Yamahama - A newbie constructs a somewhat ambitious n-scale layout

[gavino200]

That looks great. Makes me reconsider wanting "ships" in favor of fishing boats. I think they'd fit much better with a mid-size layout. I love these little scenes you build, Swede!

[MeTheSwede]

On 7/5/2021 at 4:57 PM, gavino200 said:

That looks great. Makes me reconsider wanting "ships" in favor of fishing boats. I think they'd fit much better with a mid-size layout. I love these little scenes you build, Swede!

 

Something I've brought with me from my Lego modeling days is that I find putting lots and lots of small things into a layout more interesting than having a few big things. Small means more.

[MeTheSwede]

My layout just got some "blue paper water" since after all, it looks a lot better than foamboard. 😆

 

 

The opening of the Yamahama traditional fiskmarket right away turned into quite a popular spot both with tourists and among the locals. You can buy a fish, or just look at the catch and the boats or the workers stacking fish into the refrigerated cars on the backside. Or maybe just take a seat and count the waives as the little girl in pink is doing. She likes to remind her mother sitting next to her, that waive counting is a seriously underrated activity in today's stressful society.

 

I see a couple of very big fish in the red boat. I wonder how they will go about getting them ashore.

 

A Nagoya bound 313 series train travels past in the background.

 

Sorry about the iffy photo quality, didn't want to wait for daylight and didn't notice until now how bad it got. Just avoid trying to zoom please. Or pretend the photo has been intensionally weathered or something. 😉

 

[Kiha66]

Looks great!  I love little harbor scenes like that.

[cteno4]

Nice harbor scene! This is one of my favorite tomytec sets. Btw I found a way to make more of the big blue ice boxes, just sliced off sections or rectangular tubing stock to make the box and put strip of 010 styrene for bottom and 020 for top (you can leave the top off some being piled with ice and fish). Then two runners once bottom of 010 square stock to lift for forklift skids to go under. I’ll go dig them out. The loading area needs a ton of these as they have empty ones stacked up as well as full ones ready to load onto trucks.

 

many times these kinds of Japanese fishing boats will moor stern into a small dock, I think exactly for the very reason of easy offloading on the flat stern onto the dock and minimal dock space is tied up.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

I've done some updates to the track diagram I posted at the start of this thread. No big changes to the track, just another industrial spur (Mori Warehose). I've assigned numbers to the points to bring some order by numbering the 19 switch boxes. (Points with the same numbers are controlled by the same switch box.)

 

Despite having had this track plan more or less finished for months now, I only this week realised I didn't understand how best to utilise the shadow stations. For some reason my brain got totally stuck with the thought that I needed to have one destination in the right side shadow station and one destination in the left side shadow station, when in reality the left side shadow station can fit both freight destinations. Now I feel very silly.

 

Nagoya bound trains and Osaka bound trains will now end up in the same shadow station, but on different tracks as indicated in the track diagram below.

 

 

 

 

This is how freight operations will work:

A locomotive will pick up the cars on the "Nagoya track" of the shadow station for freight and pull them off the western (left) side of the map meaning the train will enter from the eastern (right) side of the map (as my layout's red and green lines are hidden loops). The locomotive will advance to Yamamura Station and park it's cars on the arrivals track (track 4) in the yard. The locomotive will run around the yard by using the run around track (6) to get to the eastern side of the yard and there and pick up the cars on the departure track (track 5). The train will now move back the same way it come, exiting the layout eastwards heading for Nagoya. The train will enter the Nagoya track again, where the cars will be dropped off using the Tomix uncoupler mechanism. The locomotive will progress to the bumper at the red filled circle and be switched over to the Osaka track.

 

On the Osaka track it will couple to the waiting cars pushing them up to the mainline. When the train is up on the mainline, it will now change direction and the locomotive pull an eastward traveling train. Reaching Yamamura it will drop of cars on the arrival track (track 4), run around (using track 6) and pick up the cars on the departure track (track 5). The train will then exit the layout heading west for Osaka. In the Shadow station the train will reverse into the Osaka track and the cars will be uncoupled with the Tomix uncoupler. The locomotiv travels up on the mainline again in order to be switched onto the Nagoya track and we are back at the start.

 

 

I've started working on the ground that will "cover" the freight shadow station. It will be two sections made out of foam that are liftable for easy access.

 

[Kamome]

These little harbours are squeezed in to small areas at times. Close to wear I live, there's a narrow inlet leading out to the sea, but has a small man-made quay to allow for 10 or so fishing boat moorings. The inlet goes underneath the JR mainline, elevated shinkansen line, main road and motorways.  It's a about 500 metres to the open sea. So these scenes don't have to exist right on the coast. If they do, they will always have breakwaters and tsunami defences. 

 

I want a little scene like this with some refrigerator cars.

