And so it begins...

[railsquid]

Anyway, enough playing around with the track - I've been spending the weekend striking fear and erroneously-sited screws into the heart of various bits of innocent timber and have come up with this:

 

 

upon which my pre-fabricated Tomix base boards shall forever rest. Now, admittedly my woodwork training was mainly acquired at the Bludge and Hammeritin School of Kludging and those of you who own their own power tools may wish to avert your eyes, but on the whole I'm quite chuffed bearing in mind I was making this up (and buying the appropriate tools) as I was going along, and once completed the base boards slipped into place almost like it was designed that way, and so far it hasn't fallen over once despite not being fixed to the wall in any way. We'll see how it holds up once I've completed the scale model lead mine and the next big earthquake comes along. 

BTW if it looks a bit warped in the picture, that's because of the camera angle.

(Do please excuse the hideous snot-green grey carpet, it is serving as an excellent sawdust catcher and I'm sure once I can arrange an accident involving paint and/or solvents it will be replaced completely).

[cteno4]

Squid,

 

Hey looks great. You don't have to be a fancy woodworker to make something nice and useful! Much of woodworking is figuring out the way things should fit together, then apply the right tools/techniques to make it happen, many approach it the other way around!

 

How do the modules fit in?

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

The baseboard consists of three 600mm x 900mm ready-made units from Tomix like this:

 

 

which bolt together (catalogue number 8011 if anyone's taking notes). It's then just a case of lowering that onto the L-shaped brackets along the top of the front and back beams. I'm not intending this to be a portable/modular layout but I may need to move it at some point so the flexibility is useful.

 

I'm slightly disappointed by the Tomix units, as I thought they would be very standardized but bolting them tightly together reveals that the bolt holes appear to be slightly out of alignment which produces some unevenness. I've managed to compensate for that with the frame so the surface is now nice and flat.

[cteno4]

Ahh now I see the L brackets go on the inside of the modules and bolts can go in there. Nice design!

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

Actually the boards just sit on the frame; the boards are bolted to each other but not to the frame.

 

Meanwhile here's the completed setup, including a small extension in one corner.

 

Now I can get cracking with a more permanent setup (though no doubt it'll be a while before I start fixing things down).

 

Next step is to drill some strategic holes for points and power feed wires; and construct a small shelf at the front to hold the controller/point switches etc.

[katoftw]

So 1800x900 size?

[railsquid]

Bingo.

[railsquid]

And here's some track'n'stuff in something approximating my vision ^[*] of what the layout should be like:

 

^[*]It might be a fevered nightmarish vision involving way too many points, but it's mine, it's the only one I've got and I'm sticking to it.

[katoftw]

How much of the track is actually powered?

[railsquid]

How much of the track is actually powered?

 

Oooh, if you set the correct points in the right direction, pretty much most of it (from just two feeds). Except the sidings inside the loop which run backwards off their respective spurs. And the inside high-level track, which isn't connected to anything yet.

 

But fear not, I am sure the wire-and-track-laying gnomes will be along in a while with a more permanent and conductive solution.

[macdon]

Great progress on your layout!

 

I bet you're now excited seeing the trains run and imagining what the scenery would be like. Cheers!

 

Mardon

[railsquid]

It's definitely a big step forward. I've been running the trains before (see earlier pages in this thread) to get a feel for what works etc., but now I can start to make things more permanent. There'll be a few more minor changes, and I need to finish off the station area / Shinkansen at the top right (there'll be a narrow fiddle-yard leading off from that as well), but I can start drilling strategic holes for points and power-feeds.

 

And then there's the scenery of course :)

 

(Then I need to write to Kato with a list of suggestions for additions/modifications to their track).

[railsquid]

Some almost imperceptible progress - the Sidings Fairy has paid a visit, and a minor construction boom is ongoing. This is going to be a very urban layout, from left to right: residential, commercial, business, seedy entertainment district. I'm basically happy with the way things are working out, though I've decided to complete the inner loop. And add a couple of more sidings. And probably go DCC. And there will be a Phase 2 which involves making the layout L-shaped, which will add extra space for some more rural scenery and maybe even some sort of tram/light rail. But that's for the future.

 

Anway I'm slowly getting into the modelling part - most of the buildings have been put together with the minimum of effort, but I'm starting to work on things like adding stickers, decorations, glueing them together with clamps (the Tomytec kits are particularly prone to warping/badly fitting; the beige road footbridge was a particular pain to assemble).

