Warauchi Onsen Station

[Pashina12]

So I decided I'd leave the Planning Aizu thread to research and planning of the "big" dream layout, and start a new thread for the actual development and construction of my shelf layout: a fictitious place in Aizu, either on the Aizu Line or the Tadami Line, circa 1969. The name Warauchi (藁家) comes from a Japanification of my surname; I'm thinking to add the Onsen part to have a hint of why this station has such a large area for receiving passengers.

 

 

This is the plan I'm going with. Note the stuff aside from the tracks aren't really to scale, and the positioning of things is subject to change, but this is the general idea: station at the back, paper mill at the front (I decided to call the paper mill the Aizu Paper Company to set the region as being Aizu). I have in mind to have a highway bridge going over the retaining wall, but I'll hold off on that decision until I've got something of the mountains in place (that process will start with the building of the tunnel).

 

Since I can't do any tracklaying until the posties go back to work and deliver my package, I have to do other things to keep myself engaged with this until then. Having discovered that the library at my university has a makerspace with laser cutters, 3D scanners, 3D printers, etc, that is free for students and faculty to use for any purpose, I decided I'll take advantage of that in the building of this layout.

 

Once, long ago, when Shapeways was a new thing, I got as far as designing a chassis for a BL2 in TT scale, which successfully printed, too; designing the complex curves of the body proved beyond me, though, so that project was abandoned. But I got into Tinkercad and to do something simple to get a feel for it, I drew up the big sign for the Kyodo Oil filling station that will be at the left front of the layout:

 

This is drawn to be 8 cm high (longer than I need, actually, but figure that way is better so I can bury the legs in holes in the layout surface). The kanji on the sign are raised 1 mm from the surface, so should be easy to paint. It'd be super cool if I could make each one illuminated but that's far beyond my abilities as of yet, so I'll stick with the easier way for now. Maybe replace down the road. Anyways the idea is to print two of these (the bottom is flat), and glue them together to make the final product; hopefully 1 mm for the supporting rods is thick enough to work...

[Pashina12]

With the end of the semester here, I now have plenty of free time to do things such as work on this project. Since it's been years since I've done any modelling - the last thing I did was weathering a TT scale locomotive 4 or 5 years ago - I figured I'd get my feet wet with something small: the Sankei "Bus Stop A" kit. Tiny little thing, and rather frail, since it's almost all just thin bracing. Still, if other Sankei kits are like this, then I look forward to doing the shrine kit I have, and will definitely consider others as this project moves along.

 

The kit came with printed paper representations of the corrugated metal sheathing used for the walls; using that I think would have detracted from the appearance of the fine lacework that the laser cut pieces are. Happily in my stash of materials I have some old Keystone Locomotive Works corrugated metal sheet, and lucky break, the corrugations on that are the same width as on the printed ones that came with the kit. It's actually metal, but thin and easy to work with, can cut with scissors or x-acto. So I used the paper ones only on the inside, and used the metal for the outside; I now regret having used the paper at all, but I'm not taking it apart.

 

First I weathered the floor, using Tamiya acrylics applied with a blending tortillon: first layer Brown X-9, second layer NATO brown XF-68, third layer Flat Earth XF-52, and finally JA Grey XF-14. I used the tortillon because with this I could get finer control with both streakiness and where it goes, and being paper, deposits much less paint than a brush would do.

 

I then weathered the bench, again with Tamiya acrylics. First, I used a 3:3:2 mix of JA Grey XF-14, Pink X-17, and Flat Earth XF-52 applied with the tortillon to fade the spots that get sat on the most, followed by a light drybrushing of XF-52. I was very happy with the result... and then I inserted the sitting part of the bench upside down. x_x No matter, it won't be too visible.

 

To weather the sheet metal, I started with a 4:1:1 mix of Tamiya Sky Grey XF-19, JA Grey XF-14, and Gun Metal X-10, drybrushing it to cover most of the surface, but leaving some shiny spots here and there. Then came a 2:1 mix of RAF Ocean Grey XF-82 and Gun Metal X10, again drybrushed, somewhat more sparingly than the first layer. Then came the first layer of rusting, which was a roughly 1:1 mix of Testors 1151 Copper and 1184ZA Zinc Chromate applied with a tortillon, followed by PollyScale GTW Morency Orange and ATSF Red applied with a toothpick to give some variation to the rust patches. Then I gave the metal surface a wash of well-thinned Chinese calligraphy ink, and finally, I ran over the edges of the metal/paper walls with a pencil, to reduce the whiteness a bit. To distract attention from the bench and the paper walls inside, I added a lady in a kimono sitting on the bench, and a couple of schoolkids standing to the side to wait for the bus, all from Tomytec sets; kimono lady I think helps with giving a mid-Showa rural atmosphere.

