Kamiyacho Layout - Coming Soon

[Kamiyacho]

Soon to be installed in my basement........

[quinntopia]

I like...I LIKE!!!! More photos please! 

 

And tell me about the buildings...looks like some pretty interesting modifications or scratch-builds! Neat-o!

[Kamiyacho]

A number of the buildings were scratchbuilt by Custom Model Railroads.  We've replicated the Ginza 4-Chome intersection including the Wako and Mituskoshi department stores, Nissan headquarters and the San-ai Dream center.  Down the street, in more or less the prototypical positions, are the Fujiya and Sony buildings.  Behind the commuter station is a "flipped" version of the Yurakucho Mullion building.  These are buildings which I vividly recall from living in Tokyo in the 1980's. 

 

In some ways it was a difficult decision to let someone else do much of the construction but after spending the last 25 years moving around the world, and partially completing only two small layouts, I finally concluded that I was past the point where I'd ever have the time (or develop the ability) to create a large layout myself.  I enjoy scenery and detailing much more than basic construction so this is a reasonable compromise.  I'll have a layout which is about 80% complete and I can spend the next 10 years gluing down thousands of figures, making little scenes, and photographing it.

[to2leo]

Wow that's really neat layout.  I especially love the buildings placement and details.  Did you send them building pictures to let them know which one you want?  How long did it take?

[KenS]

In some ways it was a difficult decision to let someone else do much of the construction but after spending the last 25 years moving around the world, and partially completing only two small layouts, I finally concluded that I was past the point where I'd ever have the time (or develop the ability) to create a large layout myself.  I enjoy scenery and detailing much more than basic construction so this is a reasonable compromise.  I'll have a layout which is about 80% complete and I can spend the next 10 years gluing down thousands of figures, making little scenes, and photographing it.

 

I think that makes sense; get quickly to the part you enjoy. It used to be that you needed to do everything yourself, right down to building the railroad vehicles from kits. Today you can buy pre-made buildings and trains (and most of us do).  It's not much more of a step to having the basic layout custom-made.

 

And it's a nice-looking city.  I like the way the scenery dominates, and the train is "in" it.  It looks like there's some more rural scenery off to one side. More photos please, and it would be interesting to see a track plan.

[Kamiyacho]

I had collected some Tokyo pictures from the 80's, plus we also used Google Earth a lot to "drive" around Tokyo and choose details to model.  We had to be a bit careful though as in the 80's there would have been, for example, no ads for cell phones.  Also, there have been some changes in the last 20 years!  But I've become a little bit flexible on the time period; I'm calling the city the late-Showa to early-Heisei period and many of the signs are from photos I took in Tokyo this July.  But for the rural areas I'm tempted to go further back into Showa, more like the 50's or 60's.

 

Construction itself took about 10 months, but I waited nearly a year until they had room in their shop to begin.  It is kind of neat to see things I've been thinking about for 20 years finally come to life.  Plus, they created some things I never would have thought of.    

[Claude_Dreyfus]

That is an impressive looking model. I'd second the request for a track plan and more pictures  . Also,I would be interested to know the dimensions, as looks can be deceptive and I'm wondering if it looks bigger than it actually is...

[Kamiyacho]

The layout is roughly 12 feet X 14 feet.  I'll attach a version of the track plan - some modifications were made along the way and I do not have a final diagram. 

[cteno4]

Ive been keeping a collection of all of curt's layout photos on the jrm site if you want to see them all in one gallery.

 

http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/photos/kurtslayout/index.html

 

also been posting some nice little articles curt has been writing about the layout progress and i hope he continues to document his progress as its a very interesting path that you dont see all the time! i cant wait to see the layout!

 

http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/curtlayout.html

 

great that curt is now here on jns giving the whole evolution! thanks curt!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[to2leo]

Thanks for doing that, I just added to my bookmark!  I love the Tokyo Forum building...wish I can somehow make one.

[Bernard]

Curt - in an earlier post I said how much I lived your harbor scene but this new photo really shows how large it is and all the activity that's going on. You have one fantastic layout!!

[serenityFan]

Wow, what building is that glass building next to the harbour ...  need more pictures of it  :grin

[Kamiyacho]

The building next to the harbor is imaginary and I think it will be a convention center.  I was discussing with Jeff recently that it might be fun to model some different events to hold there, perhaps starting with a train convention.  The exterior of the building lifts off to reveal an atrium and several levels connected by escalators. Should be fun to put some people inside. I don't have any other photos at the moment.

 

The roof of the large blue shinkansen station can also be removed to see the platforms and escalators.  Further detailing that building will be one of my projects. Perhaps I can also add interior lighting and a platform level video camera.

 

The rural area is the least detailed aspect of the layout as I really like to make the traditional building models and will be working on that in the years ahead.  I don't have any current photos but here are two from a month or so ago. Layout installation begins on September 2!

[cteno4]

well i just got back from Curt's house and all i can say is AMAZING! the layout is quite stupendous and really fun. nice amount of track, but not a spaghetti bowl! easy switching out some trains and the dcc operation makes things simple. He is just working out the little kinks now after the installation. we spent a few hours running trains, cleaning track and findings little gotchas around on the track to fix. working quite well. the detail is great, but it just a start so curt can go wild with all sorts of fun details. its one of those layouts that really takes a long time to take in even though its not a huge layout. he is going to have fun for years to come playing with this and doing all sorts of fun detailed work on it! room for expansion in the layout and also in the room as well for the future!

 

the lighting in the buildings is wonderful. they did a lot of the signs with miller engineering electroluminescent backlighting so they really look great. some flash, others do a small sequence. really gives the japanese city feel to it!

 

just smashing!

 

once he gets some of the detailing into the layout it will be a fantastic layout for MR.

 

cheers

 

jeff