gerryo Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 I might as well get this started with a question. My layout will be approximately 10 feet long by 4 feet wide. I use the American dimensions because our lumber is sold by the foot, and I am not good at converting. This is because of about 60 years of working in inches instead of metric. But I am learning slowly. My question is this. What is the length necessary for use of the Kato Double Track Incline? Do any of you know the rate of the incline? I have always used 4% grades but wonder if something less would be better. I am combining the Unitrack with a Unitram city center. and using a ground level double station to have the two types meet. So you can guess how much I need to know this answer, with all the cdross overs I have planned. Sorry I have no pics as yet as the planning is being done on Cadrail Design Program. gerryo 1 Link to comment
the_weird_one Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 (edited) You should be good, unfortunately I work in Peco but with a 9' x 5' board you can do something like the layout I've attached. Its pretty much a copy of the layout used by this https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr65vBXrInv78IeBj8JmMLA YouTuber - one that I really admire for the scenery change. The biggest downside is that the tightest radius is 300mm so fairly tight if you want to run Shinkansen on it. Edited December 29, 2014 by the_weird_one Link to comment
gerryo Posted December 30, 2014 Author Share Posted December 30, 2014 Thanx wierd_one, but I already have all my curves set at 16.5 inches (412.5 mm, I think). Don't want to go any smaller. Maybe I could work out 3% grades as a compromise. I think that would be about 24 inches less on each slope. Might help. I had a really neat layout all planned, then proved to my self that it couldnt be built. I had tried to do a double loop with the viaduct and they would be at the same height at the same place. Didn't quite work out. Gerry Link to comment
katoftw Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 (edited) If you are using double tracks, the 381mm will be your smallest curves. As if you have a 414mm curve, then a 381mm curve will be attached to it. As for the length of the incline, The basic set piers normall require 248mm or a 45 degree curve between them and some in 5mm, 15mm, 25mm, 35mm, 45mm, and 50mm heights. Steepest sections equal 4% rise. There is also 10mm, 20mm, 30mm and 40mm peirs in a secondary set making the whole incline 2%. But that is also alot of length required to do so. But that will add 1 meter to a already long 1.5 meter incline. Edited December 31, 2014 by katoftw 1 Link to comment
gerryo Posted December 31, 2014 Author Share Posted December 31, 2014 (edited) Thank you katoftw, for that info. That is exactly what I was looking for. Now I can prove, to myself, that my plans will work or not. Gerry Edited December 31, 2014 by gerryo Link to comment
gerryo Posted December 31, 2014 Author Share Posted December 31, 2014 (edited) How did I ever get into Japanese trains? Well, it's sort of like this. I am a member of a small group who have built a 20 ft. by 16 ft. rectangular layout in British OO. We take this layout to shows around eastern Ontario and western Quebec, here in Canada. At the smaller shows I have had a small 4 ft. x 2.5 ft. N Scale layout along with me for the children to play with and run trains. This year I tried to build this small layout using all British equipment. This was not to be. I could not get the track and or trains that I needed to complete it. I had also been trying to design a home layout for my OO trains, and was finding that it was difficult, if not impossible, to complete the design in the space I had available. I had had some involvement with a T-Track Club so had some experience with Kato Unitrack. Decided to look further and found that there were many more pieces available in Unitrack than in Peco. I also became interested in Unitram as a small layout for the kids. I now have a small layout all designed, the frame built, and am waiting for the Unitram V50 set to be delivered. There will be the equivalent of 2 V50's but I will use the V51 Expansion set for the second half. My interest in Unitram has also convinced me to include some of it into my large layout, and to have the children's layout attach at one end to also become part of my home layout. So, there you have it. Those are my ideas, and as of today I have the design completed to include lots of Unitram, a double loop of Kato Double Track, mostly up on Viaduct, and down onto table level with a double station - one side for High Speed Trains and the other for Unitram Trams. Gerry Edited December 31, 2014 by gerryo 1 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Gerry, Cool, I think you will find a great variety of Japanese track, trains, structures, vehicles and scenery bits for your layouts! Easy to get stuff from Japan and good suppliers and decent pricing. The unitram works well with kids. We have done a unitram for a few years now at shows with a lot of kids and they love to run the trains. Do need to remove the reverse switch from them as kid tend to run fast and the hit reverse if they can and can be hard on the trams! We use kato controllers and pull off the reverse lever and put tape over the stem. Even at full throttle the trams rarely fly off the tracks and we try to keep them from going too fast. One member is modifying a kato controller to be able to vary the top voltage output to keep things saner as well. We still stick to using the cheaper tomytec trams on this layout just in case though! Cheers Jeff 1 Link to comment
