AsiaNrail at Train Days 2018

Train Days is an annual event held over a weekend in September at the Los Altos History Museum.  Either Peninsula Ntrak or AsiaNrail, or both have been part of this show almost every year.  We have been invited back this year and it is confirmed that we will have the AsiaNrail layout and we hope to have the Ntrak layout there as well.

This year's event will be on the weekend of September 15th and 16th.   Hours are 10:00am to 4:00pm both Saturday and Sunday.  Admission is $5.00 per family and parking is free.  The museum is located at 51 So. San Antonio Road, Los Altos, CA 94022

https://www.losaltoshistory.org/events/train-days-3/

This layout will be the debut for my new module.  I have been working on it on and off since April and am now placing the final touches on it.  Inspired by last years trip to Kyushu, this module will be viewed from both sides and the cloud back drop shown in this photo is only temporary.


This layout will also be the first on where we will not be using any rail joiners between the modules so it is hoped that setup will be easier.

Starting a new AsiaNrail module

With the 9 day long Hiller exhibit now behind us, I have started on a new module project.  This is not exactly a "new" module and is actually quite old, let me explain.

Back in the 1970's Jim Fitzgerald, Paul Ingraham, and a few others here in the SF Bay area had a modular layout standard they called "Interail".  The dimensions were metric, and Paul's AsiaNrail module standards that we are currently using borrow some parts of the Interail standard.   From Paul's memory they had set up this Interail layout about 10 or 12 times including at the NMRA National Train Shows in Calgary in 1979 and in San Mateo in 1981.

A few of Paul's current AsiaNrail modules had originally been Interail modules and he had a pair of old Interail modules that had originally been built by Jim that he gave to me.

This is one of Jim's old Interail modules.  The modules are in metric dimensions.  They have a 22.5 degree angle on each end and if put together can make a 90 degree turn.

The first order of business to bring these old modules back to life was to give them legs.  These legs would need to adjust in height between the two heights we use on the AsiaNrail layout.  I had not made legs for this narrow of a module before but had some experience with legs for narrow modules from helping Paul set up his modules.

I decided on a design that uses pairs of 2 inch wide strips of cabinet grade plywood that are held together by 1/4-20 bolts.  The upper sections have 2 holes with Tee nuts set 8 inches apart while the lower sections have 3 holes set 8 inches apart.  To raise or lower the legs, different holes on the lower sections are used.

The first photo showed the legs at the 43.125 inch height.  This second photo shows the same set of legs raised to support the module at a 51 inch height which is the normal for AsiaNrail.  The cross supports on the top and bottom are bolted to the legs with 1/4-20 bolts into Tee nuts that are on 1/2 inch thick plywood wings that are attached to the leg sections.

For leveling and fine height adjustments, there are four 5/16-18 bolts on the bottom feet.

When not set up the pieces are re-assembled into a storage configuration with the leg sections being sandwiched between the cross supports.

Here is the module up on it's new legs.  There is not much on either of these modules except for code 80 track and lots of old ground foam scenery.  I have some plans for these that will be much more interesting and with the differences in type of track and wiring I am going to completely strip these down to the wood structure.

So being satisfied with the legs, the next step will be to paint them and then move on to the module itself.

2016 Los Altos Train Days

This past weekend I had all of my Japanese prototype modules in a joint AsiaNrail / Peninsula Ntrak layout at the Los Altos History Museum as part of their annual Trains Days event.  It was a busy time for me as I was the coordinator for the Ntrak part, and had modules in both layouts.

We had a triangular shaped AsiaNrail layout connected to the rectangular shaped Ntrak layout through my junction module.  The Musashi-Koyama module set was right out in front.




This was the first time for my Musashi-Koyama modules to be in the layout in such a way that they were carrying through traffic.  Everything worked fine mechanically and with the track but we did identify some changes that need to be made electrically to make using both tracks easier in this type of operation.  I'll have plenty of time to work on that before the next show.

With several other people from the JNS Forum helping out and bringing trains to run we had a great variety of trains on the layout.  Shown here are just a few of them on Saturday waiting in Paul's staging yard for their turn to get out.

Here is someones 583 series train passing through the grade crossing on the new extension as to the Musashi-Koyama modules as it pulls into the station.  Hopefully by the next outing I will finally get some crossing gates and both grade crossings.

On Saturday I did run my Kato E5 set for the first time on the Ntrak layout.  It ran great until it lost one of the axles on the lead truck of the lead car.  It came off somewhere and we could not find it.  Luckily on Sunday while we were disassembling the layout the stray axle was found.


The show was a great success with over 2800 people visiting all the layouts including ours.  This was the 8th year the show has taken place and it seems to have become a regular event in the community.

AsiaNrail at the NMRA Covention

The annual NRMA convention and National Train show is coming up in less than 2 months.  This year it's in Portland Oregon.  While I won't be attending myself, Paul Ingraham will.  He will have a smaller version of the AsiaNrail layout in the Layout Design SIG (Special Interest Group) room.  He will also be presenting several clinics on modular layout design and modeling Asian prototype during the convention.

This years convention will be between August 23rd and 29th.  Click on the logo to the left to access the convention website.

This LINK goes to page on the convention website that has the location and times of Paul's clinics.

While I was away.....

While I was in Asia, the annual Trains and Planes exhibit took place at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California.  This year it was an 8 day long event with up to 7 operating layouts in N, HO, O, and G scales represented.  Last year, using my Hot Springs Junction module we did a combined Peninsula Ntrak / AsiaNrail layout.  But this year with my module and myself not being available, two separate layouts were set up.

Here's Paul Ingraham with the AsiaNrail layout at the Hiller exhibit.  The Peninsula Ntrak layout is in the background.  We have often run point to point operations on the AsiaNrail layouts but with Paul having to run this layout by himself this time he went with an oval.


Here are a couple of YouTube videos of the AsiaNrail layout done by Julia Jackson of Peninsula Ntrak.  Paul explains the concept of his modular design and the scenery on some of the modules.