 

All told there's about an hour and a half of actual sitting-at-the-table-working in it, and I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out, when I look at the model itself, and not the photographs, which of course bring all the flaws to light when focussing in so closely. The seeming flaws visible are mostly still the whiteness of the edges of the paper, and the fact that the rust patches do look more like paint than rust - but both of these are much less apparent with the naked eye than under the camera lens.

 

[Pashina12]

Got to playing around with how the east end of the layout is laid out, and I realised it's better to have the track curve towards the front of the layout - this will make it easier to see and to work on the tunnel area. Also, I'm considering a couple of options for the east end of the paper mill and the adjacent area:

 

 

 

Either lengthen the track leading into the new building where pulp is unloaded, and have one house in the empty area between it and the cliff, or keep it short and have two old houses in there, at the end of a gravel road... thinking I prefer the second option.

 

For the top of the mountain area, thinking of having it mostly wooded, with a footpath to the little shrine, maybe with some rickety old stairs built against the cliff-face leading up to the trail from beside the tunnel portal...

 

I found a Tomytec battery-powered LED lighting kit that I forgot I had - I'll be using that to light the buildings, will need to order at least one more. I wonder if there are street lamps/station lamps that can plug into those, too?

[Pashina12]

Since the tunnel/mountain area will define how much space I have to work with for the Nittsu yard and the old residential area, as well as the shape of those areas, I decided to get started on that with the construction of the tunnel and adjacent retaining wall.

 

The tunnel is made of Evergreen .040" styrene sheet and whatever spare thick strip styrene I had in the plastic stash for bracing. The inside of the tunnel is .010" sheet, painted with Tamiya USAAF Neutral Grey AS10 from a spraybomb, then drybrushed with XF82 RAF Ocean Grey to get some streaky weathering inside; I did the painting and weathering before installing the sheet inside the tunnel structure. The retaining wall is cut from a piece of Greenmax 2153 stone wall type B - this type of retaining wall is common on the (now abandoned parts of the) Aizu Line.

 

There's still a lot to do on these pieces until they're finished, but setting them into position on the shelf is really helping me to visualise how things will/can be arranged at that end of the layout.

 

[Pashina12]

And here are a couple of wider views of the shelf, with how things are positioned now. I'm getting to really being able to envision how it will all eventually look.

 

[Pashina12]

I have an issue I need help with...

 

Some days ago I noticed Amazon had the Tomix 280mm track in stock again, so being a bit impatient I ordered a pack (along with another Sankei building kit - a shop - and streetlights and stuff. And then later that day they announced the posties will be going back to work... okay so now I'll have an extra 2.8 metres of straight track, *oh well*. Here's a lengthwise view of the layout with all the tracks in place:

 

 

Wired up the power pack, and finally for the first time like, ever, trains moved on a layout owned by me! The C11 is a bit jumpy particularly around the turnouts, so is the 8620 but a bit less so (but neither had ever run before); the Kiha23 goes just fine. So! This is a milestone!

 

Now, to the problem: as I was moving the C11 around, I noticed that there are two spots that are issues for power: circled in red:

 

 

The issue of course is that the Tomix track routes power through the direction the points are aligned, so if I push back into the lead on the bottom track, if I throw the turnout straight to move into the stub track, there's no power. So I did a bit of searching and found another thread here where it says that if you take those two long brass contact bars out of the turnout assembly, it will take the routing away... well it did stop routing: power just stops entirely now, and the loco stops at the frog. And then there's the double-slip... things are fine except for trying to go into the stub on the right side - if I flip the turnout to straight through, no power goes to the left side.

 

So how can I solve this most easily?

[Beaver]

How many power feeds do you have and where are they located? Having dead end tracks in both directions means there is no way to power everything from a single feed. It can be expressed as a simple rule; power must always be fed to the toe end of each point. I cannot see any isolating breaks on the track plan either, and all the wires in your photos appear to be the point control wires?

 

I would suggest splitting the layout up into multiple power sections, each isolated from the others with it's own separate feed. This prevents dead sections, prevents short circuits, reduces voltage drop over joints, and makes it much easier to operate multiple locomotives/railcars. Relying on the power routing of the points is very limiting.

 

I would suggest;

 

-Feeds on the right approach track and main headshunt / left approach track (?) (it's not clear if this is a through station or a terminus), with isolating breaks on all three loop tracks at one end.

 

-A third feed on the headshunt at the front with an isolating break separating the headshunt and kickback siding electrically from everything else.

 

-Double slips are always electrically difficult. Recommended practice with flexitrack is to wire the feed directly to the middle of the slip itself but the Tomix track probably isn't designed for that. Perhaps two feeds adjacent to the slip would work.  Do you really need a double slip rather than a pair of conventional points?*

 

*A pair of right hand points with a fourth feed in between, and a pair of isolating breaks on the loop side and the sidings powered off the feed via the points, would work very well. It looks like there is plenty of room to move the siding at the top further to the left to compensate for the increased space requirements of two points, and the platforms would not need to be shortened since they already stop short of where the point would be, while the siding to the right of the double slip could stay where it is by putting one of the points where the slip is.

