Small Randen inspired tram layout

[Ken Ford]

I've been researching, planning and acquiring equipment for a modular layout based on the Kyoto Keifuku ("Randen") branch to Kitano, but I decided it would be a good idea to first build a smaller, self contained continuous run layout to experiment with Japanese-style urban scenery and to get used to working in N again.  The idea of having a small table-top layout to bring to shows is very appealing - some of the micro layouts I've seen here and elsewhere look like real fun.  This little roundy-round will be Randen inspired but not a model of any specific location.

 

I have a CV1 and CV2 on hand; I was originally thinking the combination of the two with a siding (passing loop) at one end of the layout would work.  However, when I plugged everything together I decided I didn't like the look - there was too much space between the tracks in the siding, and I didn't want a center platform at the station.  So, back to the drawing board.

 

I found geometry for the #2 wye turnouts and designed a quick loop based on these.  It's a simple oval made out of R150 with a siding on one of the straight sides - the siding length is sized for a two car Randen trams (248mm straight.)  The siding will be a station with platforms on either side.

 

This makes the layout a little bigger than I had originally planned.  I'll need to wait until the track I ordered today arrives, but I think this will fit on a 1000mm x 400mm module or smaller.  I entertained the idea of making the back hidden behind scenery which would allow me to have a second hidden passing loop / staging / storage, but I really like the idea of building a "layout in the round" viewable from all sides.  Plus, the single track straight section opposite the station would be great for a scenic section inspired by the Kitano branch's sakura display.

 

I'm trying to decide what to do about benchwork - it's small, and I want it to be rigid but light.  I'm considering a core of 2" extruded foam insulation with a skin of the thinnest luan ply I can find but may just go stick-built.

 

I'd post a trackplan, but I don't have a good way to draw it up (xtrkcad doesn't have the small radius Unitrack.)  I'll have to wait until the additional track arrives and post a picture instead.  I'll post links to other layouts that are inspiring me and Randen scenes that have the look I want as I dredge them up.

[Guest keio6000]

Hi Ken,

 

Randen is a great system to model, at least if you believe the Densha de Go - Ryojōhen interpretation of it (you know what i'm talking about, right?).   When I'm in Kyoto, however, i find it perplexing.  The whole system appears to have been placed randomly in the northern bit of the city and doesn't seem to go anywhere in particular that a bus wouldn't be more convenient for.   But I digress..

 

Anyway, it's a beautiful theme for a layout and you can really get a lot of mileage out of it if you have both light rail and roaded rail sections, bits of modern japan, and perhaps a tomytec temple or two as well.. plus some beautiful kyoto natural beauty.... again, not exaclty prototypical for the actual area where randen runs, but does the trick.

 

We look forward to pictures of your layout!

 

This is the mainline (to shijo-omiya)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk-Gf109tmI

 

 

 

 

 

and back to arashiyama

 

 

 

 

Kitano branchline:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi8FzlK92dg

Edited August 16, 2014 by keio6000

[Densha]

The whole system appears to have been placed randomly in the northern bit of the city and doesn't seem to go anywhere in particular that a bus wouldn't be more convenient for.   But I digress..

I don't know the exact situation there, but I've always thought railways and trams are the more durable replacement for buses. They're usually faster and more efficient and can take more passengers with them than buses.

[Ken Ford]

I've never heard of Densha de Go before - seeing that they have a Randen game is great!  Little chance of me being able to find it here, though - and if I did, making it work would be difficult.

 

You posted the Wiki pic of the sakura tunnel I was thinking about.  There are a few pics of Utano that I like the look of, the concrete retaining wall in particular.

 

This will be fairly small, I'm thinking a roadway that crosses and then parallels the track behind the station with a row of buildings facing the road.  The cherry trees would be behind the buildings.

[Ken Ford]

I don't know the exact situation there, but I've always thought railways and trams are the more durable replacement for buses. They're usually faster and more efficient and can take more passengers with them than buses.

 

That's always been the situation here, too - traction has much higher capacity than rubber tired buses.

[cteno4]

Ken,

 

For that size module 2" foam would work, but unless you are thinking of doing scenery below grade its a hassle to get wires thru and makes you glue track down.

 

Our club sectional layout has modules that are 100cm x 50cm and are made from 1" x 3/4" stock (1" on the vertical) frames with 3/16" luan on top. I cut a rabit joint on the long pieces of the frame for the luan and the 4 cross pieces (at ends and thirds in the middle) are just 13/16" tall. Center cross pieces have 1/2" holes drilled in them every few inches for wires. These are very lightweight. Rigid and flat and have held up well for 4 years now.

