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Gerryo's Largest N Layout


gerryo

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51 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Container yards, dock and ship does take some space. Curt has a nice small one with ship, crane and yard that's takes about 3.5' x 2' area.

 

How does the container ship supposedly get in there?  The two turns in the channel are way too tight for it.

Sorry - but large ships in impossibly small "harbors" are a pet peeve.

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It explains his lack of interest in realism, but I have to wonder why he didn't just dispense with the water and build a container starship?

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Charles, 

 

Perhaps express your opinion without being insulting. in person it's a very, very nice layout and most never notice the issue. 

 

Most layouts can't be perfectly prototypical and need to bend the rules in some way due to all the variables. It works very well in this case. You seem to need to have things perfect to your standards and that's fine for your layout, but insulting others layouts because they don't match your ideals is just boorish.

 

jeff

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Way back, in the dim dark past, I thought of putting a fishing port onto a layout plan.  I even bought the makings of a set by Tomitec, and I still have it somewhere.

That would take up a lot less space than a container port.  It just seems a shame not to do something with that spur off to the right, and have it end in disaster or nothing.

I even have some fishing boats to go with it.  North Sea type but could be adapted to use in Japan.

 

Charles is right in that out of scale container ships are not kosher, as neither would a container spaceport.  This is model rail roading,and so it shall stay.  A small shunting loco must be available from one of these manufacturers.

 

I just checked and more fixings for the village are available

 

More thinking to do.

Gerry

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Small fishing port could be done in very little space with ocean going off the edge of the table. Tomytec fishing boats are very common in Japan and small. But still would take like 10" x 18". Curt had this int a small nook along the edge of his layout in a small space. Cool things about little dock scenes like this is it's a really fun place to pack in a ton of detail.

 

http://japanrailmodelers.org/photos/kurtslayout/pages/page_81.html

 

container port would work with water/ship at edge  of the layout but just smaller container ship and compress the dock, yard, and track terminal together and that would need like 18" wide strip min. Usually rail, container yard and dock/cranes are quite spread out, but on layouts usually scenes need to be compressed to make them work in the room you have. Smaller coastal feeder ports may compress this as well. Curt's really looks nice and gets him both the port scene and the container yard together.

 

There are smaller feeder coastal container ships in japan. It's declined some with truck taking more, but still there.

 

http://www.imotoline.co.jp/eng/service/circulation.html

 

Small ones are just about 250' (20") and 42' beam (3.4")

 

http://www.imotoline.co.jp/eng/ship/499.html

 

if you want the spaceship container ship it's already been done

 

https://fairplay.ihs.com/ship-construction/article/4273041/aerodynamic-coastal-feeder-ship-wins-japan-award

http://www.containerst.com/news/view,the-worlds-first-spherical-bow-container-ship_45390.htm

 

Rail only container yards come in a big variety of shapes and sizes. Probably much more in stride with the space you have and just compress the container yard to a narrow one. You can also find container and trailer storage in odd small bits of land in japan when space is tight/expensive out from the main yards and along tracks and such. Probably the empties stored there.

 

Jeff

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Yeah that was my second link, the first one let me in the first time but now wants a login the second time. Odd

 

more of moving the bridge to the front to be aerodynamic and also be able to see better than having to look over a pile of containers. The bridge crews have to keep on your toes from running into something when the bridge is the first thing to hit something else!

 

jeff

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59f9b3e64d0e2_N-4x10wSmallFishingPort.thumb.jpg.3a5e882493c300890d78012a46483b4e.jpg

I'm liking the fishing village idea more all the time.  I have the village pieces by Tomytec, some boats, and I have a small piece of Noch layout that was to be used as a front extension on the Cortina layout, but will not be used now.  This piece is almost flat with a few minor details and is 1000mm long by 319mm wide.  If added to the east end would leave a space of 310mm by 250mm at it's end to be the small harbour.  This adds a foot to the layout and makes the west end seem rather barren.  Ha, ha, more space???

Lots of space at the harbour end for other fishing village details and spare boats.

 

Gerry

Edited by gerryo
Had to put print where it shd. be
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WOW.  Thirteen minutes and I have a revision already.