[Tom C]

8 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

She likes to remind her mother sitting next to her, that waive counting is a seriously underrated activity in today's stressful society

Wonderful, just wonderful. Well done 🙂

 

Oh, and the photo looks just fine. It kinda has an early morning feel to it 👍

[MeTheSwede]

I've been planing to use waybills and car cards to direct my goods traffic ever since the start of this layout project. This week I got it up and running.

MarklinofSweden recently posted a tutorial video https://youtu.be/ipQP5Xp9eF0 and links to templates for waybills and car cards which I used to create my own designs. A couple of old cardboard boxes turned into material for making destination boxes.

 

If you don't understand what I'm talking about you can either watch the linked video or read my brief explanation below.

 

 

Brief explanation

Each destination on my layout has a destination box. Every rail car has a car card with a photo, id-number and a pocket to slip a waybill into. The waybill in the pocket tells where the car is going next. (It also has various flavour text that is not important). When a car is delivered to it's destination, the car card goes into the arrival folder of the corresponding destination box. Next "day" it is moved to the loading folder and the "day" after to the departure folder. At this point the waybill is rotated or flipped over to show the car's next destination.

 

 

This is what the location boxes looks like on the layout. They are simply hanging on the drawers, three on this side and five on the other side, positioned in a logical way "near" the destinations.

 

 

Today I also attached numbers and some symbols to the point control boxes to make it easier to understand how to operate them. I'm having a guest over tomorrow who doesn't know he will be turned into a guinea pig. Wish him good luck! 🙂

[cteno4]

Looks like fun, just don’t turn him into Cuy!

 

jeff

[Kanpai Keith]

Absolutely love how your layout is all coming together.  As a newbie I’m planning a micro layout for starters.  I’ve been confined to the dining table for the past year.

[gavino200]

On 7/14/2021 at 7:22 PM, cteno4 said:

Looks like fun, just don’t turn him into Cuy!

 

jeff

 

Technically he's already a Cuy. You just don't want to turn him into Cuy Asado 😉

[cteno4]

Yeah and he tastes like chicken!

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

3 hours ago, Kanpai Keith said:

Absolutely love how your layout is all coming together.  As a newbie I’m planning a micro layout for starters.  I’ve been confined to the dining table for the past year.

 

Thanks!  I'm looking forward to seeing your layout come together too.

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by MeTheSwede

[MeTheSwede]

The bus services around Yamamura Minami Station has improved, now offering commuters the possibility to change between the coastal train line and multiple bus lines. The inhabitants of Yamahama takes all public transport very seriously and demand good services.

 

 

Road safety is also improving in the city as badly needed road markings are starting to appear in some places.

 

Maybe our resident bus experts will be able to pin down the location of Yamahama now?

 

 

As usual I'm sorry about my crappy photography, but atleast the fuzzyness is good for camouflaging unfinished things. 😁

 

The road surfaces are spraypainted and lightly weathered 5mm foamboard. The solid white lines are Tamiya 1mm tape and the other road markings are stickers from TGW. I found out I needed the tape, because the stickers aren't really able to handle curves.

 

I spent a lot of time on Google Earth learning about roads and street markings before starting this part of the project. I also learnt some stuff about spray painting, including not spray painting on the balcony in the dark because I can't properly see what I'm doing and not spray painting on the balcony under windy conditions, because a single airborn cat hair can ruin my work.

[ianlaw]

A good looking area. Looks quite finished to the eye.

[MeTheSwede]

As summer vacation ended and I got from back to work, progress on the layout has slowed down again. I've done work on a three way intersection and then a parcel from Zenmarket arrived with 14 cars from various Yahoo auctions and some high school girls from Sakatsu, resulting in a traffic jam.

 

Yesterday I painted a set of Greenmax street lights and got some photos taken.

 

 

With so many new cars on the streets the local authorities thought it best to put up traffic lights at the intersection. 

 

 

As in many cities, the addition of new traffic lights aren't very popular among local motorists. This time I'm inclined to agree with their complaints, as it seems the traffic lights show red every time I come by looking at them.

 

 

Those of you who look closely might notice there are still a few stop lines missing on the streets. I also need to get some road signs up.

 

 

Not only are the traffic lights red, but there's a cement train comming too. Very annoying!

That's why people are better of doing their commute by train.

 

 

While the cars are waiting for green, high schoolers that have arrived by bus or train are crossing the road. Look, they're walking beside the crossing, even thought they're right in front of the police box! Young people these days, they don't have proper respect for authorities!

 

 

I've fixed down basically nothing permanenly at this point. As you can see one of the lamp posts are leaning dangerously. Earlier there was a nasty accident with a pedestrian knocked over by a falling traffic light pole, but luckily there were no permanent injuries suffered.

 

 

The elementary schoolers (from Kato) knows how to use a zebra crossing properly. They are too young to have been corrupted yet.

