A Small Station Project

Off and on over the winter I have been working on the Tomytec Building Collection 073 Station Front Set. Its a very typical Japanese minor private railway station.

The Niigata Kotsu was a small private railway running out of Niigata which opened in 1933 and the 33 km line closed in April 1999. Niigata Kotsu rolling stock have been included in the Tomytec Tetsudo Collections 2 and 8, but at this point these are long gone from the market.

Shirone Station, which was 3/4 of the way out on the line makes an interesting small station prototype. The photo below comes from Wikipedia.

Niigata Kotsu Shirone Station

There is a single track main line typical of small Japanese private railways. There is a siding to the left which may have been a former freight station. Tomytec issued a Niigata Kotsu freight motor # 51 as part of the Tomytec Tetsudo Collection #2 in 2006. Freight service ended in 1982.

At the end of the former freight siding is the station building itself which can be modeled with the Tomytec station set. There is an island platform across from the station, reached by crossing the tracks at track level. On the other side of island platform is a third track which is probably a through track connecting back to the single track main line on the other side of the station.

Niigata Kotsu Shriane Station track sketch.

There is a Flickr set of 72 photos of the Niigata Kotsu rail line. The photo of Shriane Station on the Flickr set shows a small fence skirting the rail line along the profile of the island platform outer track. Fences such as these were made out of recycled ties or scrap rails. Greenmax offers suitable railway barriers made with crossties. Behind the fence are small commercial structures similar to those offered by Tomytec.

Electric Railways of Japan, Volume 1 says the Niigata Kotsu operated trains every 60-75 minutes, presumably with 60 minute service to Shirane where there was a shrine and 75 minutes beyond this point. On the Niigata end the Niigata Kotsu line offered a connection to the JR Echigo line.

A Small Tram Layout

It’s time to present a small tram layout using Tomix Wide Tram Rail. Its designed for continuous running, probably with one car so, so this plan could fit inside a train layout. The minimum radius is 103mm.

I was working with a 60″ x 30″ space when I created this N Gauge plan.

Track plan for a small tram layout.

List of materials. Quantities are pieces, NOT packages. Most packages have two pieces in them, but not all.

Tomix 1790 S70WT x 7
Tomix 1791 S140WT x 13
Tomix 1795A C103-30WT x 8
Tomix 1795B C103-60WT x 8
Tomix 1796A C140-30WT x 4
Tomix 1799 X37-90WT x 1
Tomix 1799C C18.5WT x 4

One caveat: some of the pieces required for this layout will not be available until April 2011. That’s Tomix 1799 the crossover set.

This track plan was created with Anyrail which has two Tomix track libraries, one for regular Tomix track and one for Tomix Wide Tram Rail. A trail version of Anyrail allows you to build a layout up to 50 pieces of track without buying the full product. The Anyrail web site is here.

Tomix Moving Bus System

Tomytec has released their Moving Bus System Basic Set this week and already there are videos appearing on You Tube. As usual for a hot new Japanese product, it is sold out on release. More will arrive soon. Meanwhile, there is more information here.

The road units and power unit are also scheduled for production as single products.

Tomix Wide Tram Rail added to Anyrail

Anyrail has added a separate directory for planning tram layouts with Tomix Wide Tram Rail. The track pieces in the directory include several pieces announced but not yet released including the tram crossovers.

I hope to publish a couple of tram layout plans soon.