Japan Vignette

In my last post, I mentioned that of the limited number of N locos that will negotiate Kato Compact Line curves, many are Japanese prototype. (The Kato N NW2 will take them, but the Broadway limited locos will not.) That doesn't bother me, I had a chance to visit Japan many years ago, and I've always liked Japanese trains. So I decided that if I was going to run some Japanese prototype on this layout, I could justify making some of the scenery Japanese.

Tomix buildings are good basic models of very typical Japanese structures. There are several American railfans who live in Japan and make YouTube videos in US English about their travels, like Jeremy below:

There are also many, many Japanese railfans who post on YouTube, many of whose videos are cab rides on an entire line. You can turn on English sutitles that will translate their Japanese. All these are great tools for getting a feel for how buildings are positioned -- for instance, the ones in my photo back up against the rail line in very typical fashion.

For now, I'm just experimenting with where to place things, and everything is subject to change. But this is an example of the flexibilty possible if you use T-TRAK modular architecture for a home layout; scenes can always be swapped out.