Our basement layout

[Bernard]

Great work, I'll repeat myself, I love seeing your layout come together! :wav:

[scott]

Thanks...and I've been tinkering in Railmodeller, so there might be some additions to the insanity in the next few months....

[scott]

This weekend we went back to working on the hills and tunnels at the north end. I really wanted to cover up some of the obvious structure and get some actual terrain down. We went through a lot of plaster cloth....

 

 

1. View from the control area.

 

2. End view of the north-end section.

 

3. From the back corner, by that other nameless station.

[scott]

Here's the latest version of the trackplan. I didn't like how the point-to-point line curved around to be right next to the main town/station area, plus it was hard to see behind the backdrops for the town. So I curved it off the other way, and ended in the far back corner of the layout. Now it's too close to another station area, but that doesn't bother me as much; eventually I can separate it more with terrain.

 

The green line is the proposed tram line. My wife thinks that adding that would be too much for the fairly small scale of the town, but I'm leaving on the plan for now just in case.

[Bernard]

Scott - the yellow and green lines are both Tram lines? If you're worry about looking crowded don't train lines in Japan are crowded. But both the yellow & green lines will be automated? (you'll need 2 auto reverse units)

The end point for the yellow line is on top of the mountain, you might have to level it out to provide for the town, a piece of foam board will easily do that but you probably are going to have to take apart some of the mountain. (I've done this a lot on my layout, totally removed a portion of my layout because I thought of a new idea I hadn't planned for.)

You will have a lot of action of the layout plus a new town.

[grumbeast]

Thats a very interesting plan,

 

and as I'm new to Japanese modelling, I hadn't thought of the idea of a point to point tram run and multiple loops (been immersed in North American operations heavy stuff for the last decade.. never got that started and just want to watch trains with a beer!).  I'm going to have to take a look at my space again and see what I can do

 

Keep up the good work!, its great to see the progress of a layout

 

Graham

[disturbman]

Yeah. Japanese urban scenes are always very compact. The spaghetti ball is there prototypical. One layer Shinkansens dedicated track (on viaduc), two layers of local and express tracks and one last layer of tram or subway if you want. A pleasure for those who wants to run many trains without looking too out of place.

 

If you don't know Japan you should hunt the net for some photos of cities and railways. :)

[scott]

Scott - the yellow and green lines are both Tram lines? If you're worry about looking crowded don't train lines in Japan are crowded. But both the yellow & green lines will be automated? (you'll need 2 auto reverse units)

 

The yellow isn't really a tram line--it's the "local" line, mostly for me to run my smaller EMUs and railcars. (And maybe the Enoden 300 tram, which seems to fit). So that one's not automated. But the green line would be for the Tomix Portram etc. to run through town.

 

The end point for the yellow line is on top of the mountain, you might have to level it out to provide for the town, a piece of foam board will easily do that but you probably are going to have to take apart some of the mountain.

 

Right now the yellow line ends on top of a couple of jam-jar boxes just above where the red line curves into the north-side (left) station. I'll probably just continue a ridge over there, and have some suggestion of a small town/onsen/whatever.

 

Keep up the good work!, its great to see the progress of a layout

 

Thanks, Graham! It's in a real mess right now, but once I get a few more things done and clean up the foam crumbs, I'll post some more pictures.

 

If you don't know Japan you should hunt the net for some photos of cities and railways. :)

 

I have, but since layout will only be for Japanese equipment part of the time (forgive me.....I am impure), that's not really the issue. I just need to make sure the amount of track doesn't totally overwhelm the amount of town I have room to build. Which probably means that I'll need to try to "suggest" more town than is really there. Ideas are forming....slowly. :-P

[scott]

Some pictures of the last big change to the track plan:

 

 

 

 

Park station before:

 

 

Park station after (just missing a 28" curve):

 

Back-corner station before (this line was re-routed so that it doesn't just loop around behind the town it came from):

 

Back-corner station after:

 

Town area before:

 

Town area after:

(it's a tram line!)

 

 

Other large station before (sorry about the cruddy flash pictures):

 

Other large station after:

(I still need to finish re-aligning the incline. Also, we may use a different station.)

[disturbman]

What did you do with the lighting? Put the sun in your basement or you played with the contrast settings of your camera? It's unbelievably warm.

