Pre planning for urban layout

[BTrain]

Thanks for your comments. I like your idea for the elevated train station along the river. My idea for the Shinkansen line along the wall was to have very gentle curves with a water line at a lower level along the edge of the layout. It wouldn't be wider than 12 inches so yes for the most part the line will be mostly straight. I hope that's prototypical enough.

 

I was also thinking it would be nice to connect the Shinkansen line with the local line somewhere. Do you have any suggestions on how I could do that? Or is that not a good idea?

[KenS]

Well normally, they'd not connect in real life because they're two different track gauges.  However, it's your layout, so you don't need to be bound to that.  My "Shinkansen" line connects to my "Commuter" line with a simple crossover between one line of the Shinkansen pair and one line of the Commuter pair in the middle of a station where the two run parallel. But that's not intended for normal running, just as a way to move trains from storage (connected to the Commuter line) through the Commuter line to the Shinkansen line.

 

However, "Mini-Shinkansen" lines are essentially former narrow-gauge lines regauged to Shinkansen standards, but not otherwise rebuilt (still twisty and with a narrower loading gauge, and often single-track).  You could make a connection between your lines if you want to pretend the non-Shinkansen one is a mini-Shinkansen line at times, and run trains through.  To be strictly prototypical you'd need to use a mini-Shinkansen train (like the E3) for run-through, while running normal trains on the main Shinkansen line.

 

This would also be an excellent excuse to run one of the paired trains that combine normal and Mini out of Tokyo, then split (e.g., E3 paired with a mainline E5, or the E5 paired with the new E6 Mini-Shinkansen).

 

For inspiration, take a look at Ōmagari Station, where the Akita Mini-Shinkansen line branches off. From the map, it looks like the two lines share a set of platforms at the station, and then the line branches off nearby. It's a very simple junction. Regrettably the satellite photo quality on Google is pretty poor there.

 

[Densha]

Regrettably the satellite photo quality on Google is pretty poor there.

Don't forget there's always Yahoo and Bing Maps as well. In this case Yahoo maps has slighter better quality at that station but that differs per location. Some large cities on Bing Maps have plane photography too so that gives a very good view.

[BTrain]

Thanks KenS and Densha. I'm still playing around with the track plan. I may go ahead and purchase the full version of AnyRail. The fifty piece limit get annoying. I tried downloading the Thanks KenS and Densha. I'm still playing around with the track plan. I may go ahead and purchase the full version of AnyRail. The fifty piece limit get annoying. I tried downloading the Xtrackcad but couldn't get it to install.