My Tokuyama station layout

[Eurostar25]

Haha tell me about it, most of my iPad has been full of pictures of Google earth and photos I took when I was around the area. I've tried to get as many shots as I could of each angle!

 

It's definitely not built up scenery, it's like any local residential area in the countryside with a large station dropped in it.

 

The port over the road would be a good model in itself but I just didn't have the space as the depth of the module would be getting quite big by that point.

 

I wanted to copy it as my wife is from there (so it gave me an excuse I guess) and also I thought it was a station that would probably look ok being trimmed to fit an 8 car shinkansen given the space limitations of being kept in a spare room.

 

The plan is Hamamatsu-cho on the other side of the layout but again a trimmed version. Mainly there because the Kato overhead station probably could get kitbashed in my mind to suit. But this is a long way off.

[railsquid]

I doubt the houses are worth much more than the normal levels for the area (which I don't know at all, but it looks it has development patterns similar to many other smaller Japanese cities which are usually not suffering from population booms). They're on the "wrong" side for a start - the established commercial district is on the other side of the station; each individual plot will be too small to build anything of commercial use on, so unless some developer is willing to buy up the whole block (and it doesn't look like a prime location for doing that kind of thing), those plots will perversely be tricky to sell. It doesn't look like there's a shortage of carparking either, which is a typical fall-back use for hard-to-use plots.

[Eurostar25]

Interesting comments squid and very accurate for the area. Even the main station side is hardly a hive of activity, the main shopping arcade has every second store closed and looks like it's struggling to survive in the months that I've stayed there or nearby.

Carparks everywhere too. Sad really as I guess it was busy back in its hay day.

[cteno4]

There is a prototype for just about anything in Japan! Love it! Looking great Eurostar!

 

Jeff

[serotta1972]

Wow Eurostar, you're putting on quite a clinic building your spectacular modules. Very inspiring, thanks for sharing and also for the stories that inspired them.

[Eurostar25]

While waiting for the final building to be released by Tomytec and able to be shipped I've had a go at planning the next module which will connect to the Shrine corner module I made before this current one.

 

Initially I wanted a container yard to store the Koki and Taki cars, but given the module size of 100cm by 40cm, there really wasn't enough space, so I've decided to turn it into a loco stabling yard.

 

The shinkansen tracks run through the back of the module; the yard will have the kato engine shed in the middle, and the tomix railroad office in the lower right hand corner. The other gray shape at the rear is the road from the module on the right hand side, and also the gray at the lower right is the carpark for the railroad office.

 

I figured I better have a track which can lead to an extension somewhere on the layout, just incase I want to make it even larger than it already is... However this will just hopefully look like a spur track to the gas works sitting next to it but kind of hidden by the viaduct tracks at the same time.

 

The idea hasn't been copied from any image on google maps, more so just trying to use some of the buildings I've collected that have been in storage for too long.

 

Will update as progress permits. Thoughts/comments welcome.

 

 

[Eurostar25]

Pretty sure you're supposed to build the layout first and then stock it later right?

Might have to add a 3rd mainline for the freight traffic at this rate...

I can definitely say I've got enough freight locos now for the freight engine shed module above.

The DF200 is obviously from out of town but aptly pulled by the DE shunter where it's heading off for modification works

The EH200 will probably haul the green Taki consist

The Ef210 and Ef510 the Koki container train

The 2 DD's on the Cassiopeia

The EH500 might be shed bound along with the DD51

 

That's the plan anyway...

 

Edited July 20, 2016 by Eurostar25

[serotta1972]

Oh no, you got it wrong - buy the trains and then build the layout. I don't believe in that nonsense, "build it and they will come".

[railsquid]

Of course you need a wide variety of stock to test the layout as you build it, the last thing you want is to find that some future acquisition has a fundamental problem with track or platform clearance or something ;)

[Eurostar25]

Haha thanks guys, I'm doing my best to avoid becoming a collector and still be a modeller but now the locos and rolling stock out number the track space of passing loops and storage sidings to hold them.

Just build a bigger layout aye?

[railsquid]

Funny, that's how I started out... I'm now at a point where I need to get cracking with the layout so I can free up storage space occupied by all the scenic stuff and accessories I've acquired...

[Eurostar25]

Haha I'm at the point of when I use the scenic material to go on the layout out of the train box it's then replaced by loco's or wagons so the container of train equipment never really reduces!

