Kato Track Plans

[bill937ca]

Kato has some track plans on their Japanese web site. These plans are big and are probably intended to set up on the floor in true Japanese style.  There is a larger PDF for each plan and a separate parts list (in Japanese) with part numbers listed.  It should be usable.

 

One plan has an eight track station!    Only if we had the space!!!!

 

http://www.katomodels.com/unitrackplan/

[HiSpdTrainFan]

Plan 5 is similar to V16 V15, and V11 which is what i'm doing for my passenger layout.

Plan 6 is very nice.

[linkey]

Thanks Bill for the web link. 

[CaptOblivious]

These are all quite cool! I like how No. 1 is tailored to modeling operations with shinkansen+mini-shinkansen. I'm rather fond of plan 2, and the way it permits several trains running at once with 2 more in the wings.

[KenS]

Some of those need a pretty big room, even for a floor layout.

 

I think plan 1 is my favorite.  I hadn't thought of Shinkansen/Mini-shinkansen until Don mentioned it, but it would be ideal for that, or for the mainline with branchline structure you see on commuter lines. And I like how the elevated station has the stub track on the lower right that can be used for storing a waiting train (if it's short) or maintenance equipment (a two-car East-i E, for example).  Both of those are common features of Tokyo stations.

 

The others don't really appeal for one reason or another.  They're not bad plans, I just don't find them exciting.  Plan 5 looks a lot like the early version of my Kitchen Table Layout (precursor to the current Sumida Crossing layout) before I got bored with ovals and added a freight branch and yard.  But I don't really get the upper passing track on the lower station. It's only big enough for a two-car train, which seems too small for a station that size.  It would work better if you added straights to all the tracks to make the stations longer, but the switches for it are still in an odd place, because they deny use of the ends of the platform.

[Mudkip Orange]

I thought plan 4 was intriguing by moving the passing tracks out of the station and onto the mainline a bit removed from the station. Keio does this on the original mainline.

 

And plan 3 adds a fake-out track to the standard up-and-over twicearound, so if you want to keep trains running on one level, you can. That's always been a big design objective whenever I try to come up with a permanent (non-kato) track plan, as I want a layout to have "test running" and "breaking in" capability that doesn't involve basically hauling up and down a steep grade continuously.