Working on new Japan-themed layout in my basement in Washington, DC

[zartan]

Been working on an n scale layout in my basement for the past couple of months after getting back from my first trip to Japan in November 2014.  I did some model railroading 30 years ago as a kid and hadn't done any for a long time, but riding Shinkansen everywhere definitely rekindled my interest!  Today is the first day that I've had rail back on my layout after a couple weeks of heavy landscaping and detailing - nice to be able to run trains again.

 

 

[kvp]

It looks really great! The vegetation looks to be in early autumn and the location seems to somewhere around Tokyo. Do you have a trackplan we can see or an overhead photo?

[cteno4]

Hey Zartan,

 

Great stuff! Great to see you are in DC! Give a yell, we have a Japanese rail club here in DC area if you are interested in meeting up with other japanese Modelers in the area.

 

Jeff

[katoftw]

Nice. Some of the tracks look really close together? Perspective in photos?

[zartan]

Hey all - thanks for the positive comments!  Exciting to be at this point.  I will try to take some pictures from above showing the overall layout, but its hard - instead of using track planning software I did a ton of messing around with physical track to work out how to get a transition from the viaducts to the 'ground' working, and its still not working perfectly (shinkansen are too long and bottom out on some parts of the transitions).  , 

 

kvp you are absolutely right, i was in tokyo in early fall 2014 and this layout was designed to reflect my impressions of the trains there.  I need to do a ton more weathering to get it truly right, which is the next step - ballasting and weathering the tracks.  The original concept was tokyo on the left, Nara/Kyoto on the right, with a bunch of adjustments to reflect the realities of modeling japan in a small area.

[zartan]

Diagram of the track plan and a couple more pictures:

 

 

Diagram of the track plan. The two sections in blue are the segments that go up/down vertically to connect the viaduct with the "ground level." The one on the left is a little flaky as it is not a perfectly smooth rise; the shinkansen sometimes bottom out on it, so I'm working on adjusting to minimize derailment and stalling out.

 

 

Looking from the left towards the mountain, you can see all four loops and the segments that go up and down between levels.

 

 

There are four loops on the layout.  The switches in the foreground allow you to assign each loop either to its own controller (one of the four Kato controllers) or to the Tomix controller, which can be assigned to any or all of the loops.  This allows you to run a single train up and down the levels and between loops with a single controller, or flip a switch to switch control to a dedicated controller and isolate that train from the other loops.  In other words, I can run four trains at a time independently, or traverse the entire layout with a single train.

 

The Tomix controller is incredible and makes operations a lot more fun.  The momentum and separate 'brake' and 'throttle' really add a ton of realism and technique - it's somehow satisfying to engage the brake well outside of a station and time it right for the train to ease to a stop exactly at the platform.

 

Buttons in the background control train sounds (station announcements and JR Rail melodies I found online) using a controller I got on adafruit that plays WAVs in response to closing a switch.  

 

 

Looking towards 'Tokyo'.

 

Next up is mounting a backdrop I got printed on vinyl banner online that just arrived today - a picture of Mt Fuji that I took out of a Shinkansen window.  Early draft I taped together out of individual sheets of letter paper is in the background here.

 

Already realizing some things I would do differently next time.  The main thing is that I built the benchwork way too sturdy / heavy.  You could park a real train on the damn thing and it's not movable.  Definitely wish I would have made it much lighter.  And, the viaduct station in the foreground blocks the view of the lower level trains, and doesn't have room for platforms on both sides.  So, of course, you always wish you had built it a little bigger to add in 'one more thing'.  Overall though I'm pretty happy with the way its turning out given that I just started it around two months ago.

[cteno4]

Zartan,

 

Great layout! The tomix throttle really looks to be something wonderful to play with, I want one!

 

It's always the case to want more! You packed a lot in here very well though!

 

Maybe sometime you could have a layout tour for jrm members in the area! Hope to see you at an event here soon.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff