Kamanashi Kikanku

Kamanashi Kikanku

This layout is built in the UK by Phil Hendry, a regular contributor to this site when it comes to the subject of Micro-Trains couplers. Kamanasji Kikanku depicts a locomotive serving facility in the days that steam locos were a common sight. The layout has a turntable, roundhouse, coal, water and sand supplies and a small workshop. Operation is mainly moving locomotives between the different service points, the roundhouse and the fiddle yard. The turntable and roundhouse are from Fleischmann and don't look out of place. Most service facilities come from the Kato range, the track is Peco code 55 streamline, as are the points. The points are driven by Peco point motors via a capacitor discharge unit, common practice for many UK modellers. All locos and rolling stock is fitted with Micro-Trains magnetic-action couplers. These couplers open automatically when they are stopped over a magnet between or under the rails. This layout is a bit special as it has a cassette fiddle-yard, not often seen on N-scale layouts. The cassettes are made of small planks of plywood to which aluminium angles are fitted. These cassettes can be moved around on a table-like surface and plug into a receptacle to get a train on or off the layout. The fiddle-yard area is screened off from the views of the audience. The screen provides a surface on which some information could be placed (posters, leaflets etc.)

The loco depot with roundhouse and turntable.

A D51 steam loco near the workshop.

From time to time this layout appears on model railway exhibitions, mainly in the north of England.

Photographs by Mark Veneman

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