 

Back on topic. Nice adds! What with the big foamcore board in the middle of the city/layout? Is it not a problematic for the access hole?

[Bernard]

Don't you love getting those boxes in the mail!

Nice work so far! Will the new town be up to the lip of "Andres access box"?

 

Also do you plan to change the overhead station? If you do, I might be interested in buying from you. It looks like the new model and it would match the overhead "kitbashing" I'm doing now.

[scott]

What did you do with the lighting? Put the sun in your basement or you played with the contrast settings of your camera? It's unbelievably warm.

 

The yellow walls probably affected it, plus I was adjusting the white balance on the camera.

 

Back on topic. Nice adds! What with the big foamcore board in the middle of the city/layout? Is it not a problematic for the access hole?

 

Thanks! The foam core is the backdrop for the main town/station area; now that it's in, I think it may be a bit too tall (8 inches / 20cm). But I'd have to pull it out to cut it. And yes, my shoulders and fat @$$ kept bumping the board when I was working on the back station.

 

Don't you love getting those boxes in the mail!

Nice work so far! Will the new town be up to the lip of "Andres access box"?

 

:-) Yeah, the backdrop boards are right up to the hole, in order to make room for the town buildings, the tram line/road passing behind the station, etc. I may have to enlarge the hole toward the back for "dad access."

 

Also do you plan to change the overhead station? If you do, I might be interested in buying from you. It looks like the new model and it would match the overhead "kitbashing" I'm doing now.

 

I'm not sure yet. As you can see in the last picture, the platform spacing is a little odd. Originally, the station was only going to be for the inner line, and the outer "express" line was going to go through a tunnel, on top of which I was going to build a hill for a bit of the station's town to be on. But then I thought I'd try having another "union" station for the two lines. I'm not sure which is better--anybody have an opinion?

[scott]

Here are the options I was trying to describe above:

[disturbman]

I will say the second option, but I'm not quite sure about the hill.

[scott]

One possibility with that option would be to build a wall next to the station high enough that the station exit would be up at the level of a street, rather than needing the stairs. (It bugs me that the overhead stations don't seem to be handicapped- or bicycle-accessible.)

[scott]

I decided to set the back station up to just be a two-line station for that one line.

 

 

The plan would be to have the station exit onto a sidewalk/street behind the station. So the street would be at the top of a wall that would be behind the tracks as you look at the layout .The problem turned out to be that while the station entrance is about 2 inches high, the street would need to be about 3 inches high to accommodate the tunnel running underneath it.

 

One way to deal with this would be to have ramps running down from street level to the station doors. I tried to draw a perspective view of this, but completely flubbed it. So I've attached a quickly-sketched plan view of what it might look like.

 

If anybody has any suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing them.

[Bernard]

Just looking at the station and the room you have to put a street in with a sidewalk, what would happen if you turned the station around and had the enterences on the other side?

It seems like you have more room for a street & sidewalk.

[scott]

That could work, but I think I'd have to cut a doorway in the other side, and cut off and cover up the existing entrance area. Might work, though.

[Bernard]

Scott - What I was looking at is that you would have to put a road between 2 tracks and have it cross over the tracks twice at different points. By turning around the station, the road isn't trapped between the tracks.

[scott]

I'm sorry, Bernard, but it's been a long day, and I'm completely failing to picture this. <sheepish grin>

[scott]

I just came up with a possible solution for this while I was in the shower. I always have my best ideas in the shower; perhaps I should move up to bathing weekly.

 

The back station is on a line that slopes down from two inches above the base to the base before it gets to the station. If I elevate the ground under the station by one inch, and then finish the descent to the base once past the station, everything should work. Then the two-inch-high station entrance will be three inches above the base, which will match with the top of the tunnel behind it.

 

Much tweaking will ensue once I find some sort of base material that's one inch thick.

[Mudkip Orange]

once I find some sort of base material that's one inch thick.

 

Lowe's has 4x8 sheets of foam insulation that are 1/2" thick. Double 'em up and VOILA

[scott]

Thanks, Mudkip, but the plan has already mutated again. 

 

The attached not-to-scale picture shows what I started on last night; didn't get too far with it, but I think it'll work.

[disturbman]

Indeed it might work. :)

[Guest ___]

ROFLOL, Scott. I see you have a station entrance there with stairs and no roof. Can I venture a guess, you got that from Jeff?