 

I need to find a way to include a tram line from the port to the viaduct station.  This tram would be the "PORTRAM".  I already have a "CENTRAM" in here.

 

Gerry

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I think that just for economies sake I will go with the fishing village scene.  I have a lot of experience with small boats so figuring out the plan and where things need to go will be easier.  I could even have some small sailboats, which were just my speed.  And it will take up less space if I limit myself.

 

My need for the PORTRAM track still stands.  It can go under the viaduct but not the other tracks.  Can any of the single track lines be moved or deleted without disturbing the overall plan?

 

Gerry

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I have a major question regarding the viaduct in my plan.  You have said, Jeff, that it is best to put it at an angle for interests sake, but would it not be much easier to build and plan if it was in the layout parallel to other things there?  Since in real life, everything depends on the viaducts, do they not get built in plan with other things?

Gerry

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Layouts like this are wide approximations of reality as we have a tiny fraction of the space that 1:1 rr have, so scenes get compressed and adapted a lot from reality. Shrinking and compressing reality will end up with trade offs and it all depends on what you want for your layout to determine the tradeoff decisions.

 

When we did the original test setups of this general layout we had the viaduct in parallel with the ground tracks but it looked pretty dull. The angled viaduct really looked a lot better and helped not feel like it was a set of loops with in loops within loops. Real viaducts can be many directions compared to local lines.

 

your layout, it's up to you!

 

jeff

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I made some changes and am now quite satisfied with the results.  First, I turned it upside down to orient it better to the room, where east is east and west is west.

Second is, I limited it to 10 feet long by 4 feet wide.  It is actually 3 meters long which is close to 9.5 feet by 1.25 meters wide which is 4 ft. 1 in.  Within this I think I will have a lot of different expressions. 

With the viaduct being square to the layout makes it much easier to set in other linear ideas, such as the streetscape space for Diotown, a large viaduct station necessary for the Shinkansens parking and the possibility for other small stations.  My fishing village will fit nicely on the East end as will a small boat yard with tracks for the dollies.

 

I would appreciate any comments or blaring mistake pointed out.

Gerry

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Gerry,

 

you do have a reversing loop in there to wire and control for. 

 

Marine railways usually don't connect into regular railways and many are not even standard rr gauges. The carriages are just boat cradles with small wheels on them that just use rr rails. Many times they also use manual transfer tables/transversers to move the boats into compact and uniform work slots if attached to a larger boat yard. For the tomytec fishing boat sizes they are very simple systems. Nowadays the marine rr are out and they just use the self propelled cradle cranes that roll out onto two skinny peirs on both sides of the boat and they just pluck them out of the water on slings and drive them to the work area and prop the boat up. The tomytec boat scene is just a little single marine rr into a boat shed. They have a tidal haulout area next to it for a boat or two. It all makes a nice little compact boat yard scene.

 

there is no real reason to have the boat yard tracks hooked up to the rr line, perhaps connect that spur into the boat yard to the outside loop on the left of the station and get rid of the reversing loop and give yourself another running loop. Is that current reversing loop a tram line? If so it doesn't need to connect to the inner folded loop or the boat yard as they would not in real life and no reason to switch your trams to run on the rr lines really.

 

Is the left still a container yard?

 

one small thing I forgot to mention is that the S curves in the double viaduct of that old jrm plan did have problems with a few trains. I think it was only longer shinkansens (like 10-16 cars) or ones with rapidos that were the problem children. In layout 2.0 we put a 128 in the middle of the s curve and that helped solve any crankiness with the S curve in the double viaduct.

 

cheers

 

jeff

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I have eliminated the reverse loop.

I have eliminated the extraneous track at the boat yard.

The left end is NOT a container yard.  It is made up of 5 Tomytec Fishing Port items and will include Tomytec boats.

The Tomytec boat yard is for repairs to boats.in the short term.  Longer term overhauls are moved to the boat yard by heavy cranes and dollies being pulled by small diesel locomotives, therefor the need for rail track..

I have no long Shinkansens, my longest is 8 cars and none have rapido couplers.

In between the s curves I have a 124, a 310 and a 186.  You can't put a strait in between 22.5 degree curves.

What I am lacking are single track running loops except for the down town loop.  Maybe that's enough.