katoftw Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 I made a boo boo with the incline sets also. I listed the single track incline sets. The double track incline piers are a little different. They come in 5, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, 43, 45.5mm. A mixture of those come in the basic and the gradual set. I dont think it really changes much for the R381/414mm curves. I'd guess you'd only use the gradual set on the R282/315mm viaduct pieces. A R315 and S248 going up 10mm is 4%, a R282 going up 10mm is 5.4%. So you'd might use the gradual set to reduce the rise in this case. Link to comment
gerryo Posted January 8, 2015 Author Share Posted January 8, 2015 Well, you might say that a layout plan is never done. I made the statement that I had finalized my layout plan, and then kvp displays a layout on another topic that is by far more interesting than mine. So thanx kvp, for the plan. I have done some mods to it to allow the integration of my Unitram ideas, and this works out better than I had planned before. So, it will have a 1200 mm by 600 mm Unitram city scene at one end. This part will be removable to allow me to take it to different shows for the children's enjoyment. The Unitram segment will connect to the main layout, which will be 1200 mm by 2400 mm, and have the trams meet the ground level double track at a small country station. The ground level double track will have a yard to display trains, which I have no clue about at the present time. These will be the commuter trains which do not run on the overhead viaduct. There will also be included a stable of freight type trains. The ground level track will also connect to a circuit that ends up at a small dock area which I have planned into one corner of the layout. This will be one of the purposes of the freight trains. The viaduct is not very interesting at present as it is just a continuous oval. Probably will include a viaduct station when I can figure out how they look, and how they interact with other parts of the railroad. I also plan a single track incline down to the ground level track, when I figure out how to do that. Enough for now. I guess I had better start to build this thing before I am swamped with trains with nowhere to go. gerryo Link to comment
NJHA Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 You can be sure a plan is never done. It took me almost 1 year to get my plan into final stage, and even now sometimes i look at the tracks and... "hmmmm, i wonder if...". Link to comment
E6系 Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Hello gerryo, I sense a lack of satisfaction with your track planning. Please allow me to make one suggestion: Have a look at the travel section of the forum and see the places people have visited. Check out the trains that run in those locations and see if they are the type of thing you want to model. If so, use Google Earth to find the locations and look at the real track layout. Finally, create your own interpretation of that layout and run with it. You mention you want to have trams. Please consider then, the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Both have excellent tram services. Use Google Earth to see "Nagasaki Station". You will note that the trams run parallel to the main line for quite some distance, albeit with building between. It is reasonable, therefore to spread your trams throughout the layout, if you wish. Also look at "Hiroshima Station" using Google Earth. You will see the Shinkansen, local trains right next to it. On the other side of the local trains you will see the bus station, taxi stand, and Hiroshima's famous trams all very close together. Bordering them is the river. Such a scene can easily be interpreted into a layout, right? I hope my advice is useful. 1 Link to comment
