Japanese layout idea from Italy

[Melandir]

Starting from a tomix finetrack combination I have added a few variations to have some place to store trains

 

but then a French guys here in the forum solved the puzzle on how to use Kato station on Tomix track and monkey started running wild again and I'm already working on new projects again :D

 

btw, here a project of what I'd like to built to have trains running

 

Is two loops  with some stage track.... nothing proto, just to have fun at the moment

 

the board is 2500mm long and 1100mm width

 

should be ready by next month and then I will start building on it

 

anyone know what kind of screw I could use to fix the tracks in place? I use tomix finetrack

Edited January 15, 2014 by Melandir

[cteno4]

Melandir

 

nice plan. any parts going to be hidden with scenery?

 

for track screws, trainaidsa.com has some great ones of various lengths. he made these up as it was hard to get the marklin track screws here in the us. may be cheaper to buy marklin screws locally, but he usually had pretty simple ways of shipping so worth looking at

 

http://www.trainaidsa.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=55&osCsid=c667e369c0d737ede3e03e3ca633b313

 

ive used these a lot on unitrak and works great!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Melandir]

Thanks Jeff, I need to review the track height

 

I plan to use a 6mm plywood and if I'm correct track height should be 3.7mm for a total of 10.7mm

 

so the best option looks the K screw that is 11mm long, kato tracks looks taller than tomix but I canìt guarantee because I have never owned any piece of kato tracks

 

About the scenery, no track should be hidden at the moment, the dead tracks on the top left should be shinkansen or EMU recovery with a Tomix 4012 or maybe two connected to provide a longer recovery place, while the tracks in the middle should be a recovery place for freight train, something like a container area

 

this is the current general idea, that could change during construction

[IST]

One small comment from my side to your track plan: I would change the place of the crossing. It is now on the right side of the plan and if you would like to drive a train from outer rail to inner rail (or vice versa) it would cause a zig-zag without straight section. As I experienced sometimes it can cause problems, for example detaching some cars.

[cteno4]

Melandir,

 

check with your local hobby shops to see if they have any of the marklin K screws, might be cheaper, but do check with trainaids, i think he was shipping air mail in a small package to keep costs down on the little stuff for shipping. but these days usps is pretty expensive for little things unfortunately. they are great screws, self tapping and pretty tough. dab of gray paint on the head and they disappear totally. yes the tomix is a bit shorter than the kato track. i wish there was one between the k and f sizes, like a 8mm. small screws like this are hard to find unfortunately.

 

ist is spot on, missed that. better to move the double cross over to the middle of the station as the crossover is tough for longer cars. you do see crossovers like this inside stations in japan like this as well.

 

might also place rerailers just down stream on either side of the double cross over in the station all the way across all tracks. it really helps to get that one wheel that can sometimes pop off on a point at the station or crossover and will keep dragging along working, sometimes rerailing later, sometimes derailing later! we found this helped a lot on the jrm layout to put rerailers around in a few places and it works. plus in a pinch you can use them to pop cars back on quickly.

 

the big loop grade seems like something that could have some interesting scenery feature and maybe hide the shinkansen track some. always nice when the train disappears for a bit even if its short. but features like that take up precious scenery space on smaller layouts! always a juggle.

 

keep us posted will be fun to watch it come together!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Melandir]

Thanks Jeff,

I have found the Marklin K screw and they are now on the way to me... In the meantime that I'll start to assemble the base I have created another layout and will need your advice on it

 

it's essentially based on 2 levels..... Shinkansen on viaduct with overhead station on the back were double track start diverging, and a commuter/freight line on ground level, with some staging tracks, there is also a track connecting shinkansen level to ground level and the staging tracks

 

this will allow a total of 4 loops.... I plan to add a commuter overhead station in the front

In your opinion does it looks too much crowded with rails? I'll like to add some building and roads too as Jeff told me it looks good to have a train disappear behind some scenery (like office building) and appearing after a bit

 

waiting for yout comments

[cteno4]

Melandir,

 

Glad you found them over there. they should do the trick.

 

track plan looks good. hard to not turn into a spaghetti bowl when you have limited space and not much room though. going to a single track on the lower level might get you a bit more room for scenery.

 

one thing to try is if you have the track just set it up and then start plopping down buildings to see how it looks to see if there is too much track for you. if you dont have all the buildings then just cut up cardbaord boxes and tape them up into building sized little boxes to see how things fill up. and what scenes you might squeeze in.

 

couple of small track plan points.

 

- the dip in in the double viaduct in the front center makes 2 S curves which some trains just hate. if you have the track i would set this up and test it out with your equipment to make sure it runs well for you. also the shinkansens do start to look very odd going thru S curves even with the wider radius viaduct curves.

 

- the ramp up to the shinkansen level looks to be a 4-5% grade. while most 6-8 car shinkansens can take this grade you have to be careful on the transitions at the top and bottom as with that sharp of grade you can get quite a kink and again some shinkansens just dont like a vertical kink/angle in a joint like that and it can cause the train to stall out.

 

another idea might be to not run the shinkansen down to the ground level and add a couple of passing tracks into your station and make it a bit wider and butt it up against the back of the layout. you would then have two tracks in the station to store shinkansens

 

you could also by pushing the viaduct back a bit and then bring the viaduct out with a straight in the middle of one of the 180s so that it comes all the way out to the front edge of the layout (nice to have it all the way in front for a bit), bring it back in like you have it but if you can put the shortest straight viaduct into the center of the S curve if you can and then have the other end just do a straight 180. this way you have one end with a longer more interesting bump out and the other is a straight return. 

 

when tight on space its best to maximize the viaduct route first so it can get the longest, smoothest run then work on the ground tracks as those usually can meander more and even split and use tighter radius curves at points if needed. 

 

very rough idea here with kato

 

just thoughts, looks like you are having fun playing with ideas!

 

cheers

 

jeff

Edited January 23, 2014 by cteno4