Last year, my wife Amy made a Christmas layout around our Christmas tree. It was made from a cheap second-hand H0 set, and lots of fake snow sheets and batting, and some terribly out-of-scale dollar-store Christmas village houses. It was terrific. We both loved it. In fact, it was that project that got me into Japanese model railroading.
Anyway, the live tree turned out to be a bad idea (after being pummeled by needles, the poor village was raided by a horde of preying mantises!), and we never actually decorated it. Oops. Long story short, we’re not putting up a Christmas tree this year, but Amy still wanted a Christmas train. Then she hit on the idea of making a Japanese themed layout (wonder where she got that from?). Then she saw the Tomytec model shrine, and she knew what she wanted: A New Year’s layout, the centerpiece of which is a village visiting the Tomytec shrine on New Year’s Eve. Of course, finding space for a full-blown layout was a challenge.
Sadly, neither the Yamanote Line E231-500 nor the E4-series Shinkansen I already own had the right “Christmas train” look, nor did they really match the rural village theme, so we had to buy a new train. Horrors. After a lot of looking, Amy and I decided that the Yumekukan would suit. It looked holiday-ish, with its shooting star locomotive, and fancy-pants passenger cars. And it runs on the Tohoku Line, the focus of my train collecting. So it became my birthday gift, being the best way to rationalize buying a $200 train when we’re pretty much broke.
We found a nice table on Craigslist, 2.5′ by 4′, just large enough to do fun things with, but not so big as to be in the way in our small apartment. We love Craigslist in this house—you have no idea. Anyway, I spent a little time working up a plan that is both fun to watch, and makes heavy use of track I already own.
Here is the layout. The brown bits will be hidden in tunnels underneath mountains. The village will be in the center. The village is served by an electrified single-track rural line, which connects with a double-track mainline. The double-track main is at table-level, the gray lines at the bottom of the diagram. The rural line is elevated above that, with a platform represented by the grey rectangle.
And, construction has begun! I haven’t yet purchased the insulation foam that will serve as the base, but we are using Woodland Scenics’s products in putting this layout together. In this shot, I’ve pinned the track, using sewing straight pins, to a combination of 4% inclines and 2″ risers. The test train runs beautifully up the inclines; the pantographs just clear the viaduct but about 2mm, which makes me a little nervous, but 30 minutes of continuous running haven’t yet revealed any problems. I’ll probably raise everything by .5″ just to be sure (and to be within NMRA standards).
More updates to follow!
Wonderful – I take it this layout will stay up onto the new year.
For sourcing stuff free, try Freecycle. I use it extensively here in the UK- it works.
Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
Thanks! And yes, it will stay up through January, which is good because we are going to be gone from mid-December.
I’ve had a look at Freecycle here before; apparently it’s just not that popular in St Louis, sadly. Thanks for the heads-up, though!