JRM's new sectional layout

[cteno4]

I know i have been mentioning that jrm has been working on a new layout. well its pretty much there for all the major parts now. we showed off in sort of alpha stage at the B&O rr museum show in jan and now we hope to have a good beta to show at the cherry blossom festival! its a work in progress. we went to a sectional layout as the old build on the fly layout was just taking way too many people and time to set up and tear down and litterally a couple thousand pieces to store and keep track of!

there a new in-depth article on the jrm site now. we should have more pictures up after the cherry blossom festival!

http://japanrailmodelers.org/pages/layout/layout.2.0.html

cheers

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

Not gonna lie, it's sad to see the old version go if only because it was so frigging wonderfully complex, especially with the Shinkansen oriented at a non-standard 15 degree angle.

But it's cool to see y'all breaking out of the Ntrak/T-trak "mold," and with time a sectional layout allows for a lot more detailed scenery than lift-out "scenery elements" do. Plus since y'all know what connects to what, you'll avoid the "four lane highway runs into grass field" type design elements that are so common on Ntrak systems.

[cteno4]

Mudkip,

Yes it was hard to let go of the old spaghetti bowl! it was wonderful to have trains popping in and out all over the place and a bit more area for buildings. but with the effort it took to setup the shows it was just getting to be too much and something had to give. it was putting a real strain on our very small club (usually averages around 10 members at any one time). we did try to split the difference and keep a more unique track plan that could get diced up into individual modules. no one wanted to do a ntrak layout!

with things attached to the module tops we have to have the tracks all break at right angles to the joints so the 5 degree tilt of the viaduct was not possible unfortunately.

the really good news is that it looks like 2 guys in an hour or less can unpack and have the layout setup! we are hoping it will let us do many more shows and things like 1 day shows we would have never done in the past or a show that maybe only 2 or 3 people would want to do.

we tried to make some tracks disappear for a while and now have part of the shinkansen line covered. more will get covered when the station gets a real roof over 40-50% of it as well this summer.

one of the biggest challenge is we have less area for buildings than the old set up. we are looking at doing some modules for the center of the layout that maybe pure dioramas and possibly some sort of center backdrop.

also want to put a row of ttrak street car modules along the side with the shinkansen station to increase the scene there as well.

it was time for some change, the old layout lasted 5+ years. we will try this for now. maybe something different in a few years! we definitely are going to start planning what 3.0 will be sooner this time around!

cheers

jeff

[Shashinka]

I am hoping I will be down in DC early enough to set up the new layout. Sadly becasue of my goofy-ass work schedule I can not get down to the tidal basin this week to shoot sakura, so I have to combine my yearly DC sakura shoot with the JRM booth at the sakura matsuri. Regardless, I am eager to see after a few run-through how much faster we can set up the new layout.

While the old layout was nice and complex, it was as annoying as all hell to set up and took forever. I burned out on set-up after the third or fourth time of doing it.

[Krackel Hopper]

hey hey,

I like the look of the new layout.  The track might not be as elaborate, but the scenes have a purpose.  I think these modules will provide some cohesive scenes on the layout instead of a spaghetti bowl of track with buildings stuffed in/around.

One question - in the container yard, the connection between module E and module F has two tracks (green line) that are not at a right angle break point.  Did you leave a gap where the filler piece gets clipped in when the modules are put together (like N-trak)?

I'm sure others from JRM have already mentioned this.. but I'll chime in too.. Kumamoto Castle would make a sweet diorama to plunk down into the big hole in the middle of the layout 

[cteno4]

Yes it was all about tradeoffs when thinking all this through for 2.0 (really hate the analogy to web2.0 which is dribble, but version control in this case is more a true descriptor!) -- scenes were a big one of them.

the biggest problem is we actually have a bit less in some areas on the smaller modules to now do scenes as well as we hoped. still a work in progress to keep working on this and refine it.

the middle is one place we have for perhaps doing something pretty cool with extending the scenes back. we are thinking about large buildings directly behind the station, perhaps the castle in there somewhere and maybe some industry. things that are larger and can be seen well from a distance. also thinking maybe a divider backdrop between the two sides which may be a simple as a clean backdrop with a long jrm sign on it to not even get into trying to do the backdrop scene which could prove very tough to do well and if not done well could look really bad!

the two sides are pretty close together actually so if we do one full scene in the middle it will kid of blur the whole layout into one. right now you do get the effect that its not one big layout but a very long ribbon scene.

anyhow this gives us a lot to play with over the next couple of years. the great thing is that now folks can take a module or a set of modules home and dink on them. the old layout we could not do that. if we wanted to work on something we had to set it all up and then work on it and that took up a lot of time and space. here at my house the only place large enough for it was in the one garage car space (the other car space is my shop) and thats my wife's car's spot and i pay big time when she cant park in it! as i said its all about tradeoffs!

