oeyhamre Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 Hi folks! I`m new to this forum, just got back into model railroading last year :). As I have no room for a permanent layout I decided to go for the Kato Unitrack system (and put my old Fleischmann Piccolo track back in storage). The only practical place for my layouts is the family dining table in our livingroom, so I only get to run a layout for a few days at best, before the need for the space in the daily running of the family gets pointed out :icon_cheese:. (My dear wife :love10: is very tolerant and patient with her neerdy husbands rediscovered passion for modeltrains). I have roamed around the forum a while and gotten a lot of inspiration and knowledge from all the great enthusiasts in here. I just wanted to show you my latest layout, this is based on Katos 303 layout, I`ve widened the curves to better run Shinkansen trains, and made a few other changes to utilize my track stock and my space: I`m just awaiting delivery of some more track from Hobby Search to get this up and running. The hopefully I will have a few pictures in a few days (my shipment is currently going through customs, so hopefully the wait won`t be to long :)). Link to comment
Densha Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 You might want to move the double crossover to the right so that you can cross the tracks before and after leaving the sidings. Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 14, 2015 Author Share Posted January 14, 2015 Something like this then? Only downside is it makes the sidings a good deal shorter. Link to comment
Densha Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 Can't you better place it on the short straight section on the right just after the curve? That way you don't have to shorten your sidings. But that makes me think: wasn't there a problem with S-curves and switches? Maybe someone else with more experience with Unitrack knows more about this. Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 14, 2015 Author Share Posted January 14, 2015 That actually was my original thought at the get go, but to get that to fit the table I will have to reduce the curve radius from my current 315 and 348 mm to 282 and 315 mm. I have only one long Shinkansen set now, but I plan to get more, and the 0 series I have struggle and don`t look good going through very tight curves. Even so it might work in real life, so I`ll try the different options when I get to actually building the layout and report back :). Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 14, 2015 Author Share Posted January 14, 2015 Update, I can`t get the layout to fit together in AnyRail with the tighter curves, so I guess it won`t work anyhow without changing the whole thing. Link to comment
katoftw Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 seems no straights to fit a station/platform Link to comment
spacecadet Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 seems no straights to fit a station/platform He could make one of the yards a terminal... I actually kinda like that idea, might use it on my own layout. Frees you up from having a big unbroken oval. And it's fun to do switching. Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 15, 2015 Author Share Posted January 15, 2015 He could make one of the yards a terminal... I actually kinda like that idea, might use it on my own layout. Frees you up from having a big unbroken oval. And it's fun to do switching. That`s the plan, the lower siding will be set up as a terminal station. And switching IS fun :) Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 15, 2015 Author Share Posted January 15, 2015 (edited) Got my shipment from Japan today, layout taking shape: Edited January 16, 2015 by oeyhamre 4 Link to comment
Irish Padre Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 (edited) Looks great - I'm a temporary dining table modeller too. Hope you have fun with it. Edited January 15, 2015 by Irish Padre 1 Link to comment
kvp Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 The good thing about temorary layouts is that you can build a new one every time you set it up. 1 Link to comment
spacecadet Posted January 15, 2015 Share Posted January 15, 2015 You've made more progress on yours in like 2 days than I have on mine in about 3 years! 2 Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 16, 2015 Author Share Posted January 16, 2015 Ok, that`s the tracks done for now. I decided to try to move the double crossover to the right like Densha suggested, and this promted a rethink of the sidings. So this is how it ended up looking: And in AnyRail: The new placment of the double crossover works much better, good advice Densha :). 1 Link to comment
zartan Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 I'm working on a similarly-sized layout right now and my first plan was somewhat like this. I found that having the station and the sidings both in the 'same direction' was unacceptable because you would have to stop and reverse a train to route it to a destination. Stopping and reversing trains really reduced the fun of running them. You might consider reversing the direction of the siding so it starts on the left of your drawing above. Hopefully what I'm saying makes sense... Link to comment
gerryo Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 (edited) Zartan. The viaduct track starts shortly after where the sidings come off. The siding cannot be turned around. I think that with local train operations there will always be turning and backing up of trains. If you have a large enough layout you can always build in turning loops, but with our size layouts, we don't have that option. In Steam days we had turntables to turn locos, then there was run-around tracks, now we have Bi-Directional locos. The layout that I PLAY with in our club is 20 feet long by 16 feet wide and we don't have space for turning loops. They would be nice, but of very low priority. gerryo Edited January 16, 2015 by gerryo Link to comment
zartan Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Yeah I gotcha, I'm not talking about turning loops though, just having spurs in both directions so a train can "come" from one direction "to" the other. In this layout, trains departing from the spurs go into the layout counter-clockwise and there is no spur to go "to" if you are heading counterclockwise. Totally hear you on the size constraints, I'm just making a suggestion/observation. Link to comment
Mudkip Orange Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 This is a fun setup. 1 Link to comment
oeyhamre Posted January 17, 2015 Author Share Posted January 17, 2015 Thanks for the suggestion. Sidings going both ways is something to try in the next layout, as gerryo points out, there just is no space to do that in this setup. The goal was to get as much fun and interest in a relatively small space, with a viaduct track, using as much of the track I already got as possible. And I only have two complete Japanese trains at present (more to come, I'm sure :)) and they're both bidirectional: Kato 0 series Shinkansen Kato 113 Yokosuka Link to comment
IST Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Very nice layout setup, I like it! It is always fun to build these temporary layouts and play for a few hours and watch the trains. 1 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Oeyhemre, Great start! Wonderful to set up layouts like this on the fly and try ideas out and have fun. Hopefully you will get a spot to eventually keep things up for longer times. But if not at least your wife understands you and that's nice, Jeff 1 Link to comment
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