Sunday, September 19, 2010

Background

How did an American guy like me get into modeling Japanese railroads and start building modules of Tokyo ?

I've always been interested in model railroads, have been in N scale since 1968, and active in Ntrak since 1992.   Nona, my wife is a native of Tokyo and on a visit to her native land in the 1990's she bought me a gift of several Japanese N scale model railroad cars.  

In 1999 I made my first trip to Japan and was so impressed with the system of railroads.  There were so many different trains all running on schedule.  On that first trip I started what became a habit of collecting models of the trains that we rode.  I had wanted to photograph the models in an appropriate scene and thought about building a station diorama.  Then I decided why not build a set of T-Trak modules for this purpose and have something of a Japanese layout that I could actually run these trains on.
 
As I did not know of anyone else in my area building T-Trak I knew I would need to build enough to have a complete layout by myself  This photo shows part of my one nearly completed T-Trak module.

Visiting the International Railfair in Roseville, CA in 2008 I saw a most impressive Asian themed modular layout called AsiaNrail.  I already knew the owner of most of the modules as he is a member of Peninsula Ntrak which I also belong to.  He invited me to build Japanese themed module(s) that could be used with the AsiaNrail layout at future shows.  This was a turning point and the T-Trak modules were abandoned. 

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