The Adorable Railway

[AzusaE353]

Building the Adorable Railway or ‘Airashi Tetsudo’

 

Firstly, why is it so adorable? The dimensions are 3m x 0.8m so that it is just the size of a very tall household door!

So ‘A-door-able’ suggested itself and links with the very Japanese idea of ‘joyful trains’.

 

This layout is small and that is because it is used at one end of a single car garage. The usual inside width of a one-car garage here is around 3.2m so it means the layout fits and is able to be moved about when needed. I have downsized from a large home to a more modest villa with a garage and still want to have some modelling potential.

 

The design allows enough space to partially put the bonnet of the car under the layout so that positioning the car in the garage is not critical. The requirement for car space is also the reason for no cross beams or bracing at the front. The rear “hinge beam” is attached to the legs by big plywood corner braces to make sure the whole thing is robust. While in general I think it will work just fine, I think that I will keep the car out from under when still hot. I can imagine that the timber frame may take offense if a hot engine is left too close too often.  

 

It is also designed to come apart in 5 modest sized and ‘flat-ish’ pieces so that it can be transported easily if needed. With such a small structure it was an easy decision to paint the lot. An earthy colour for the visible part that will have track and scenery, light colours under the board to make wiring comfortable and white strips on the front of the legs as a visual reference to avoid hitting the layout when parking the car. The first image below shows the basic dimensions and the 5 major components.

 

It is a very light construction of pine battens and 7mm plywood; a lot lighter than I would usually build! It is glued and screwed to give as much strength in the joints as possible. The legs are a similar construction with the plywood panels helping to provide bracing. Casters on the legs make it simple to move around for general access but it also has a hinge along the back to allow it to be tilted to wire under the baseboard in comfort.

 

An experimental feature is the use of gas struts to hold the whole lot up when working underneath. This has been successful so far but I am also aware of the significant force from the gas struts on the frame when the board is horizontal. I want to keep to light construction and am hoping that there is no long-term warping of the timber by the gas struts. [I used two 200N struts which means support for a 40kg weight. The baseboard is about 20kg bare but with about 2:1 leverage the board has on the struts this is close enough.]

 

That is the build details, so what of the track plan? Basically a 4 track double-end staging yard behind a scenic backdrop. From this, a single track mainline will lead to a small junction station which has a branch to a terminus. The mainline then returns to the staging yard. A basic loop in other words.

 

The station layout is loosely based on Kobuchizawa on the Chuo East Mainline. The track plan is designed to allow typical Japanese passenger operation of Limited Express, Rapid and Local services as well as branchline operation. All trains will be diesel/diesel railcar as I have not got the patience to manufacture N scale catenary but feel a bit uncomfortable running electrics with no wire (just a personal foible!)

 

I will also cheat and have more freight than normal so that I can have some shunting operations as well as through running JRF block trains like tank, container and refrigerator.

 

Yep, no Shinkansen. I am trying to capture the regional flavour of Japanese railways and my little baseboard does not really have space for a high-speed line. I might squeeze in a short tram line though!

[cteno4]

Really nice bench work! Hinge up design is great. Instead of gas struts what about a couple of simple sticks that can hold the layout in the up position ala car hood prop? They will be a bit in the way but I agree the pressure in the frame with a gas strut will be intense. If holding near or at vertical not a lot of force needed to hold it upright so sticks could be at a diagonal only part way out the legs and bench top. They also sell hinging locking mechs to hold the lids up on good sized chests that might work.

 

will be fun to watch this evolve! Kudos on the bench work, nicely done.

 

jeff

[AzusaE353]

Yeah, simple sticks are simple but since the post was written a while ago I have used the gas struts and they are like magic being able to just tilt and work underneath or on top. The hard part is to get the correct force with the struts. Initially they were perfect but adding the control panel at the front has put just a little more weight on a long lever arm so they are balanced but more weight will put them on the edge of equilibrium. Even that is not so bad as the ball ends of the gas struts unclip with screwdriver encouragement so I could go up in force level a little if I really do need it. I will post a bit more info when I have some working pix to show how it is going. So far the pine frame is easily coping with the forces involved.

[DenshaTen]

Great work so far! I'm very excited to see the track plan and the layout develop 🙂

[AzusaE353]

This is what the gas strut installation looks like. So far the timber has not complained and the brackets are hefty but that is the standard part that is supplied. 