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

UUUUGGGGGG, DISASTER! just got a call from Matthew. 9 of the 11 modules were in his basement on the floor and his two dogs (he has two HUGE Akitas got down there and for some reason went wild. he said most of the stuff on the modules is destroyed. not sure exactly what we can do in time now for the cherry blossom festival... ill go over in a bit to see the damage, but from the tone of his voice it does not sound good. probably tempted murphy too much by posting this thread...

ill keep you posted when i get back.

jeff

[cteno4]

ok another call, two modules survived pretty well, the other 7 are godzilla land...

more later

[cteno4]

Ok i just got back from a quick visit to matthews before he had to head out to a dental appointment.

it is a wreck scene. apparently a chipmunk came in the open back basement door (its beautiful weather here today) and the dogs got scent of it and went on the rampage to catch it. you can imagine that the layout modules on the floor would have looked like the perfect place for the poor chipmunk to hide in and the 100lb akitas looked like they did that pounce thing you see wolves do in the snow with their front paws to catch small animals under the snow. i was amazed how shattered buildings and viaduct track was. im not sure if i could have crunched things better with my shoe slamming down on things...

cant get mad at the poor dogs or the chipmunk i guess. they were just doing what they do and the layout was in between.

looks like about $500 or more in damaged buildings and viaduct track. the ground track fared pretty well. few places looks like the rails tore loose, but those can be replaced. We are doubting if we can recover in time for the cherry blossom festival in a little over a week or so. we may try. we are going to try and get folks over to matthews tonight if we can to do a full evaluation and see what we want to do. the two modules that survived have almost no scenery on them as the removable mountain covers a lot of them. only two modules that are totally untouched were two at kens house he was working on and the mountain which is at curt's house.

really a disaster, all i could keep thinking about when looking at it was the oh the humanity quote from the hindenberg. it was sort of dark humor that we at least were able to laugh about some that it was like goji came to town. not a way i would want to model that scene though! its better than the alternative of it being destroyed in a car crash where someone could have been hurt. amazingly the dogs dont seem to have cut their paws at all in the smashing (they are huge mits on them -- i mean huge!).

chipmunk did survive amazingly by getting behind a box and being quiet i guess and was finally shooed out the back door, so at least no meat carnage or smelly dead chipmunk in the wall two weeks from now...

sorry im blathering, it helps to let it out like this rather than sit here and pout. hard to focus right now...

jeff

[cteno4]

well i got one laugh out of this here, a friend i emailed about this just sent back reminding me about the japanese model rr destruction fetish videos that can be bought where a lady in leather and high heals stomps and smashes a nice running layout! we got that, but we had dogs and none of us got to witness the show... would have gotten a million youtube hits...

jeff

[cteno4]

another bright spot to lift me up! went out for the mail and there was a package notice in there and so i decided to drive around the neighborhood to find him here and found the mailman a couple of blocks down and there was my GIGANTIC kumamoto castle! nice to have something to get my mind off of the destruction. ill post some on the castle and some picts on that thread soon. this monster is going to take a very long time to build!

also forgot to take the camera over to matthew's. he took a bunch of the devastation and will email some over tonight. ill post some, sort of like watching a car wreck, but at least it could be a goji scene and folks have been asking what it looked like... maybe i can get the governor or obama to declare it a disaster zone and be open to stimulus monies!

jeff

[Krackel Hopper]

Terrible news.. although, a bit funny how it all went down.  I can only imagine this chipmunk trying to hide in/around Kato/Tomix/Greenmax buildings followed by dogs pouncing and smashing them to pieces.  Had that been videotaped, it would have truly been a sight to see..

Will the club go back to Version 1 for the Sakura Fest?  Or were most of the parts from V1 salvaged for V2?

Either way, I think setting up a very basic couple loops or even doing T-Trak would be better than nothing at all.  

I wish I could offer up some help.. If I lived closer than Kansas I could. Then again, if I lived closer than Kansas I would hopefully be part of the JRM.. ha!

