Enoden (江ノ島電鉄 : Enoshima Dentetsu)
Gallery
What is it?
The Enoden (short for Enoshima Dentetsu, or Enoshima Electric Railway) is a light railway serving mainly commuter student and tourist traffic, running over about ten kilometres between Fujisawa and Kamakura, in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It's just to the south of Tokyo, and runs past beaches and many temples making it handy for visitors to get around the area. The line has been in existence since 1902, and in its present form since 1910, although stock, stations and signalling have been greatly modernised in recent years.
You can read a good description of the line by Hiroshi Naito, and there are lots of excellent photographs here (translation) and on Flickr.
The marvellous thing about it is that it remains a completely charming blend of old and new, with very modern stock in revenue service alongside aging trams and two-car sets from the 1950s. Ideal fodder for the railway modeller, especially since Hasegawa's subsidiary Modemo (translation) make a nice range of N gauge Enoden rolling stock.
I've been working towards building a model of some of the Enoden for a few months now, and since I've started building the baseboards I thought it was probably time to start documenting my progress. To which end, read on!
Woodwork
As mentioned earlier I'd already built some of the module frames for the layout. I couldn't finish the last one until I'd worked out where the water was going to be along the front of the third board (at the left-hand end of the layout) but that's now settled. I notched the front beam over the weekend to allow for the beach and estuary, and assembled the frame on Saturday.
This means I'm now at the fun woodwork stage. I've done all the painstaking 'ensure these things are square and level' framing, and now I can just have at the plywood decks with a power jigsaw to create the different levels and ramps. Whee!
By the way, I'm not claiming that things are actually square and level, but I think it's pretty close. Not bad considering the last time I did any serious woodworking was in the very excellent Mr. Smith's craft club at King Edward VII Lower School, in Sheffield. Sadly, the building we used to hang around in after school hours has now gone, along with the rest of the '60s Lower School buildings to be replaced with a PFI-funded modern creation. It's not that the old buildings were nice (they were pretty grotty) but they were ours in some way that the new building is not.
(There's also a much more direct way ownership has been lost - the privately funded buildings are rented to the school, and they have to pay to be able to run after-school activities, or they get turfed out at hometime. Depressing.)
Woodwork at school in a proper workshop has made me pine (ha!) for a proper workbench, with a drill press and a decent vice. In the meantime, I bought a $20 workmate clone, which is exactly worth the money I paid for it... It's OK for sawing and drilling, but it isn't stable enough to hold a workpiece in order to plane it or shape it with a rasp. I have some nice plans somewhere for a workbench built from 2x2 timber and a solid-core door - a future project perhaps?
Anyway, you can see how it's going from the pictures - the first module has had its plywood deck shaped and attached. When it's all dry tomorrow I'll put some supports in for the ramp between the depot and Gokurakuji station.
Scheme mark 2
It turns out that the scheme as described to below was more of a scheme.
I put the whole thing into an excellent, and now free, track planning program called XTrkCad. For someone (me) who expects every content creation program to have an Adobe interface, it was a but confusing, but the tutorials are very good and you can become fluent quite quickly. I was particularly impressed that it had all the components of the Peco code 55 track I'm using, and that it can generate easements automatically. It also allows you to run trains on the plan to check clearances and lengths of platforms, etc. Highly recommended.
You can see the results below, after passing them through Illustrator to block in the scenery, or download the PDF version as before. Unfortunately the DXF export from XTrkCad generates lots and lots of tiny curves which Illustrator doesn't anti-alias very well, so the track itself appears rather blocky.
Changes
The minimum radius is now 200mm, which is ample for the articulated tram stock used on the Enoden. I've also substituted the Kamakura High School station with Koshigoe station, at the suggestion of Doug Coster who pointed out that the platform at Koshigoe is rather shorter - only room for 3 coaches. He also provided some factual corrections for some of the background information elsewhere on this page. Cheers Doug!
I'm sorry to lose the school, but I think this makes more sense as it allows the interesting transition between private right-of-way and street running at Koshigoe to be modelled without running to another board.
I've also worked up an outline for a fourth board, attaching to the left side to create an asymmetric inverted U-shape, which would extend the JR line and add Enoshima Station. At the moment the left-hand side stops rather suddenly, and I think I may need a temporary fiddle yard to cap it off.
Concerns
The loop back under the upper level isn't on the plan at the moment. It should still work, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to do it since everywhere else the track follows the real thing quite closely.
The JR line at the back might add too much clutter to the whole scene, but it is an interesting thing to have there. I suppose it could be pushed onto the backdrop, but that wouldn't be as much fun. We'll see...
What next?
I can now cut the front frame for the final module now that I know where the water is going to be, so hopefully I'll have all three board frames complete today, and can get the jigsaw out to split up the plywood decks into different levels.
The scheme
I've more-or-less finished my proposed track plan, which you can see below. You can also download a PDF version for a closer look.
The plan models the key stations from Kamakura up to just before Enoshima, with one or two minor stations as well. It's obviously a huge compromise to fit everything into the available space, but I think it ought to work. Some of the curves are pretty tight, but it is more-or-less a tram layout so I don't forsee any problems there.