[cteno4]

Looks good. I guess my only concern is it’s bolted to a thin spot on the cross piece there with that slot cut out in it. I guess if any distress you could add a metal bar on the far side of the cross piece that extend out a ways on either side of the strut bracket to distribute the load some and beef up the cross piece. Hard to tell what will happen with time.

 

jeff

[AzusaE353]

Totally agree Jeff. I was loathe to do it but with the interest in experimentation I kept going.

The other side has the full depth of the cross piece. I had in mind backing up the gas strut connection with an short length of pine if I saw any problems.

So far it has survived 6 months of open and close without a hitch.  I cannot see any incipient failure, like a crack starting. But just to repeat, the cross pieces and diagonal bracing were all glued and screwed to make the structure as robust and integral as possible.

 

The sandwich of a metal plate on the back face is the back up plan as you suggest.

Hence the bolts left long enough to carry a metal over-plate. I am quite happy to fool around structurally as whatever I learn is then available to others to use. 

 

The interesting thing is that the timber has been so tolerant and robust. One important thing was to select the pine parts to be completely knot free so that full strength was in all parts. The tilt function is sweet though for wiring work! (see below)

[cteno4]

6 months, that’s a good period to see something. Sounds like it’s holding the stress well.

 

yes clear wood, especially on small dimensional lumber is so important. But these days you have to pay thru the nose to get it! I’ve moved over to using 12, 15, and 18mm Baltic birch ply and cutting strips of it to make dimensional lumber. It’s cheaper (even with the rise of Baltic birch prices) than clear dimensional lumber and it holds up better to warping. I’ve been amazed by its strength.

 

anyhow wonderful to be able to work on wiring like that! How much time I’ve spent upside sown on layouts! 
 

cheers,
 

jeff

[AzusaE353]

OK Quick and dirty track plan. The idea is that the Chuo line runs from Shinjuku (Tokyo) to Muratomo and beyond. The hidden sidings form the start and finish points for a train.

The action is at Kobuchizawa a junction station for the Khumo overland line. (which is not a terminal line as I have set it)

I can run Limited Express, Rapid and a Kobuchizawa terminating local for passenger service. The branchline is a single car as is typical on the actual Khumo line. Interspersed with busy passenger will be block JRF trains of containers, tank and refrigerated fish loads from west coast sources like Kanazawa.

I will also operate a late night parcels express and a local freight to shunt the yard and leave traffic for the Khumo branch. Of course there will be an occasional tourist steam special to the branchline in the middle of everything else just for a bit of spice.

I am really cheating with so much JRF traffic but the idea is to have plenty of variety and a busy timetable trying to fit JRF around passenger services. With such a small layout I need the traffic intensity to sustain the operational interest.

[AzusaE353]

I did not mention in the previous post that the track plan is designed with Tomix Fine Track components. I have built layouts previously with flex track or hand laid and spiked and am now happy to take a slight hit in the realism to have quick installation with ballast formed and generally excellent alignment. I am using tiny track screws (about 1.5mm dia) with a Phillips head 00 driver which makes it easy to rework track sections for minor improvements. It is also easy to lay the curves with some packing on one side to get some proper superelevation on the mainline. 

[AzusaE353]

Update: The backscene/view block is in place and preliminary colouring in place. This has been curved in corners to avoid a sharp line in the backscene.  Track all laid and experiments with a tram line through the town begun. It was to be a dual line tram but the roadway started to dominate what is supposed to be a regional town so the tram was reduced to a single line. More experiments resulted in the tram becoming a single track service behind the town which is a little like some of the trams around the north east of Kyoto. With track down the scenery is being roughed in with shaped styrofoam rescued from packaging. Wiring is taking a back seat for now as there may be some minor re-arrangement of the track position. Where the there is confidence in track location three aspect colour light signals are being located and station platforms trial fitted. The dream is to use Arduino control for the colour light signals triggered from section switches simulating Centralised Traffic Control.  Cork sheet is being used for roadways. The power for everything except train control is from a computer power supply which has enough grunt for the whole layout and comes in 3.3V, 5V and 12V supplies.

I have found that as I add scenery, control panel and structures that the original gas struts are struggling and I had to replace them with next size up. (220N upgraded to 300N) but this was easy as the struts just pop on and off the ball ends. The new gas struts have ample capacity so the message is that using this method works well but go up a size right from the start. There is more but it waits until I have a few more pertinent images.