Segmental Layout - Ichiba

[Martijn Meerts]

That's a lot of interior detail, looking good!

 

[Junech]

A Fremo meetup and many club projects are taking up a lot of time, but I finally found a little time to spend on my N-scale projects.

 

First, the main building got its "glass" for the windows and 2 signs for the stores. On the inside, the inlays for the different floors are now glued in as well. Next will be thinking about the inside of the rooms. Especially the shops since you can look inside through the big windows. I'm still undecided about what will be on the top floors...

 

 

Some work on the diorama itself was done, too. I put down the road surface and painted it with the base color. A bit more weathering and markings until the streets are done. The bumper and the fence around it are set-up as well. And so are the sleepers that are put into the ground as a kind of fence between the street and the railway.

 

I also started to paint the platform, but a lot more work on that one.
 

[Junech]

The catenary Kamome is in planning (https://jnsforum.com/community/topic/19155-neon-noir-designs/?do=findComment&comment=265072), which gave me the idea of having it on the layout. But I wasn't sure how it would look with the tight curves I have.

 

So I printed the file he shared and calculated how far apart they would roughly need to be. I followed the NEM 201 norm for N scale and a narrow pantograph for the calculations. That left me with a maximum of 1.5 mm outside the track center to avoid losing contact with the wire. For curves, there was a formula for the lengths of the individual straight sections: 4*sqrt(radius*1.5mm). That gave me 72mm for the outside curve. To have an even amount of sections, I reduced it to roughly 65mm.

 

All together, it looks like this:

 

 

It looks quite tight, but Enoshima Electric Railway has some really close masts, too. So it shouldn't be a problem. I will need to think about my railroad crossing, though. Not much space left for the road between the masts. So either need to relocate the road or get a special mast.

I knew that there were masts I was looking for in German catenary installations, but I needed to search for one on Japanese railway lines. Luckily, I found one at Ogaki station:

 

With two of those I could put them on the outside where there is more space and still put the road in the planned position.

 

Another thing I need to look into is how they handle the masts in train stations. Will need to look into that.