New micro layout that also fits into an IKEA Billy bookcase

[MeTheSwede]

Having "almost finished" my first 26 x 75cm N-scale layout that is measured to fit a shelf in an IKEA Billy, I've already for some time been planing for another layout, or should I say module, as it will be built to fit together with my first one, extending the line that goes to the harbour. I thought I should let you in on the plannig process.

 

This time I'm putting less restrictions on the layout design by not putting in a loop. I want trains to pass through the layout, not around it. It's going to be a crowded urban landscape with some street running, a station with a meeting track and a couple of abandoned freight spurs. This way I can have both a plausable contemporary scene with some light rail or trams, and I can be a bit playful when I want to and operate the layout as a switching puzzle deivering freight cars to the abandoned spurs using the meeting track as a run around.

 

 

My planning process consists of drawing the size of the layout on a couple of A3 papers and then trying out possible track geometry and placement of streets and buildings.

 

 

This was the first iteration that I thought worthy of taking a photo of so that I could set it up again later for further tinkering. My very first versions had a longer street running section and a straight station area. I decided that an angled station area would produce more visual interest than having the track go straight. To the left of the station area you can see where I planned to have a level crossing. Some empty plots can be seen in this photo. I was planning to add more buildings later.

 

 

 

A view of the street running section. All the time I'm moving buildings around, trying to find visually interesting viewing angles.

 

 

 

Sometimes just leaving a small gap between two buildings can create something interesting.

 

Sorry about my very grainy photos taken in bad lighting. I wasn't planing to show them for anyone when I took them.

 

 

 

On this photo from another planning session, I'm working on trying to break up the street grid by having the crossing street winding across the layout. Something else I'm experiementing with here is putting a single storey building at a strategic location to make the street intersection more visible.

 

 

 

An aerial view of this version. Streets go parallell with both long edges of the layout "off the layout" so to say. Maybe a lane will be modelled, or just the sidewalks.

 

 

 

This scene with the train leaving the station looked promising, but there's not much room for station platforms.

 

 

 

Another attempt at getting a winding street. The problem is that getting buildings to fit reasonably with a winding street is tricky to say the least. I don't mind scratchbuilding a couple of houses for weirdly shaped plots, but I don't want to end up having to scratch building nearly everything.

 

 

 

 

An aerial view of another version with buildings almost falling of the layout in the lower left corner. The upper right corner with trains disappearing in between buildings looked promising.

 

The next update will feature what I think is the final track configuration.

 

 

[Junech]

Looks like it will be a really nice addition to your current layout.

 

One thought that came to my mind regarding the windy street. Instead of the normal street, you could opt for an intersection like Enoshima Electric Railway has. (Google Maps).

 

If you don't want to put the platform between the tracks and gain a bit more space for them on the outside you could change the track like this (bottom one is the new option):

 

Whatever you choose I'm looking forward to the building process.

 

Junech

[MeTheSwede]

Thanks for your input Junech.

I found that the missing piece was Y-turnouts. In hindsight I wonder why I didn't use them from the start or at least earlier in the design process as I've spent quite a few sessions tinkering with stuff.

 

 

Now I've got a symmetrical station with room for platforms on both sides. The train garage also makes for a more realistic looking layout in my opinion. It does however block a lot of the view as seen from the topside of this photo making the natural side to sit when operating the layout being from the lower side of the picture.

 

 

The street running section got a bit shorter, but still gives pretty much the same impression as originally, despite new track and all new buildings. Here, 103mm curves were purged and 140mm curves were installed again.

 

Buildings got moved around again as I found I had somehow placed the track wrong, not lining it up with my existing layout.

 

 

 

Time to put some paint on the wide tram pieces. Mixing the same colour as on the existing layout was tricky and I ended up doing a lot of coats.

 

 

Here the track is positioned in the correct place. At this point I experimented with some shunting puzzling and it proved great for that.

 

 

 

Connected to the existing layout.

 

 

Experimenting with a very narrow street. The building in the middle of the shot blocks too much, and will have to go.

 

[katoftw]

You've done so much with such a small space. Looks great.

[MeTheSwede]

On 9/18/2024 at 12:12 AM, katoftw said:

You've done so much with such a small space. Looks great.

 

I really like those dense urban areas in Japan that are characterised by tiny land plots built up with family homes and small business. They make for great walkable neighbourhoods packed with visual interest and the diminutive scale of everything makes that type of environment very suitable to modell in a small footprint layout.