Outline
The line folds back along itself to give more running length, and the gradient falls from Kamakura towards Enoshima in order to allow the loop track to run back underneath Kamakura station. The height difference between foreground and background also helps to make it clear that the scenes are separate rather than connected. I've seen this work well on other peoples' layouts so hopefully disbelief will be suspended here as well. The stations are also staggered so that a station in the foreground mean plain track in the background, and vice versa. The exception is the passing loop, but this will be quite narrow since it doesn't have any platforms or other station parephenalia, so hopefully will not look too busy.
The pointwork is all based on the real thing, with minor changes to save space where desirable, such as the loss of the outer passing loops in the JR station and using two shed roads rather than four at Gokurakuji. The only significant exception is the point and tunnel at the left hand end, which don't exist in real life but are needed here to give a continuous run. If you were going to do this as a true end-to-end this could be left out, but then the left end of the route would be a bit sorry-looking without Enoshima station.
Tricky things
The right-hand side of the plan was quite straightforward to work out and follows the prototype quite closely. I've sacrificed two of the shed roads at Gokurakuji to make things fit - the width is there, but the pointwork ladder for more roads would take up too much length. If you used smaller radius points it might be possible to squeeze another one in, but I wanted to be able to use the Peco Code 55 track.
The left-hand side was more difficult. In the foreground, I had to decide between Kamakura High School (Kamakurakoukoumae) station, which is right on the sea wall and crops up frequently in tourist photographs, and Koshigoe station which fits into a tiny triangle between the railway and road right at the start of the street trackage leading up to Enoshima. In the end the high-school looked like a better bet, since it's more likely to be familiar to people.
The background wasn't entirely straightforward either. Having purchased Kato's lovely Narita Airport Express set, which runs from Narita Airport almost (but not quite) to Kamakura, I wanted to make space for the JR station at Kamakura next to the Enoden terminus. Given that the model Narita Express is six coaches, this was quite tricky, but I think it just about fits. The JR line disappears quickly behind the backdrop, and at the moment is limited to shuttling a single train in and out of the station. It's vaguely amusing that on a typical mainline layout it would be the tramway which will shuttle back and forth in the background, but here it's the other way around.
Operational possiblities
Apart from the obvious watching the trains go round, operation is likely to be pretty prototypical. Services will run from Kamakura, all the way around the layout and back to wait underneath Kamakura station. After that, they reverse their journey and go all the way back. Hase and the seafront loop provided opportunities for passing so things could get quite busy if all the single-track sections are occupied.
The depot provides a place to store spare rolling stock (useful since Modemo keep bringing out new variants and different advertising liveries - must collect them all...) The sidings are all long enough to make up two-unit trains from single units and break them down again, although manual intervention may be required since the provided inter-unit couplings are neither automatic nor self-centering. Possibly alternative couplers could be substituted.
The JR station only has enough track to shuttle a train back and forth - this could be automated. It does add the potential for Enoden trains to make or miss connections at Kamakura though.
I suspect DCC would be quite appropriate for this layout, but I haven't really thought about the electrical side too much. At the moment I'm using a spare Märklin Z controller to run things on the test track, which gives excellent performance and reasonable top speeds. There is probably room in the tram bodies to install DCC decoders though.
Ways to do it differently
The real Enoden runs many services with two units coupled together, although some of the the traffic is single units (i.e. two coach bodies articulated over 3 bogies). I wanted to allow the longer trains to add some operational interest, which means all the platforms and passing loops have to be just over a foot long. You could save a lot of space limiting traffic to single units, although I was concerned the short platforms and passing loops might look a little odd.
You could also keep Koshigoe by losing the passing loop and moving Kamakura High School station onto the middle board to make room. I thought this would be slightly limiting since you then have a very long section of single track, so opted not to go that way.
More variety could be added to the JR Yokosuka line shuttle by having two tracks behind the backscene instead of one. I thought that on 500mm wide boards this was too much of a sacrifice - it'd work, but it means losing out on some depth somewhere in the modelled scene. If you had wider boards this wouldn't be such a big deal.
There is a possibility for future extension at the left-hand side, where the street trackage could continue to Enoshima Station, and then on through the suburbs to the elevated section and the terminus at Fujisawa. I would think that to do this justice, and to fit on a bit more of the JR Yokosuka line in order to run trains on it properly, another two 500mm x 1200mm boards would be required, such that the entire layout would form an elongated L, or perhaps a lopsided U shape.
Adding Enoshima would increase the scope of operations and provide more tram storage since the station has a small fan of storage sidings. I wonder if there's enough space in the dining room?
Other Models
There don't seem to be many finished Enoden models on the web at the moment - although a couple of people are planning layouts. (Doug Coster and Ed Leong and Bob Randell.)
I did find some pictures of Modemo's demonstration layout, which looks to be about a metre square. Despite this, it fits in quite a few 'typical' Enoden features - the beach section, street running, the train sheds and the tunnel between Gokurakuji and Hase. Obviously these are all pretty compressed.
