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New Year New Layout: Hakone Tozan Line


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Hi all,

 

I've built a few model railways over the years but haven't touched any of them for quite a while. One that I started but never finished was a model of the Enoden so I have a bit of history with Japanese N gauge and the bug appears to have bitten again.

 

I'm in the planning/experimentation stage for a model of the Hakone Tozan Mountain Climbing Railway. It's extraordinarily pretty:

 

Hakone Tozan Railway

Link to photo on Flickr by rainbow_bread

 

It also has several interesting switchbacks and a very close distance between adjacent tracks. I don't know exactly what I'm doing plan-wise but I'm pretty keen to have one of the switchbacks (and maybe just that?) So the first thing was to figure out how that would work.

 

None of the commercial track systems have pointwork that fits together so closely, but Peco's small radius turnouts are about right in curvature. I thought I'd see if I could modify them as the idea of laying my own track is way too scary.

 

I cut the rail with an etched saw, which was very neat but quite hard on the saw teeth. I had to re-cut them with a file after each turnout!

 

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With the rail out of the way it was easy to saw and clip away the sleeper web, although a bit mind-mangling thinking about how the mirror image cuts would fit together.

 

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Then repeat all the steps and use a file to true up the edges so the turnouts fit together into a crossover.

 

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Makes quite a big difference compared to the unmodified crossover!

 

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and my Tomix EMU negotiates it happily enough :)

 

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I've made up both crossovers now, so have enough for one switchback. But I'll need to trim them back at the other ends when I figure out how long they actually need to be :)

 

Hopefully some more interesting/less technical stuff to come, i.e. scenics, but I've got a fair bit to do first. Track plan is probably the big one, I need to decide between a single module, potential future modules, or something that captures more features of the real thing but is a bit more caricatured? 

 

Cheers,

 

Will

 

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   Hello Will... Ive never been to Japan, someday though as it is on the Bucket list. However I am familiar with the rail line your building, from travel programs and documentaries. I agree it is quite unique and some great background scenery. Im going to follow if you don't mind ? 
 

Dennis

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7 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

   Hello Will... Ive never been to Japan, someday though as it is on the Bucket list. 

Neither have I (apart from a stopover in an airport hotel twenty years ago!) and it's definitely on my bucket list too. No. 1 daughter has started learning Japanese at school so we may have a handy translator in a year or two :)

 

Follow away, I would be insane to mind! Hopefully I can keep progress going (I've been trimming the ugly bits off the points, but I need to make some replacement timbers.)

 

W

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I did the other half of the crossover, and have been removing some of the "Peco cruft" from around the tie bars.

 

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I need to add some replacement sleepers between the rails where I've removed the Peco locking spring housings - these are moulded in a sort of mechanical box which doesn't have much relationship to reality. When you remove the spring you can clip it away, but there's not a sleeper moulded there so it looks a bit weird otherwise.


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At the same time I cut away about a cm from the toes of the facing points, which gives six sleepers between the facing tie bars. This seems to match the prototype (see above) but it might be possible to shorten by another sleeper? It's hard to count them as all the pictures I've found are from low angles.

 

There's a bit more to do on the cleaning up - like filling in the notches in the timbers on either side of the tiebar - and then I can look at wiring/soldering up the complete crossover unit. Because I've removed the springs I'll need to use turnout motors or some other locking mechanism to replace them. The plan at the moment is some kind of micro-servo system so I can automate things. I've used Tortoise motors before and they're excellent, but they're really too big for this layout.

 

Cheers,

 

Will 

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Cheers Andy, I think they look a bit heavy in the picture but they'll improve dramatically when painted and ballasted. the Hakone ballast is pretty much flush with the tops of the sleepers which will help disguise the rather unsubtle code 55 track.

 

W

 

 

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I’ll pull up a chair too if you don’t mind Will?  I’m fortunate enough to have travelled on Japan’s railways many times though not this particular one.  I have to say that everything you hear about their punctuality is true - it is a quite remarkable transport system.  Really tidy work with that point work!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry about the gap, I tend to have a bit of a modelling slump in January anyway, and I'm still debating about the Hakone track plan.

 

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This is quite close to a (compressed) version of reality. In real life, the downhill (lower) line from the switchback turns CW to meet the bridge roughly parallel to the switchback itself. Having it descend ACW inside a tunnel makes it easier to open the angle between the bridge and switchback which should help with fitting what is in real life a *massive* gorge onto a two-foot wide baseboard without it being horribly caricatured.

 

In other news I sprained my thumb (hopefully just sprained) crossing a ditch at an orienteering training camp so some of the more physical aspects of modelling (scraping and sanding) are a bit painful at the moment.

 

I suspect the thing to do is to make my mind up about point control and get an order in. I don't want to use Tortoises as while they're really good, they're also enormous. Tam Valley in the US has a nice setup using SG90 micro servos with mounts and a controller board, that might be the way to go. I could roll my own but I suspect it'll end up costing almost as much and probably not work as well as a bought one!

 

Cheers,

 

Will

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Sorry there hasn't been much happening here, the place I get my timber from closed since the last time I did a layout and I need to find an alternative. Most DIY stores have the right things but terrible cutting services 😕

 

W

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  • 2 months later...
  • 7 months later...

That's really cool to hear. I think it's out of commission at the moment following a bad storm/landslide but not completely sure.

 

I have acquired some baseboard materials and now need to figure out how to drive the points. The Tortoise motors used to be easy to get locally but have completely dried up with COVID shortages, so maybe I need to try micro servos as I can at least get hold of those?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

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  • 3 weeks later...

Have now built a baseboard, but for a different N gauge layout! I'll see if I can get a picture of what I've done so far. And I am indeed trying servos for the turnout drives.

 

Will

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Spent all of twenty minutes the other night building this little 1/160 Streckenhaus from Noch's laser cut range. I think from the doors it must be for handcars, what we might call a permanent way hut?

 

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The smarter modeller would have painted before assembly, but I was just messing around. I think it could do with some corner blocks to help assemble everything square (my roof is slightly skew) and I broke a couple of the projecting beams and had to make new ones from spare card.

I'm quite impressed how they've managed to create the ribbed siding and door handle by lasering a single layer of card. The burn marks even look quite natural.

I'll try and paint in a few of the details, I can probably remove the (tracing paper) glazing from the inside to get at the glazing bars. But mainly this was a test for the medium as I have a nifty deck truss bridge in the same cardboard over which I'm going to be taking more care.

Cheers,

Will
 

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