 

 

Time to move away from paper and create the base for the layout.

 

 

Here I'm simly using the track as a template for cutting the foamboard.

 

 

 

The bottom layer is 5mm foamboard which I have painted brown for some reason. The Tomix widetram track is 6mm thick, so I'm putting a 1mm foamboard as a middle layer (seen here on top) and then another 5 mm foamboard (seen under the 1mm one) on top of that. Some white woodglue makes everything stick together.

 

 

 

Checking that everything fits together.

 

 

 

Here is after I've dealth with the still unpainted track pieces and I'm trying out where to put up catenary poles. Finding good places for the poles is a bit tricky.

 

As you can see, some houses are still moving around, although in other places it seems like buildings are starting to settle into place.

 

 

 

In order to be able to view buildings properly (other than from above) space without buildings are also needed. I've got some ideas for this space and I might end up tackling it early on, although who knows, my ideas might change completely.

 

 

 

Some rather shabby looking trees that have been around for a long time help out with giving me an idea of where I want greenery and how much of it. The amount of green space on this layout will be very limited.

[Beaver]

Very reminiscent of Enoshima station on the Enoden, the minimal passing loop and some stubby sidings, surrounded by tightly packed modest buildings, just before the start of a street running section.

[MeTheSwede]

On 9/20/2024 at 1:06 AM, Beaver said:

Very reminiscent of Enoshima station on the Enoden, the minimal passing loop and some stubby sidings, surrounded by tightly packed modest buildings, just before the start of a street running section.

 

Walking along the Enoden Line has certainly inspired me.

 

 

So far I've been doing "catch up" in this thread, compressing a lot of planning and replanning into a couple of posts. From here on you get to follow along my (usually) pretty slow modelling pace. But this week a major milestone was completed, as all the white surfaces disappeared. All buildings came off and the laying of asphalt commenced, as I got that roll of self-adhesive "concrete imitation" tapestry roll out again.

 

 

 

This time I've reached the conclusion that paving pretty much everything first and removing or covering later as needed, is the way to go.

 

 

And the underside. This base is getting very sturdy.

 

 

 

The new look of the street running section.

 

 

 

A view from one of the still non-existant station platforms. I'm planning to have a small pedestrian crossing of the tracks right infront of where the railcar is.

.

 

 

There is more depth than I expected here.

 

[Beaver]

4 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

This time I've reached the conclusion that paving pretty much everything first and removing or covering later as needed, is the way to go.

 

Definitely an overall base covering/colouring is a good idea. I always start by painting the entire ground in soil brown so that every uncovered area looks like bare earth. But a concrete or tarmac colour may be better for an entirely built-up scene.

[MeTheSwede]

As buildings are of course a major part of this layout I thought I should provide some inside into some of those were I do at least a bit more than just unboxing and doing the super simple assembly that comes with Tomytec and Kato buildings.

 

Recently I picked up a Greenmax 2218 structure kit which allows for building 6 little shops.

 

 

As you can see, the kit consists mainly of big pieces that are easy to cut apart and glue together. There's an instruction (which you won't need to look much at) and "window panes, store fronts and a stickers set (all of which didn't make it into my picture for some reason).

 

Everything is kind of modular, so it's possible to pick and chose pieces to assemble together in ones own creative ways. A prepainted version of this set but with 3 buildings was recently put up for preorders as Greenmax 2645.

 

 

 

I tried something new with this kit, the walls got a white primer paint layer and then I gave them a very short burst of beige spray paint. Spray painting I simply do in a cardboard box with the pieces attached with blu tack to a piece of off-cut foam for easy handling. Here I'm painting the windows and the back door gray with a small brush after the spray painted paint has dried.

 

 

 

The window balustrades and air conditioner doesn't come with the kit, I just had them nearby and felt they seemed like a good addition. (The kit come with other balustrades instead.) The signage I picked for this building says "Japanes sweets" and there's a "store background sticker" that goes along well with it. The instructions indicates the sticker should be placed right behind the "glass" of the storefront as in the photo above, but that doesn't look quite right to me.

 

 

 

Placing it on the back wall clearly didn't look well either, so I decided to put it about half way into the building which looked about right to me.

 

 

 

The building might be moved in the future, but here it is for now at least.

 

[Kamome]

On 9/22/2024 at 10:25 PM, MeTheSwede said:

This time I've reached the conclusion that paving pretty much everything first and removing or covering later as needed, is the way to go.