gerryo Posted January 9, 2015 Author Share Posted January 9, 2015 Hi again E6. All advice is useful !!! Believe me, I would not have been into model railroading for 40 years, without listening to as much advice as I could get. However, I think that, since this is going to be my last model railroad, I will go with whichever train strikes my fancy at the time. As you may have noticed, I already have one Odakyu 1000, an Odakyu 7000 on the way from Japan, and a 7 car E6 coming from 2 places, some from Japan and the rest from the US. So with this kind of beginning into Japanese R.R. I have nowhere in particular in mind for my layout to represent. I have been committed to Kato track as I have quite a bit which was purchased when I was doing T-Track. So I have just carried on with Kato. All my dimensions are for Kato track, and this has not been easy, as the layout plan that I am emulating, that I got from kvp in Hungary, uses Tomix track dimensions. But I think I have it mastered now. It remains to be seen if it will fit onto my physical layout. lol Thanx again for the advice, gerryo 2 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Gerry, I think E6 was also eluding to just looking at some real Japanese rr scenes to get ideas of what you can mash up to fit your layout space and track plan. It can really help to get ideas rather than going at it from just the blank track plan, having a few scenery element ideas can help nucleate the track planning mor and give it more direction than just creating the loop. The cool thing about Japanese rr is there is a huge variety of scenes with rr and rr related stuff and you can find the wildest mixture of mashups in real life to stimulate your own ideas for your own layout world. Also just using trains you like is fine, it's your world! Some like to start with using only prototypical combos to be accurate, others (as I thin what E6 was referring to) will use this more just to help them plan than make it all up -- they like to have an external plan to help plan/guide their layout. But it's whatever you want to do and works for you! Cheers Jeff 1 Link to comment
E6系 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Hello Mr gerryo, Yes, it is as Mr Jeff has said. Usually we are attracted to the actual train first, so I suggested using that as a starting point. My suggestion is to use Google Earth and create your own interpretation of a scene. Of course, we cannot model entire main and branch lines prototypically, but a quick look at Hiroshima, for example, will show you how reasonable it is to cram shinkansen, main line, branch line, tram and bus all onto one small layout ... with a river as well. Sometimes we ponder too long about whether certain things should appear together on a layout, myself included! Afterall, one cannot let work get in the way of a good daydream! Link to comment
cteno4 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I love google street view to get scene and detail ideas. Really is nice to see how the real world you are modeling is put together, I find it's very different usually than my mind would first go to for a modeling idea, but once I look back to the real world examples I can see whole new set of ideas to fill in something to a much better result even though it does not come out looking exactly like the example I drew from. It also keeps you from getting too even in your modeling. In the real world (especially japan) scenes can be pretty chaotic, but it seems our minds naturally first go to laying out a very ordered scene, that is not real life actually. It's funny as our mind's eye looking at a model scene will reject the highly ordered scene as not being natural and love more chaotic scenes, (why most not super detailed but nicely set to real world chaos Japanese model scenes look so damn convincing -- even compared to hyper detailed model scenes) but the same brain knee jerks to laying out a very orderly scene much of the time when designing. I guess it's our conscious brain trying to organize the chaos of the real world to deal with it internally work on it, but the mind's eye is programmed to look for the chaotic patterns in the real world so if the chaos is in the model scene the mind's eye registers real. I find having scene ideas in the head helps in the track planning to make sure the open bits are there in the righ places and size to allow for them and not let the track planning totally dominate the process. If both evolve together then you have the best chance of hitting the home run all the way around and pick up a lot of extra synergy as well. You can see this big time these days in architectural rendering of planned projects. These use to be done by hand and would start from many many many rough sketches taped up on the wall. The artist would look at them and refine over and over and actually be selecting the pieces of the sketches that looked real to the mind's eye. This was a very tedious process, but it came up with one or two views that were stunning and anyone looking at them thought it was totally real in their mind's eye even though still only on paper. The connection the viewer got to the image was deep and strong and thus worth the time, money and effort to getting one or two done like this to win over everyone (if it was a good design, if a crap design, of course that would show clearly!) Renderings like this can absolutely captivate an audience, I know I've been there when it's happened, totally amazing to see! Today most all renderings are done thru cad and a very quick process. Lots of views can be quickly rendered and the emphasis is on doing many views but not on refining them much at all to look real to the viewer's mind's eye. Hence they all come out looking the same no matter the project and they rarely if ever feel real at all. A great design and crap design come out looking similar in this sort of rendering process. The big downside is if it does not feel real to the viewer's mind's eye they will never make that deep, human, subjective, subconscious connection to the conept/proposal/design. Cheers Jeff 4 Link to comment
