I don't like X turnouts that much.

 

14/15) Ok, I have tried practically anything possible using the track pieces I have. What about ordering V70 variable pieces? They are kinda ugly, but they help with the geometry so much. The thicker pieces are V70. Sparks joy a little.

  

 

16/17) What if 15 but with tilted entry track? Especially 16 sparks joy a lot.

  

 

So far I'm more and more inclined to just throwing the board into storage room and buying a new one with any dimensions I might come up with a nice design for. 🤷‍♀️

 

[disturbman]

That might be a good idea. You can always reused it for another module. The V70 piece is good to link modules.

Which plan do you like the most so far?

[KateM]

2 minutes ago, disturbman said:

The V70 piece is good to link modules.

Is that because modules might not fit perfectly for a normal track piece? 

 

2 minutes ago, disturbman said:

Which plan do you like the most so far?

Numbers 8 and 16 are my favourites, at least for now. Number 8 has six tracks which is something I was looking for, while being very compact, also there is no track hidden behind the depot building. No V70 is a plus. Number 16 is the closest one to an ideal of having one track from which all spur tracks diverge to one side, like ∕≣. Entry track is closer to the corner of the board so the module might be put to the side of another module (station?) or the module itself can incorporate a parallel track next to the entry track. Non-straight connections between modules might be done using the little S35, S70, or S140 girder bridges that can be connected as a normal piece on one side and supported by a pillar on the other side. Like this ↓. Or by a curved bridge, like this ↓. However I'm afraid I'm just coming up with ideas that are nice on paper but very cumbersome in reality.

   

[disturbman]

 

10 hours ago, katem said:

Is that because modules might not fit perfectly for a normal track piece? 

Yes, I would think so. It allows you to adjust the length as to have each modules flush with each others.

10 hours ago, katem said:

Non-straight connections between modules might be done using the little S35, S70, or S140 girder bridges that can be connected as a normal piece on one side and supported by a pillar on the other side. Like this ↓. Or by a curved bridge, like this ↓. However I'm afraid I'm just coming up with ideas that are nice on paper but very cumbersome in reality.

It might but I think you ought to try it. I also have seen Japanese modelers make what I would call micro scenerized modules, just the width of a single track to connect larger modules.