I agree. Same concept as just getting paint on to the canvas. The brain tends to over think when you’re staring at a blank one and just getting stuff down helps ease you in and get the creativity flowing. 

[cteno4]

really fun to watch come together! I agree with pavement it’s easiest to paint the base pavement color and then overlay stuff or paint over than trying to paint in streets the other way around.
 

I’ve found  when playing with scenes to use pieces of cheap colored construction paper to visualize roads and dirt. Simple bold colors tend to pop your visual memory in gear and you start to see a lot more with your mind’s eye the for planning. It’s funny how jsut a few cues gets the mind going.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

Tomytec released new versions of their "shops in front of the station" (product numbers 106-3, 107-3 and 108-3) in July and a copy of each set recently found their way to Sweden.

 

 

 

Here is 108-3, a ramen restaurant and a pizzeria.

 

The vast majority of buildings in Japanese cities have some kind of white, off-white, light grey or light beige colour, whereas model buildings released on average tend to be a bit more colourful. I decided to give that very black ramen shop a paint job. Also the white signage stickers on deep red sign board didn't look appealing to me.

 

The clear plastic pieces that covers most of the inside to provide glass panes were removed with some difficulty and then I decided to mask the dark brown windows with masking tape before giving the building a spray paint job. Masking the windows was rather time consuming as there are many of them and my experience with masking tape is rather limited.

 

The walls where sprayed with grey primer and the signage boards with white. After assembly everything recieved some weathering.

 

 

 

Here's my now unique looking ramen shop.

 

 

 

And here's the backside with all those tedious windows. I think it has found it's place on the layout.

 

 

[tossedman]

Looking good! Will it end up will a Billy book shelf full of shelf modules? Be a cool way to store them all if you did. Adding some glass doors to you Billy book shelf would keep them dust free but harder to see.

 

Cheers,

 

Todd

[N-Osoi]

On 9/22/2024 at 9:25 PM, MeTheSwede said:

paving pretty much everything first and removing or covering later as needed, is the way to go

Looks cool!

 

I was thinking about why unitrack and similar looks a bit strange when just plopped down on a bare surface, as opposed to bare tracks, and maybe the rail base lifts it up and just breaks the illusion too much... having this paving that raises the ground up really counters that effect somewhat. I really enjoy seeing your stuff.

[MeTheSwede]

17 hours ago, tossedman said:

Looking good! Will it end up will a Billy book shelf full of shelf modules? Be a cool way to store them all if you did. Adding some glass doors to you Billy book shelf would keep them dust free but harder to see.

 

Cheers,

 

Todd

 

I've got three billys with doors with the upper half being glass, and model trains have been slowly encroaching into them for some time. I've been toying with the idea of making enough modules for a loop, maybe 8, but they would still fit in a single Billy. Anyway that's far off, as I'll probably be busy with detailing this one for a year or so.

 

Putting my layout modules behind closed doors has the dual advantage of being both dust safe and pet safe.

 

 

 

[tossedman]

1 hour ago, MeTheSwede said:

I've got three billys with doors with the upper half being glass, and model trains have been slowly encroaching into them for some time. I've been toying with the idea of making enough modules for a loop, maybe 8, but they would still fit in a single Billy. Anyway that's far off, as I'll probably be busy with detailing this one for a year or so.

 

Putting my layout modules behind closed doors has the dual advantage of being both dust safe and pet safe.

I'm going to have to steal a shelf from one of our Billies and give this a go. Your dual advantages are both things people have been trying to solve for decades. Looking forward to seeing where you take this.

 

 Cheers,

 

Todd

[MeTheSwede]

On 10/6/2024 at 5:37 AM, N-Osoi said:

Looks cool!

 

I was thinking about why unitrack and similar looks a bit strange when just plopped down on a bare surface, as opposed to bare tracks, and maybe the rail base lifts it up and just breaks the illusion too much... having this paving that raises the ground up really counters that effect somewhat.

 

I'm also getting this illusion breaking effect from Unitrack on a flat surface, due to the hight of the trackbed and the sides having an angle stepness of the ballast that violates physics. With the lower height of Tomix finetrack the physics breaking is quite a bit less obvious. With the ground on the sides built up enough, the problem goes away with either track system.

 

 

On 10/6/2024 at 5:37 AM, N-Osoi said:

I really enjoy seeing your stuff.

 

Thank you!

 

I'm looking forward to see your builds too.