WuZhuiQiu Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Hi, gerryo. I don't have any advice for you, but have you tried contacting "Hobby Dreamer" (on this forum). He is also located in Ottawa, and had shown some interest in Japanese trams. Hmm, nevermind - he would seem to have quit the forum: http://www.jnsforum.com/community/user/91-hobby-dreamer/ Link to comment
cteno4 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 If you want I can see if hobby dreamer is interested in connecting up with others in Ottawa, I'm in contact with him via email Cheers Jeff Link to comment
gerryo Posted January 12, 2015 Author Share Posted January 12, 2015 (edited) Hi cten04. I would like to be in contact with Hobby Dreamer, if he has any need for contact as well. Thanx. Hi E6. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner about Google Earth. I have been busy with my weekend as it was my birthday and my Daughter was here from Calgary, Alberta. I have however, been on Google Earth and as usual, am quite amazed at the detail available on there for just about anywhere in the world. I was particularly amazed at the clarity on the Hiroshima Station. So after that I went to the Toyama Station because this is the city where the Kato Unitram was developed. Also, because the Toyama LRT was partly designed by a Canadian Company called Bombardier, and I have previously been owner of some of their Skidoo equipment. Anyway, I was equally amazed at the clarity of the Toyama Station. I don't think I want to try to emulate any station quite that large, but maybe I can use some parts of it. Do you, or anyone on here, have any idea what trains are used on the Hokuriku Main Line? Or what ones are used as local Commuter trains? I guess I should try to be somewhat authentic. I would also like to know what the procedure is for posting pictures on here. I have what I think is my finished layout plan and would appreciate some input and criticisms of it. gerryo Edited January 12, 2015 by gerryo Link to comment
Densha Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 I think everyone would love to see your layout plan! :) Link to comment
kvp Posted January 12, 2015 Share Posted January 12, 2015 Not much info but at least a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokuriku_Main_Line#Rolling_stock For pictures, when you already have your own layout topic, then you can upload pictures there directly or link it from a reliable external gallery which allows it. Just don't delete the pictures later since that would break your post. Link to comment
gerryo Posted January 12, 2015 Author Share Posted January 12, 2015 unitrack e-mail.docxOK. I will have a go at posting a pic. Link to comment
NJHA Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 Hmmmm. Nearly there. Let me give you a hand. This is a wicked layout :) Link to comment
katoftw Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 It is too busy. And I fail to see the point of connecting the trams to the commuter lines. Link to comment
katoftw Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 Do you, or anyone on here, have any idea what trains are used on the Hokuriku Main Line? Or what ones are used as local Commuter trains? I guess I should try to be somewhat authentic. IF you dont know what trains come from that region. I'd suggest not buying them. Only buy trains you like. Don't let the station or line dictate your layout. Let the trains be boss. Link to comment
kvp Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 And I fail to see the point of connecting the trams to the commuter lines. That was once very popular for freight interchange, altough usually only a single track, but completly not standard in Japan. (most older trams had a different track gauge) Also this in use today by the so called tram trains in Europe, but mostly unheard of everywhere else. If you remove the extra tram connections (that are unusable for the trams anyway because of the different platform heights), then you get a nice layout. I would add at least 2 extra tracks to one of the commuter stations tough. (for local/express interchange) ps: The only way a tram network would be usable by trains is to have street running commuter emus. But that's a rare thing even in Japan. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now