Playing Around With Memorial Parkway

Memorial Parkway is a street in Rochester that has Japanese crab-apples in the center boulevard. They were planted probably 40 or more years ago. It's a pretty residential street, and it sits below the Plummer House (up on Pill Hill) which I plan on putting in the layout. So it would seem natural to have the train tracks curve around the base of the Plummer House , turn into tram tracks (think what trolley tracks look like on pavement) and continue towards downtown Rochester....and somehow fitting into the T-TRAK modular standard (albeit with an elongated module).

I purchased a red (TLR0601 ), green (TLR0604) and blue (TLR0606) Tomix tram from BTTrains as well as some tram track to try and get an idea of what things would look like for Memorial Parkway. Using some construction paper, I mocked up (very roughly) a block on the street. Rochester has no tram or trolley line...this is like an alternate reality where tax dollars are free.

This is sort of what the elongated module would look like...

The orange would be the Tomix tram track

And the gray track would be the Kato Unitrack

Since Plummer House sits on a hill, some of the track

would be underground and come out of tunnels...

I'll need to play around with the Tomix tram track. They have no switches, so I'll have to get the Tomix tram kit (see here) and then figure out instructions in Japanese (or something Kanji?). And I'll also have to figure out how to coexist the Kato Unitrack (for the T-TRAK module standards...at least at the connecting edges of the module) and the Tomix tram track (for my trams/trolleys).

See here also: www.japanmodelrailways.com/anleitungen/06-01-06english.pdf

This is a helpful link too: http://jtrains.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/tomix-3076-tram-track/

Some photos of the Japanese crabapples in the middle of the boulevard. Typically, they bloom for about two weeks at the end of May. In previous years they had been a much brighter, pinkish color. But as they aged, they appear more like this...not to mention the photo was taken near sunset....

I'll probably have to custom make the trees, but perhaps

this one might work?

http://www.tomytec.co.jp/diocolle/lineup/jyoukei_j/index.html