[MeTheSwede]

I thought I should provide a quick look at how the layouts/modules come together. As usual I'm going with the simplest solution I can find.

 

 

 

The track was never supposed to continue here, but with it ending perpendicular to the edge it was easy to just make the small piece of foamboard at the end of the track removable. The piece of course ought to have got a bumper on it, but as with many other things I haven't gotten around to getting that done.

 

 

 

As the foamboard piece gets removed, this normal (widetam) track piece takes it's place.

 

 

 

To make removal of the connecting track piece easier, the plastig plugs have been compressed with a pair of plyers so that it's mainly the railjoiners that keep the track pieces together when the modules are assembled. Thus modules easily come appart with a gentle pull.

 

 

 

Here it is assembeled together. It was all done without measuring and calculating. I simply connected the old layout with the new track before fixing the track in place on the new module.

 

 

 

And a train driver's view.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

My brain can't handle this much progress in such a short time 😄

 

Love the train driver's view!

 

[cteno4]

Excellent Swede! I can just imagine this growing more and more! Make some corners or 45s and end up with a wonderful meandering layout. 
 

jeff

[Kamome]

Love the little harbour scene. Could maybe model a little temporary loading platform on wheels for the odd fish van. Lots of debris on the quayside and rusty stuff. 

 

I can already smell the seaweed.

 

Think everyone needs a harbour on their layout 😁

[MeTheSwede]

On 10/8/2024 at 11:28 AM, Martijn Meerts said:

My brain can't handle this much progress in such a short time 😄

 

 

Imagine if I spent a third of the time I'm internet browsing on layout building instead, then I would be already finished. 😅

 

Knowing how lazy I am a 0.2 m^2 layout is the right size of a project for me. 

[MeTheSwede]

8 hours ago, Kamome said:

Love the little harbour scene. Could maybe model a little temporary loading platform on wheels for the odd fish van. Lots of debris on the quayside and rusty stuff. 

 

I can already smell the seaweed.

 

Think everyone needs a harbour on their layout 😁

 

Scratchbuilding some kind of wooden jetty and adding some details in general like you mention has certainly been in my thoughts, but then I got carried away about making a 2nd layout module instead.

 

Harbour scenes are fun. For a while I contemplated making a harbour/industrial extension, but settled on the current project instead.

[MeTheSwede]

The next building presented is from Tomytec 107-3 which is also part of their "shops in front of the station" series.

 

 

This set includes a bento (lunch box) shop and a laundromat.

 

 

 

As each set includes stickers for all three sets, I've got plenty of spares now.

 

 

 

I wasn't planing on doing the laundromat (coin laundry) now, but that dryer sticker was too tempting to apply.

 

 

 

A cool looking interior detail.

 

Anyway, over to the bento box shop.

 

 

 

This building has a brick structured lower floor which just cries out for some off-white paint to fill the space in between the bricks.

 

After adding that, the roof and upper floor recieved some weathering, stickers were applied and the upper floor windows on the front got some curtains installed.

 

 

 

Bringing out a magnifying glass, I can see a bento these days costs between 500 and 650 yen. Bloody inflation!

 

The coffee shop is from the last iteration of the shops in front of the station series. The buildings are flying abit, as I've removed the bases but not the plastic clips (or whatever they are called?) that attaches the buildings onto the bases. Once I know the exact placement of the buildings, I'll remove all but two clips and make holes in the ground for them. I've found that to be a useful way of keeping buildings in place but at the same time allowing them to be easily removed and placed back in exactly the same spot when doing some detailing work or making room for my callphone camera.

 

[MeTheSwede]

On 10/6/2024 at 11:44 PM, tossedman said:

I'm going to have to steal a shelf from one of our Billies and give this a go. Your dual advantages are both things people have been trying to solve for decades. Looking forward to seeing where you take this.

I look forward to see what might come out of your plans.

 

I was going to say it's a pitty it isn't possible to fit in a 90 degree double track curve on a Billy sized module for those interested in modelling a mainline for full lenght rolling stock, but then I reminded myself that more trains than one might think will handle a 177 curve.

 

 

Here's a Tomix Yamanote Line commuter with original Arnold couplers and a Tomix 313 series with couplers changed to TN couplers that both reliably travel around a loop with 177mm curves. Of course they don't look good, but the curve could be hidden in a tunnel or behind tall scenery.

 

On the other hand just doing a section with no further plans and then hooking it up with some temporary placed track for a loop to watch some trains go round in sounds like a good idea too.