The layout was built by DDF, a Japanese company which makes custom dioramas, and diorama kits to build. There are some lovely micro layouts on the DDF website (translation).
Research
I've been doing lots of research via the web, since the only books I've been able to find are Japanese (understandably) and are then only available through Amazon Japan. I'm pretty sure a friend of mine in the UK bought some movies from there though, so if I can be confident that Book X has lots of helpful pictures then it might still be an option. But for the moment, the internet suffices.
Fitting together the photographs and working out which are different views of the same place, as opposed to views of different places, has been quite fun. Like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the picture, and with all the pieces the same shape.
The following have been particularly useful:
The railway photo archive at nekosuki.org (translation). On this page, the pictures start at Kamakura and work along the line to Fujisawa, which makes them easy to follow.
Pictures on Flickr, although these tend to be more arty and less informational than the Nekosuki pictures.
Google Local, which has maps of the area down to 1 pixel : 1 metre resolution with outlines of all buildings and real-colour aerial/satellite imagery at the same resolution. It even shows the trackwork accurately. I took about 20 screen captures to paste together a composite map of the whole line. (Key stations: Kamakura, Hase, Gokurakuji, Enoshima and Fujisawa.)
Even better than the maps, you can drive the route yourself using Boso View Express (BVE) for Windows'XP, and the Enoden route and train files. You'll need to follow the instructions about changing the [PressureGauge] entries if you want to use the route with BVE4. It's not the most fancy-looking simulator ever, but it works really well and makes it easy to put the pieces together in your head. And it's free!
If you're going to be following any of these links, you may like to look at this schematic map to get your bearings. It's roughly to scale, although obviously all the pointwork is hugely scaled up to make it visible, but it shows how the line skirts around the coast and the relative positions of all the stations.
Why the Enoden?
Like a lot of English children, I had a Hornby OO Gauge train set in my formative years and I'm sure it left something of an impression. It grew (with the help of my father - I must only have been six or seven at the time) into what I remember as a large layout with a British Rail HST and other modern-outline stock controlled by the Hornby Zero-1, an early proprietary DCC system.
As far as I remember, the OO layout bit the dust when we moved to Sheffield when I was eight. There followed a train-free period, then a dalliance with British and American outline N-gauge in my early teens which resulted in a couple of half-layouts and one very small portable one which I finished and sold on to a friend.
There followed another, longer period of train-free-ness, although I did build the large scale Lego Shay you see here. It's quite appealing in that scale because there was enough room to have working motion and driveshaft, although the cardan shafts are sadly absent.
You can see more pictures here. At some point I'll try and make some log bunks to go with it for running in the garden.
The catalyst for the latest venture was a holiday to Munich, where I had a lovely time wandering around the model shops. Every department store and toyshop appeared to carry a huge range from most of the major German manufacturers, a complete contrast to the UK and frankly pretty much everywhere else. Model trains are clearly big in Germany. The prices are much better too, which was why I came back with quite a large Märklin Z gauge start set, a station building and some extra carriages. I quietly collected a few more bits and bobs before we emigrated.
I have to say that Micky was delighted by all this, partly because she's quite keen on the idea of making trees, and partly because the ratio of disposable income to volume of stuff filling up the house is much lower with Märklin than with, say, Lego or DVDs.
I'm getting to the point soon, please bear with me.
When we arrived in NZ, it seemed like it wasn't possible to buy the Z-gauge trains or track anywhere (although I have since found an importer in Auckland and my dad found a place in Dunedin) so a layout seemed quite a remote chance until we had a trip back to Europe to stock up. I was also a bit nervous about setting to with the very small and expensive Märklin stock and track after years of forgetting how to use fishplates and which way around diodes go.
When I spotted a Kato N-gauge model of a four-wheel Hiroshima tram in the fabulous Hobby City in Auckland for about the price of three DVDs, I bought it. It's a fine model, and I thought I could build a T-Trak module for it. T-Trak is a modular layout system devised in Japan for small spaces, and aimed mainly at tram modellers. The modules are the same size as a sheet of A4 paper and use clip together track pieces to join them. Because the modules are small, they can be built quickly with few tools, and finished to a high standard. All very clever, and you can see how this would be a nice easy start and somewhere to put my solitary tram.
Fast-forward a few months, and I've just about completed more than eighteen square feet of baseboard to run this one-and-a-half-inch tram on. So what went wrong?
The short answer is the Enoden. While looking for pictures of urban Japan in general, and Hiroden trams in particular, I came across Doug Coster's Setagaya tram layout. One of the other pages on his website mentioned a new layout which would feature the Enoden. I'd also seen some photographs of this distinctive green-and-cream light rail rolling-stock...
I don't think I took much notice at the time, since I was looking for Hiroden information, but something must have lodged, because over the last few months my small tramway plan has grown somewhat. Rather than a caricature of a tramway in a small space, I'm hoping to make something which is a bit closer to reality. While I can't fit 10km of trackage onto my baseboard, I can replicate parts of the track plan quite accurately and use selective compression to fit in some of the interesting features of the line.