[Tom C]

I'm loving your posts and commentary. Keep up the good work 👍😊

[MeTheSwede]

I'm continuing to do a little bit here and there on the layout, not really finishing any parts of it. I haven't been doing much about the actual railway side of things in a very long while, partly because I didn't want to fix track in place before I was really sure that I had it were I want to have it. Anyway, I figured it was about time to get started with some ballasting.

 

 

To me, ballasting starts with sifting through material I have found outside. This produces one pile of stuff too big to be of any use at this point, one pile of regular ballast and one pile of fine material.

 

I started ballasting work at the end of my peninsula.

 

 

And here's my attempt at producing canted track. As so often I don't really know what I'm doing and experimenting as I go...

 

I've put 1mm thick foamboard at the inside of the tracks pieces and 3mm foamboard at the outer side. A bunch of cans helped me weight done the track so it could be glued into place. It was tricky to pull of as the track pieces wheren't very keen on being treated this way!

 

During this process the inside track got pushed inwards and I ended up with a few milimeters too large distance between the tracks throughout the curve. I didn't even notice this until I had started ballasting. This will likely annoy me for ages... Oh well, atleast it didn't end up the opposite which would have been much worse.

 

 

I've bought myself a very cheap airbrush. I blew som burnt umber from Valejo, mixed with water, through it to paint the tracks.

 

As it's common on the proptype to see replaced sleepers in lighter grey shades mixed among older ones, I cleaned of more or less paint from some sleepers to reproduce this effect. I wasn't really sure to what extent I wanted to do this. Do I even want to try to model ugly imperfections? 🤔

 

 

The first ballasted section is finished. I realise installing catenary poles before adding ballast would probably have been a smart move...

 

Eventually a rural landscape is supposed to grow up here, although that is likely far into the future.

[Madsing]

These tracks really look good! So the height difference between the inner and outer rails has to be as much as 2 mm? Did you try to run trains on that section already?

[railsquid]

On 8/16/2021 at 4:46 AM, MeTheSwede said:

 

 

 

As usual I'm sorry about my crappy photography, but atleast the fuzzyness is good for camouflaging unfinished things. 😁

 

The road surfaces are spraypainted and lightly weathered 5mm foamboard. The solid white lines are Tamiya 1mm tape and the other road markings are stickers from TGW. I found out I needed the tape, because the stickers aren't really able to handle curves.

 

I spent a lot of time on Google Earth learning about roads and street markings before starting this part of the project.

 

 

Looks very good to me, and most plausibly Japanese 👍  (I've seen quite a few  "Japanese" layouts where the roads and buildings have been arranged as they would be in Europe or N. America, which looks very odd).

[MeTheSwede]

16 hours ago, Madsing said:

These tracks really look good! So the height difference between the inner and outer rails has to be as much as 2 mm? Did you try to run trains on that section already?

 

Since the rails aren't at the edge of the track pieces, the height difference between the rails shoud be less than 2 mm. I suspect it's slightly less than Tomix's canted track pieces, but I don't own any to compare with.

 

Train running was the first priority as the cans got taken off. When I was strugling with fixing the track pieces I was expecting a bad result, but it turned out very well.

[MeTheSwede]

16 hours ago, railsquid said:

 

Looks very good to me, and most plausibly Japanese 👍  (I've seen quite a few  "Japanese" layouts where the roads and buildings have been arranged as they would be in Europe or N. America, which looks very odd).

 

Thanks!

 

I've spent quite a bit of time on Google Street View looking at road markings, bus stops, traffic lights and stuff. Just 10 years ago, it must have been so much harder to get the details right for people located outside of the country. Not that I'm trying to represent all details... I'm neither competent enough nor patient enough for that. But "plausibly Japanese", that pretty much sums up what I'm aiming for.

[MeTheSwede]

 

I've continued ballasting on the layout. Getting the points clean enough for my JR diesel locomotive Type DE10 to travel happily has been a pain, but I've really enjoyed seeing the details of the track area come together. This section is mostly finished now as today I painted and installed signals.

 

The little road next to tracks remains a paper mock up and the houses along it are temporarilly placed.

 

 

The museum railway put up some yellow fences to prevent their volunteer shunting crew from getting run over by express trains on the main line.

 

 

Other yellow fences were mainly put up to prevent train otakus from getting crushed by trains. Wouldn't want anyone accidently run over by a 313 series, when there are so many more rare and interesting trains that could end you.

[MeTheSwede]

 

And here's the 313 series heading for Nagoya. Time for the train otakus to put those cameras to use!

 

 

The weeds and bushes next to the engine shed are getting a bit out of control, but the tourists seem to like to see railways a bit overgrown, so I guess they'll have to stay.

 

 

I bet you didn't notice the rail feeder on the last photo. This angle gives you a sporting chance.

 

 

We have a train meeting as the 313-series meets the "Nanki wide view" limited express with final destination Kii-Katsuura.