 

 

In honour of the day, the Shinkansens have been let out of their boxes for a run-around.

 

 

[Densha]

What about creating a 6-car 0x100 series Shinkansen by removing one driving cab of each and couple the other cars together? Just because you can ya' know.

[railsquid]

What about creating a 6-car 0x100 series Shinkansen by removing one driving cab of each and couple the other cars together? Just because you can ya' know.

 

That would be somewhat tricky due to the different couplings... It did cross my mind to create a Shinkansen/Blue Train hybrid...

[railsquid]

Hah, I just had a minor scenic epiphany - I can fill in some of the empty space in the centre of my layout with more sidings a small hill of the concrete-sided kind common in Japanese cities with some onsens on top.

[railsquid]

And another one... I'll be travelling to Europe soon and passing through a local modelshop in the UK. which I see has a selection of BR blue era diesels for very reasonable prices, which is the era I was frustratedly trying to model when much younger but gave up due to lack of money and skills. The only problem is they will look kind of out of place on a Japanese layout... But - on the putative extension (PS don't tell the wife just yet) I only need to stretch the already expanded local plausibility (in my world Japan is all standard gauge and Shinkansens often run on normal lines, etc.) a little to include something along the lines of an "イギリス鉄道博物館" ("British Railway Museum") which is a little corner of the UK in Japan. And which does of course connect to the local railway network for excursion trains.

 

There are actually quite a few country-themed "villages" dotted around, so this kind of thing (excluding the railway aspect) is not entirely divorced from reality. Some are a bit tacky, but there's a Shakespeare-themed place out in Chiba which I went to once, fully expecting it to be all fake, but the buildings were excellently done and looking at the "oak beams" I thought to myself "railsquid, if those are not genuine English oak beams crafted by genuine English craftspersons, then I'm not a train-orientated cephalopod". And lo and behold, it turned out they'd been built by the same British company which built my parent's oak-framed house.

Edited October 5, 2014 by railsquid

[cteno4]

Nice to see someone using the word cephalopod!

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

I try and work it into conversation as often as I can.

 

Meanwhile, I must say I'm enjoying this creative process immensely.

[cteno4]

Good Cephalopods need to be part of our conversations!

 

Glad to hear that as its one of the most rewarding parts of the hobby in how you can weave many different bits and kinds of creative efforts together and learn new ones! One of the main purpose of having a hobby and sadly lacking in modern culture. I know so few people these days (outside of the jrm club members) that have true hobbies and always surprised when folks laugh at me having one or think it a waste of time. Sad...

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Densha]

One of the main purpose of having a hobby and sadly lacking in modern culture. I know so few people these days (outside of the jrm club members) that have true hobbies and always surprised when folks laugh at me having one or think it a waste of time. Sad...

Gotta save that one! I really can't understand how people can live with only things like pop music/movies, social networks and other modern 21st century shit. I really, really can't.

[Sean]

I have to say that the idea of doing a model of an English railway in a Japanese layout based on a Japanese model of an English railway in real life is both totally amazing and very difficult to describe in words.

[railsquid]

Didn't think of it like that... I'll try and add a Tardis somewhere too.

[Mudkip Orange]

W6a is damn near Japanese loading gauge as it is, so it's certainly more plausible than Shinkansens sharing tracks with local commuter trains...

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Certainly some interesting developments in your little world, especially the British Railway Museum...although a real one of those requires a rusty tender, a couple of manky mark 1s (one doubling up as a tatty shop selling ancient Lima carriages and triang coal wagons) and some sort of shunter painted in mock-Thomas livery... Still, this is a perfect world; where the locos are clean (and interesting) and the carriages don't smell of mould!

 

Good luck in your quest to get as much done before the impending arrival of said Squidlet.

 

Good Cephalopods need to be part of our conversations!

Glad to hear that as its one of the most rewarding parts of the hobby in how you can weave many different bits and kinds of creative efforts together and learn new ones! One of the main purpose of having a hobby and sadly lacking in modern culture. I know so few people these days (outside of the jrm club members) that have true hobbies and always surprised when folks laugh at me having one or think it a waste of time. Sad...
 

 

Yes, I do wonder about 'normal' people sometimes...