 

Can anything go in under that huge viaduct station?  Seems like waste space.  Can businesses go in there, as well as the station buildings?

Remember that the loop ends of the bus runs are shown extra large..

Gerry

 

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Gerry,  boat yards didn't use locos to haul boats around. The main cradle car usually wentnup and down a ramp using a cable and a winch. Then the cradle was moved along a traverser with a little comealong motor on the transverser table and the cradle was then usually just pushed into its slot, the boat chalked up and then lowered onto chalks and then the cradle pushed back on the transverser table. While it used regular rail, the gauge was really wide, like 6' - 8' and the wheels were tiny but with big flanges. 

 

Also not sure if there will ne enough clearance for your boats on cradle cars to go under the viaduct.

 

They were very simple. I actually helped demolish a medium sized one that serviced good sized fishing boats (like up to 50-60') when I was a kid. Also grew up next to a small shipyard (for larger ships) that also had a big boatyard with this sort of rig above for boats up to like 75'. Later all these were scrapped for the sling cranes for most all boats as no rails and no getting anything into the water, not lifting with the sling at an angle, and you could drive and chalk the boats up anywhere the sling crane could go.

 

you were just asking about reality earlier, but cool to do your own thing!

 

yes there are things like bus depots, container storage and even shops under viaducts, but usually not Shinkansen tracks, but you can fudge that! 

 

Do think about space for buildings, you have an awful lot of tracks, trams and bus lines going on.

 

thats right now it's all canted track on the double viaduct. Our last two layouts were flat viaduct track so you could. Hopefully the S curve with the canted track won't cause issues with twisting on the trains. I remember some that did not like the s curve were ones with very tight diaphragm couplers as well. Do you have this viaduct track now? If so set it up and test it before getting too far in.

 

cheers

 

jeff

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Gerry,

 

hey sorry did not mean to imply everything shouldmget stripped off. Just ideas and none or all need to be taken. With the boat yard I was just on the track that it was taking up a lot of space to do it by rail and that it was not how you usually done. You can do a lot of boat yard in a small space there and have room for other scenery w.o having a rail system for it. .

 

With the tram and bus lines its just going to be a competition between them and space for your buildings and that's all up to you for how you like it! It's just one of those things that you can't have a gob of bus and tram lines and a lot of buildings in the room left over from your rr tracks in limited layout area. I would suggest you set up the basic rr plan if you like it now and then plop what building you have down and add in some of the bus and tram lines to see what balance you can achieve that you like. If you don't have all the buildings then you can also cut up some corrugated cardboard and make boxes about the size of various building you might want to get an idea of space and how they would relate to the tram, bus, and rr lines.

 

planning in buildings is really hard when doing track planning in software or paper. You can put in footprints and even spend the time to go 3d in fancier software, but it never works as well as just messing with some track and buildings (or boxes) in real space. You can even mock up some scenery in a few minutes wirh crumpled newspaper and masking tape. Roads and bus lines can be quickly simulated with cut up paper. I think this process would really help you in determining how many of the tram and bus likes to put in. Layout planning like this is a real balance and you of course never get it all as there are lots of limits we have with modeling so it just takes a lot of fiddling to get the best possible balance for you.

 

You may want a passing siding or spur siding(s) on your ground loop to store a train or two. I don't think you have to abandon the folded ground loop unless you want to max out building space. This may be a good place to mock up the track plan on the table and play with buildings to see

 

its impossible for other to know what exactly what you would like, comments are just give for things to think about against your needs and wants and what you enjoy and be tossed if not with that. None are gospel or have to dos, just ideas to bounce around and most end up bouncing into the trash can!

 

keep at it you will find what sings to you!

 

cheers

 

jeff

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Thanx Jeff.  My table will be in 3 pieces 1000mm by 1250mm, and will be ready by end Nov. so have time to think on this.  My main push right now will be T-Track-Z so must get at it.

 

Gerry

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OK.  This is great and real if you have one or two boats for repair.  But where do you put them if you have 20 to 30 to repair.  Then you need to move them to higher ground and away from the waterfront.  In the winter, here in Canada, where we have lots of snow, like north eastern Japan, all the boats are taken out of the water.

They have to be stored somewhere.  Not at small boat repair shops.

 

Gerry

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