[Martijn Meerts]

You could concentrate on getting it back to a state where you can run trains, and not worry all that much about the scenery. At the exhibition, you'll just place Goji near the bit that's seen the most destruction. I'm fairly certain kids will love that ;)

[Bernard]

Jeff - This is unbelievable! After all that work the club has done but I have to say, you are handling it quite well. When you described the damage and with 7 modules shattered I just can't image it. Can any parts of the 7 modules be salvaged?

[cteno4]

Thanks,

yes the thought is to get trains running first. luckily the scenery that was destroyed was just the first temporary stuff that most were going to replace this summer with nicer stuff so no huge long term loss there. the track is replaceable, just going to take some time as we spent the last few weeks doing modifications to the tracks to work on the sections and mount them down as well as hardwired all the electrical to them. luckily the mountain was not there. Curt has put a lot of time into making it beautiful! my nightmare has been that being dropped or crushed, not all the modules!

ironic also as i had just made the prototype module box. its an open top 3/16" ply box that the module slips into then you can stack a bunch and put a lid on top and some straps around the whole thing. this was to be our solution to ultra safe transport and storage of the modules! matthew was going to slice all the wood up today for 11 boxes at the woodworkers club and we were going to spend friday assembling them all! ahh the irony...



we cant go back to v1.0 as we attached most of the track down to the modules so we would have to rip it all up from 2.0 to go back to 1.0. we may see if we have enough to do the 1.0 with everything folks have laying around or a modified one quickly. luckily we did not get rid of the old module bases or most of the stuff from 1.0 other than the track. we will sit down tonight when we have more heads and are in a bit better spot to think about what we do for cherry blossom. perhaps a little photo board there in front of the layout showing the damage and the story will be interesting to the public!

i still have to almost chuckle when i think about how it happened though. i can just imagine the huge akitas pouncing on the modules and a frantic chipmunk (have you ever seen them really get wild, they turn into an electron cloud, totally probabilistic on their location at any point in time!) scrambling through the streets of the modules!

thanks for letting me blather its helping me cope, that and flipping through the castle instruction book!

more at 11...

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

Jeff - This is unbelievable! After all that work the club has done but I have to say, you are handling it quite well. When you described the damage and with 7 modules shattered I just can't image it. Can any parts of the 7 modules be salvaged?

Benrard,

thanks, i keep trying to say stuff happens and leave it at that. getting pissed or too bummed about it doesnt get anything and at least how it happened can still make me smirk some, our own private goji movie... venting here helps as well, sort of trying to write it to observe it from the outside instead of from the inside, ill have to do a lot of that in due time...

most of the double viaduct track is pretty well toast. enough damaged on the walls and some of the rails that it would just be better replaced. that easily doable. most of the structures were pretty stomped. some just need gluing back together (it will be a jig saw puzzle to figure out what goes to what on the details and we will need to vacuum the carpet to find them all!), others will probably just become parts for new kitbashes. the dogs were down there for at least an hour while matthew was up on the second floor on the phone so he could not ear the chaos going on in the basement.

luckily the modules were not assembled so no trains on the layout although one small card table with a box of matthews trains (one of those large boxes with foam slots for lots of cars) was knocked over in the fray. about 15 container cars hit the floor, i think he only thought he lost maybe a coupler and a brake wheel or two, no major damage.

unfortunately this weekend was a really bad weekend for most everyone as we had tried to schedule one last layout work session for this weekend last week. we will see what we can pull together and what we can do next week. im sure we will pull something together will just see what that is here later tonight when we have all had a chance to think about it and sift through the rubble so to speak. matthew later this afternoon and i can go over and take a closer look and start sorting through the pieces until we can get more of the group over in the evening hopefully...

cheers

jeff

[bill937ca]

I've been out of town since 8 am this morning.  But wasn't this morning April Fools?     

This is more fun than the Kingston VIA Rail station was.  Wall to wall university students going home for Easter.  Talk about frazzled.

[cteno4]

bill,

i wish it were i didnt even think of that irony piled on top of all the other irony! its a good thing when matthew called that i didnt remember april fools or i would have laughed at him on the phone and that would not have been a good thing to do at that point as he was really upset, plus the fact he was going in for i think a root canal or something nasty this afternoon at the dentist so he was really not a happy boy at all. he feels really really guilty that this happened at his house with his dogs. i kept trying to tell him there was no way he could have foreseen something like this happening...

so i wish i could just say april fools and then smile... when you see the pictures later you wont smile.

jeff

[cteno4]

Ok matthew and i spent a couple of hours picking up pieces and sorting things this evening. only the two of us could make it over to assess the situation.