 

Our old layout was 1x2 frames (.75" x1.5") around extruded 1" foam at 2'x4' size and also held up to a lot of abuse. We still use them for all sorts of odd things, I have two screwed together end to end with some ply on both long sides to make a 8' tall standing rack for long bits of thin stock and moldings in the shop.

 

I actually have the prototype of the 1x.5m frame in the garage and you can have it for the cost of shipping it out to you (guessing $15 or so) if you want it. Was going to do a similar little fun layout at some point with it but who knows when that will happen and would rather see it used now.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Ken Ford]

Jeff, I appreciate the offer, but I'll end up making this one to the exact size I need.  It may be different than 1000x500, and may even be non-rectangular - an advantage of using foam with luan skin if I decide to go that route.  Besides, I have a newish chop saw, and I'm always looking for an excuse to use it!

[kvp]

 

The whole system appears to have been placed randomly in the northern bit of the city and doesn't seem to go anywhere in particular that a bus wouldn't be more convenient for.

 

Originally the only alternative of the tram was the horse pulled coach or the steam train and the tram was always better regardless of required capacity. After the invention of the internal combustion engine and government built and maintained roads many tram lines that required little capacity were converted to bus or the more economical electric trolley bus. Today a tram line could be justified if more capacity is required than what could be conveniently provided with articulated or double decker buses or trolley buses. There is a capacity point where trams get more economical. If you remove the government maintenance from the roads/streets, then the tram would almost always be better.

 

In Japan, many surviving tram lines were built before the buses came along and were part of a much larger network. The Randen is a typical heritage tram line with modern equipment but a heritage network. In Tokyo most of the tram network was demolished, but if you look at the route map from the 60-ies, most modern metro lines are running exactly where the old tram lines ran. They essentially converted the major tram lines into metro lines. In Japan most tram lines were either converted to heavy rail or bus, but very few cities have tram lines with near heavy rail capacity. A good example for this is Hiroshima and its green movers. (in the US this is called light rail, which usually mean a more serious capacity than a streetcar line) In Tokyo the two remaining tram lines are the Arakawa which was not worth converting and became a heritage line and the Setagaya line which afaik had to be kept because it was part of a land use agreement. Later some not really useful people movers were built because of similar agreements and recently many old streetcar lines were renovated and even extended because there is a political will to do so, even if they are not really viable economically.

[katoftw]

When I'm in Kyoto, however, i find it perplexing.  The whole system appears to have been placed randomly in the northern bit of the city and doesn't seem to go anywhere in particular that a bus wouldn't be more convenient for.   But I digress.

It's been around for 104 years.  I think you'll find the city itself was been placed randomly around it.  Not the other way around as you suggested.

[katoftw]

Ken - where are the pics?

[Ken Ford]

The trackplan - in about a week.

 

The prototype - keio6k already posted the one pic of the sakura tunnel I was going to post; I'm still looking for the other of the retaining wall.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Randen_cherry_blossom.jpg

[Ken Ford]

I should say that I originally started this with the intent of making it very small and simple with just an oval of R150, that idea was inspired by this layout:

 

 

This fits beautifully on a 24" x 18".

[Ken Ford]

My package of Unitrack arrived yesterday. I'm not sure I like how this is going.

 

What I'm trying to do is a small oval of R150 with a short passing siding on one of the straight sides. I tried using wyes, but the spacing is wider than I would like.

 

The look I'd really like is an offset siding as is common to the Randen - you enter the siding straight and go through the diverging route leaving the siding. I'd do this with a pair of #4 right turnouts. I'd ideally like to get 25mm track spacing on the siding, but the curves are in 33mm increments. From what I can tell you can't get straight Unitrack in 16.5mm lengths (33mm / 2). So, I'm not sure how I can resolve the geometry issue without going flex track on the backside - something I really don't want to do. (I could always add a second identical siding on the other side of the oval, but again I'm trying to avoid that for scenic reasons.)

 

Does anyone know of any Unitrack geometry tricks that would allow me to "swerve" a track centerline over by 16.5mm in a relatively short distance? I'm wondering if any of the 15 degree curves could be used to do this.

 

If I can't figure a way of doing this, I think I'll have to go with the wye configuration I have now. Either that, or start looking at Tomix track and not use Unitrack for this layout at all.