 

I'm not sure what Tomix track offers by way of isolating breaks, but there's sure to be something. Kato offer isolating unijoiners to create breaks and their track system seems to be designed for simpler layouts than Tomix's track. If nothing else, since it uses conventional fishplates instead of special joiners, you could just pull the fishplates off where the isolating breaks need to be and use another manufacturer's isolating fishplates, any that are designed for Code 80 rail should do. And IIRC adding more feeds should be very easy because you can just stick a feeder into the middle of any piece of straight track rather than needing a special feeder piece to be worked into the plan?

 

 

[MeTheSwede]

Power travels along the track the way a locomotive can travel without stopping and reversing. The way you described to make a turnout non-power routing means power doesn't travel through the turnout at all.

 

For this layout you need three railfeeders (Tomix 5534) and two splitters (Tomix 5812) to provide power to them. Make sure to install the railfeeders pointing in the same direction, or there will be shorts when a section of track gets power from two feeders simultaneously.

 

 

Putting a feeder at 1A allows a loccomotive to travel to 1B and park there, as it won't have power after the turnout separating 1A and 1B have been turned.

 

Puttig a feeder at 5B means track 5A, 5B and 6 will have power regardless of how the X-switch is set, provided that the triple turnout is set to it's top track configuration. Putting the power feeder at 5B allows a train to be parked at 5A while the triple turnout is not set to it's trop track exit and the X-turnout is set to it's "curve setting" as opposed to it's "straigh ahead setting".

 

If you want to park locomotives at 5B and/or 6 that can be solved by removing the rail joiners between the X-switch and the 5B track and 6 track respectively and installing additional railfeeders at 5B/6 and use Selector boxes (Tomix 5536 or Tomix 5533) to allow those railfeeders to be turned on and off individually.

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I've described how to do these things the Tomix way with Tomix products. It's of course also possible to make ones own electrical stuff.

 

 

[Pashina12]

2 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

Power travels along the track the way a locomotive can travel without stopping and reversing. The way you described to make a turnout non-power routing means power doesn't travel through the turnout at all.

 

For this layout you need three railfeeders (Tomix 5534) and two splitters (Tomix 5812) to provide power to them. Make sure to install the railfeeders pointing in the same direction, or there will be shorts when a section of track gets power from two feeders simultaneously.

 

 

Putting a feeder at 1A allows a loccomotive to travel to 1B and park there, as it won't have power after the turnout separating 1A and 1B have been turned.

 

Puttig a feeder at 5B means track 5A, 5B and 6 will have power regardless of how the X-switch is set, provided that the triple turnout is set to it's top track configuration. Putting the power feeder at 5B allows a train to be parked at 5A while the triple turnout is not set to it's trop track exit and the X-turnout is set to it's "curve setting" as opposed to it's "straigh ahead setting".

 

If you want to park locomotives at 5B and/or 6 that can be solved by removing the rail joiners between the X-switch and the 5B track and 6 track respectively and installing additional railfeeders at 5B/6 and use Selector boxes (Tomix 5536 or Tomix 5533) to allow those railfeeders to be turned on and off individually.

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I've described how to do these things the Tomix way with Tomix products. It's of course also possible to make ones own electrical stuff.

 

 

Thanks for the answer, I've placed an order for the feeders and splitters as you suggested.

 

So, to be clear, because I can be a bit dense sometimes: one feeder each at 1A and 5B, but where does the third one go, and where do the splitters go?

[Pashina12]

3 hours ago, Beaver said:

it's not clear if this is a through station or a terminus), with isolating breaks on all three loop tracks at one end.

It's theoretically a through station, in practice the station is the entirety of the shelf layout, please see the diagram in the first post - that shows everything.

 

Quote

Do you really need a double slip rather than a pair of conventional points?*

For space reasons, yes - the diagram is a bit misleading with regards to the availability of space.

[MeTheSwede]

6 hours ago, Pashina12 said:

 

So, to be clear, because I can be a bit dense sometimes: one feeder each at 1A and 5B, but where does the third one go, and where do the splitters go?

 

The third feeder stays were I suppose it must be already, i.e. attached to the track to the right of the station area.

 

3 feeders require 3 cables feeding power to them. There is 1 connection leading from your power unit. Attach a branching cord (splitter) to the 1 connection and you will have 2 cables leading from it. Attach a second branching cord to one of those cables, and the 2 cables become 3 cables that do identical things. Attach your 3 feeders to those 3 cables.

 

 

[Pashina12]

Okay, thanks for the clarification, that makes sense. 🙂