31st August 2000
Planning for Shin Yamanote is well underway,
however no construction has commenced. The difficulty of fitting a 9m layout in
a 5m room is apparent, and building it in two halves, and not being able to fit
them together until the first exhibition is not my idea of sound judgement !!!
For that reason (and others) I have decided to build a small layout in the
meantime, which will be finished a lot earlier than Shin Yamanote. Construction
of both could be done in parallel of course.
Another reason for this layout is that I have a lot of rural/country type buildings that I cannot use on the Shin Yamanote 'city-only' layout, and I don't want them to go to waste. It is also a project that my wife and I can get involved in together, and it will actually be 'her' layout !!!
There was a plan in an old edition of the Tomix track planning book that I always liked - a bit different to the once-or-twice round ovals with lots of the spaghetti-on-a-small-board that seems typical of many Japanese layouts, so this gave me a chance to use this as the basis of my new layout. It is a rural line in the mountains, with no electric overhead, so only diesels or steam can run on it. I have made the layout a little longer than the 1800x900mm in the book, and added a mainline loop (with electric wires) on the pretext that you travel on this line to the small village, and then change to the local line for the journey further into the mountains (where there will be a temple or some sort of Japanese shrine/castle etc). originally the layout would have been 2200x1200mm, as that is the size that fits in the trailer, however I wanted a little more length. What I have done is cut that dimension in the middle and turn each piece sideways, so I can have a 2400x1100mm layout. Two pieces are easier to carry that one big one, but track and scenery joins are always a hassle !!!!
"Inaka" is the name supplied on the signs with the Tomix <4002> Wooden Station. However, using different Kanji, the word also means 'rural' or 'countryside', which perfectly matches the reasons for building this layout.
3rd September 2000
Finally done the scans ... as well as a rough modification showing my alterations.
Here is the original track plan - so you can see what is
in the tunnels !!!
Here is the suggested 'scenery' plan from the book.
Here is my modifications (very roughly) showing the
addition of the main line to the station area at the front, the station building
swaps sides, and the through track in between the two platforms. There is a
small storage track next to the rural platform, both of which will hold 4 cars.
The mainline platform will hold 9 cars.
Here is a picture from the book - showing the
mountainous rural nature the layout is supposed to depict.
18th March 2001
After having visited Japan, and seeing lots of things to give me inspiration, I have decided to do Shin-Yamanote as the next layout, so contrary to all the good ideas in the first few paragraphs above, this one will be shelved indefinitely.
Maybe someone else would like to use the idea as the basis for a layout ???
Whole page contents and images
2000
Doug Coster.
Details current at 13/10/00.