[katoftw]

I think you use the R282-15 curves.

[Ken Ford]

Thanks! I realized that XTrkCAD probably has the larger curves in their library, I'll try doodling it up.

[Ken Ford]

Here are a few quick doodles in XTrkCad that illustrates the problem and possible solution.  Note these are drawn with R216 instead of R150 because compact track isn't in the library, but the concept is the same.

 

First, the problem:

 

Loop 1.bmp

 

If I sever the curve and move things slightly, I get this:

 

Loop 2.bmp

 

Inserting a few short straight pieces gets me this:

 

Loop 3.bmp

 

I think the small misalignment will be OK.  So, the wyes are going back to be replaced with #4s and a short track assortment.

[Densha]

Because Anyrail (http://www.anyrail.com/) has the R150 curves in their library I made this for you, including automatically generated item numbers:

 

 

Item list:

20000, N Kato Unitrack 20000. Straight 248mm. 2x
20020, N Kato Unitrack 20020. Straight 124mm. 2x

20070, N Kato Unitrack 20070. Straight 45.5mm. 1x *
20071, N Kato Unitrack 20071. Straight 29mm. 1x *

20160, N Kato Unitrack 20160. Curve radius 481mm, angle 15º 2x

20174, N Kato Unitrack 20174. Curve radius 150mm, angle 45º (Compact) 8x

20221, N Kato Unitrack 20221. Right turnout 126mm. (remote) 2x
S60L, N Kato Unitrack S60L. Straight 60mm 2x

 

* 45.5mm and 29mm straight tracks both only sold in this pack which includes both pieces: 20-091

[Ken Ford]

Thank you, Densha!  I have Anyrail downloaded, but I've never installed it.  You just showed me a good reason why I should use it instead of XTrkCad.

 

I believe all of these pieces are packaged in the 20-221 turnout, at least they are here in the US:

 

20160 Curve radius 481mm, angle 15º

20221 Right turnout 126mm. (remote)
S60L Beveled Straight 60mm

 

I haven't decided whether to go with 124mm station length for single Randen cars or the 248mm I had originally intended to allow two car trains.  I like the more compact size you drew and which I used for my tests I posted above, so 124mm is likely.

[Densha]

Yep you're right. Anyrail automatically generates that list so I just copy-pasted it and forgot to mention that.

 

Also consider that the straight tracks in the station are now not exactly parallel so the platforms won't be parallel either, if you care about that. I'd suggest you can at least put 2-car Randen trains on there, how long is that? Adding another 124mm straight makes it possible to even run 'full-size' 2-car trains. (Randen has very short cars) You can also use the curves partially for platforms of course, but that means scratch-building and you have to make sure trains don't bump in each other if it's too close.

[Ken Ford]

I'm liking AnyRail - it's very intuitive, especially compared to XTrkCad.  This was about five minutes work immediately after installing the application:

 

 

Fun stuff!

 

Randen cars are about 100mm long each, I figured 248mm straight was a comfortable berthing length for two cars.  That would extend the layout by 124mm over the 1000mm x 500mm I've shown.  I'm not sure I want to do that with this little layout.

 

I'll probably stagger the platforms - that's common on Randen.

 

Edited August 24, 2014 by Ken Ford

[Ken Ford]

Here's a version where I increased the layout to 1100mm x 500mm to allow for berthing of two car trains.  Hmmm... it's getting big.

 

[IST]

Here's a version where I increased the layout to 1100mm x 500mm to allow for berthing of two car trains.  Hmmm... it's getting big.

 

 

 

Yes, but its more frustrating if you are making a smaller layout but your favourite trains do not fit to the station's length. :)

[Densha]

If Randen cars are 100mm each that makes 200mm for two. So optionally you can change the 248mm straight to a 186mm straight and make a curved platform. I'm quite sure it'll fit easily because those R481 curves for the switches are quite long: 124mm.

 

But with just 62mm extra space you have more comfortable space so I'd also suggest doing that.

[brill27mcb]

... Also consider that the straight tracks in the station are now not exactly parallel so the platforms won't be parallel either, if you care about that.

 

Are you sure they aren't parallel? All the track pieces of the station loop sidings are symmetrical about a center point, so it looks to me like they should be parallel.

 

Rich K.

[Densha]

I meant parallel in that the platforms are exactly at the same location on both tracks. Like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/yamojo/14369797745