[katoftw]

Sorry I'm late to the party.  Back to your yards issue.  You say 40x100 is not big enough for your yards.  why not just space the yard over 2 modules.

 

 

Scan is from the Tomix Layout Support Guide using 2 of there modules to make a long yard.

[Eurostar25]

Thanks Kato for the images, theyre very useful and also a mirror image of the angles I wanted to use for my module.

 

I should've mentioned the module can't really be any longer as it is as it fits across the end between 2 corner modules which in turn fit across the wall of the bedroom. 

 

I've had a play with the design and think I can squeeze a bit more siding space by moving the point to the right hand side of the module.

It'll still have to be an engine shed module rather than the container yard. May have a look at adding a container yard on another module which has the space for a 2m yard rather than the 1m module on this one.

 

[Eurostar25]

How do you guys add a photo or video on YouTube mid way through the post? 

 

I can only get them as small thumbnails at the end of the post or a youtube link to then go to the site itself.

 

Are you copying and pasting a photo into the post? How about the videos?

 

Bit hard telling the story of a post if all the shots are at the bottom while the words are one big paragraph above.

 

Thanks in advance. 

Edited July 28, 2016 by Eurostar25

[kvp]

You can add external images as embedded pictures that are actually pointing to this site. If you are posting your own image here, then add as an attachment, click preview, open in new tab, copy the link and replace the attchment in the posted text with the link. The image will be uploaded to the forum, but also posted as an external link, showing up in full size. (if you don't see the wysiwyg formatting toolbar, then add the links in bbcode format using img tags)

 

Youtube videos are autodetected and replaced with the embedded movie when posted as plaintext. (not as a clickable link) I usually post videos as links too, since some systems can't display inline videos, but an external youtube viewer works when there is a link.

Edited July 28, 2016 by kvp

[cteno4]

Please don't embed images from other sites on the forum unless they are your own sites. By embedding pictures the hosting and bandwidth costs/performance for the image are born by the other site and it's not fair to use their image in our forum thus at all. Actually using images not your own here on the forum is not kosher either as we do not have the rights to use them here. The forum is on Amazon servers and if someone were to complain of our using other's images here pubically we could get shut down and it's just plain unfair to the photo's owners.

 

We would prefer folks link to the page where the pictures are (if they are not your own pictures) so as to avoid any issues and be fair to their owners. It's best to link to the page the photo is on and not the individual photo as there may be other interesting content on the page folks may be interested in and provides all the credit and such the photo owner may want with then picture. it can be hard to find the source page as well from only the photo link due to how the site was laid out.

 

YouTube videos will autoembed as kvp noted. If the YouTube link starts with m.youtube.com you need to remove the .m from the link (if you are editing a post after it is posted there are two spots you will need to remove it from the post link to make it auto embed).

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[kvp]

Maybe having an attach full size button (next to the attach thumbnail) to the upload function would make posting our pictures easier?

Edited July 28, 2016 by kvp

[Eurostar25]

Thanks for the comments guys, I was only going for shots that I've taken on a phone camera and screen shots from google maps as reference shots

[Eurostar25]

Well it's almost finished now, with the addition of the restaurant there only leaves minor road works at the entrance and I'm pretty happy this half is done.

The restaurant and laws on aren't there on Google earth but I'm happy with their appearance. The house has been replaced with the parking lot instead as it's easier to model the gravel.

On to the yard next up.

Ignore the locos in the station, they're just getting run in and since the station is the longest bit of track powered at the moment that's where they go.

[cteno4]

Great station Eurostar! Whole scene looks great as well! Kudos!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Eurostar25]

Laying some track work for the yard module, this one will be pretty plain. Mainly somewhere to store locos

 

[serotta1972]

Good to see you going back to modeling, I thought you had gone to the collector side. :)  But it looks like you have good balance between collecting and modeling unlike me.  Beautiful station Eurostar!

[Pauljag900]

Good to see you going back to modeling, I thought you had gone to the collector side. :)  But it looks like you have good balance between collecting and modeling unlike me.  Beautiful station Eurostar!

And the fact there s a picture of the real one shows just HOW good it is.Good effort mate

[Eurostar25]

Thanks for the comments guys, this next scene is freelanced so I may struggle without a Google maps reference for this one!