All and all its not totally horrible. i should have all the viaduct pieces and unitrak we need to replace the broken stuff, we will just have to resolder all the leads onto the track sections that have them that got busted. we lost a bunch of tomytec buildings, but some can be recovered and i have a shelf full that we can build fast to fill in the blanks. the scenery that was ripped up was on matthew's modules and he thinks he can patch it up for the cherry blossom festival. if we hump it this weekend we should be able to recover. im starting the building campaign now on the tomytecs...

the viaduct stations platforms survived well, luckily the walls were not in so nothing got broken there.

we should have it up and running for the cherry blossom festival!

matthew's dogs Aki and Moki are now renamed goji and Gamera.

pictures at 11 when matthew emails them over (warning not for the feint of heart!)

cheers

jeff

[scott]

Oh, no! I was just about to post about how great the new version looks, and how I like the "ribbon scene" idea--and now this! I hope the  reconstruction goes well and everything works out for the matsuri.

I have to say, I admire how you're handling it--good example to remember when things aren't going well with our layout.

If you need any parts or track or whatever that we have on hand, let me know. I wish I was close enough to lend a hand.

[Shashinka]

Guess this explains the mad flurry of emails I had on my yahoo group email account when I got home tonight about the layout. There must be at least sixty messages going back and forth among the members on this incident.

[Mudkip Orange]

japanese model rr destruction fetish videos that can be bought where a lady in leather and high heals stomps and smashes a nice running layout!

If you could toss me a PM with link to said video(s), I'd be much obliged.

[cteno4]

This is Jeff Reynolds, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that The report of the destruction of the JRM layout has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The JRM's own forum version of dressing up in a godzilla costume and jumping out of a bush and saying "ARUUNGGGG!". Starting now, we couldn't send prank emails, phony voice mails, and spin stories with you in person by tonight, so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the JRM layout before your very eyes and utterly destroyed the new layout. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned today. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your train room is just a Japanese model train enthusiast, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Godzilla, it's April Fools.

Our little War of the Worlds meets Godzilla April Fools joke!

cheers

jeff

[bill937ca]

Our little War of the Worlds meets Godzilla April Fools joke!

You dog!!   

[scott]

Well, that'll teach me to only read the first post date.

[Shashinka]

This is Jeff Reynolds, ladies and gentlemen, out of character, to assure you that The report of the destruction of the JRM layout has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be; The JRM's own forum version of dressing up in a godzilla costume and jumping out of a bush and saying "ARUUNGGGG!". Starting now, we couldn't send prank emails, phony voice mails, and spin stories with you in person by tonight, so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the JRM layout before your very eyes and utterly destroyed the new layout. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please for the next day or so the terrible lesson you learned today. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your train room is just a Japanese model train enthusiast, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Godzilla, it's April Fools.

Our little War of the Worlds meets Godzilla April Fools joke!

cheers

jeff

I'm still waiting for my Godzilla costume.

[Bernard]

Why do I have a feeling that the JRM club is laughing their heads off as they were reading these responses to your thread? Unlike Orson Wells, at least you didn't make us run through the streets waving our hands in the air screaming, "Run and hide, the Monster is attacking the City!!"

[scott]

at least you didn't make us run through the streets waving our hands in the air screaming, "Run and hide, the Monster is attacking the City!!"

However, I *would* like to apologize to the Charlottesville Akita Dog Owners' Society for the remarks I made on Main Street late last night.

[cteno4]

Sorry to all for the joke (well not totally sorry!), but i didnt see any april fools going on here so i thought i would perpetrate one! always loved war of the worlds (original ones only book, radio, movie) so i thought i would play orsen/burr and bring you the destruction of the jrm layout godzilla style but with a semi believable plot! it is totally true that if there was a chipmunk loose in the train room matthew's akitas would go through a wall to get it, it was pretty easy to visualize!

Part way through it almost backfired on me as i realized the other jrm members on the list might pick up on the thread during the day and then panic thinking it was true. while being a good joke on them as well, it might have gone too far at that point and melted down so i let them in on it so they wouldnt spoil it or go running down the street screaming!

must say it was fun playing the semi detached reporter.

good night from the mercury theatre. I hope you enjoyed our performance!

cheers

jeff

[grumbeast]

You had me totally convinced!  I've even shared with my wife and we've been commiserating by proxy!!

Nice one you cheeky bugger!  :)

Graham

[cteno4]

It was worth it to get called a cheeky bugger again! love that term! [curtsy]

cheers

jeff