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Here's a Little 60 Sec Video showing 1605 train from upper line to lower Brett

Yes, those relief buildings give more space on smaller modules, but I do them on bigger ones too. In our club, I currently work on three relief buildings as well. All three were made from one kit with some 3D printed parts. I like doing the interior of buildings when the windows are big enough to guess what is inside. Will need to look into bento stores now and see what can be done for the inside of the second store. The third store is still undecided and something were I could block the view through the windows would be nice since there is no space left after adding the windows and a sheet of paper for the interior.

Thanks. British citizens don't need a visa yet. We will supposedly need something come October, but I think our government is trying to negotiate their way out of it. Since Brexit it has been on the cards. It's my wife, who is Chinese, who needs one. I also renewed my passport this year and had to have one of the embarrassing post-Brexit black ones. You can buy a nice burgundy cover that says "I voted remain" in multiple European languages.

I wonder if it's like buying a car and they charge €500 extra for the nice pearlescent paint.

Not an announcement, so I moved the conversation about TinyHK here, though obviously we could discuss the validity of merging HK with the Mainland.

Either of you get a chance to peek inside that DD16 yet?

Hi everybody, For those of you wondering, yes indeed the project is alive and well, and I'm moving along dilligently. My new full time job has kept me busy. After much struggling with figuring out a way to carve the solid styrofoam efficiently to make tunnels and the elevations I finally bought and learned how to use a hot wire foam cutter. Bought one at Handsman. It works a treat as it cuts straight through the foam like butter and leaves no mess. Now I feel like building this layout is fun again! I have to be careful though not to move the cutter too fast as it melts through, otherwise I'll bend and ruin it. If I'm lucky I'll get all of the major work done before I lay the ground cover and trees by the time I move to my new countryside house.

I really don't think I imagined die cut labels for passenger cars on my trips through the internet but cant for the life of me find them anywhere. Oh the humanity of having your Green car the wrong direction lol. In the past I haven't worried about the order that trains were arranged, but now with the E231-500 I've put a little more effort into the arrangement. Now I want to get fancy and do it the right way and make it easier for me to identify the cars also. ive been thinking about getting a bigger bookcase to put a 10-unit train set in as well to make things easier. Now I'm thinking about getting a label maker so I can easily identify the correct order and direction my cars should be, lol.

The final train is the Red Arrow. The Red Arrow is a group of similar but different rail cars and trains built in the 1930s. The were a mixture of single units and double units, either diesel or electrically powered. The unit in the photos is the Churchill Arrow which was once used by Winston Churchill to deliver a famous speech on the future of Europe in 1946. It is now used as a special event train. Here it is running as a Fondue train. Zurich has Fondue trams @ 125 Swiss Francs per passenger which sell out the season within days. I spotted this train just after I had dinner the final evening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Arrow_(Swiss_train)

Some of the most exciting announcements for me this year have been the sheer number of limestone and cement trains as this is an area of interest for me. Not certain as to if or when this train will be produced again, I wanted to get hold of the Shikoku limestone train. The DF50s have some subtle differences to those released before. Right to left. 7009, 7009-2, 7009-5(10-2008) The numbers are now far easier than applying the metal etch individual numbers. At this scale I’m not sure you notice unless you really get close. The new Shikoku version has 2 options for coupler assembly, with or without snowplough, in this case the shorter version. Set 10-2008 has two almost identical 7009-5 locos except one comes with traction tyres and one comes without as Kato has done with its other double loco sets. Also include are some headmarks. The handrails all have to be added by hand but on this release Kato has a new sprue design with tabs that make fitting way easier than they were previously. The Hoki 5200 have nice printing. The train’s loco ends no longer have a coupling knuckle included but instead the very short fixed couplers (28-187) This is slightly disappointing as you cannot push-couple with them. The printing is excellent. I do like the asymmetrical cab on the end hopper. The loads are plastic caps that seem to come out of place easily. I will possibly add ballast material to these or paint to take away the shiny plastic appearance. The closest comparison will be to the Woki 100 from Microace. They are very similar wagons. MA Woki top, Kato Hoki bottom

SOB train! Yes there is a train lettered SOB. Really its the railway Sudostbahn, not the train. The train is called SOB Traverso, there are 30 of them and they were built by Stadler Rail. I looked at riding this train as a day trip but it is a long trip about 3-4 hours, which for Switzerland is a long trip. It leads to more scenic lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOB_Traverso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Südostbahn Third photo was taken while my Basel train was arriving.

Labels are a great idea as the car numbers are small and the bookcase folders don’t always allow you to store your train in order. I once got picked up at a rental layout that one of my green cars was backwards in a 189 Asama formation. The shame!! When I purchase the add-on set, I tend to reshuffle the coaches into their running order while being stored. Often Kato info gives info on the correct direction of travel. Expresses tend to have seating facing towards one direction (cab cars always face cab front) Some commuter trains have cellphone antenna on one end or position of toilet etc.. Sometimes though the shape of the foam doesn’t allow for correct order or orientation storage due to pantogtaph location or other features. In my experience this is an issue with Kato inserts. I’ve not experienced the same problems with Tomix or Microace bookcases as the spaces tend to be square. My Kato E5 as example is stored in correct direction although cars 2,4,6,8 are stored in the smaller 4 car box due to the pantograph spaces. My other Kato shinkansen like the 500 are stored 1-7 + 16 in one case and 8-15 in the other. The only issue is that the 2 pantograph cars have to be reversed from correct orientation. Some others like the 0 and E7 have to have coaches stored out of order. I assume some people keep their trains stored with complete base set, add on set as purchased, but this would be even more confusing for me. I feel my trains could be arranged back to factory positions should I wish to sell anything.

Making me realize on my mini onetrak i should be doing some of this and just cut small buildings into two pieces and then i can use the back and front on two different modules and get a tad more space if needed on smaller modules. Then would be fun to detail the interior of the cutaway building for when it is seen from the other side. Some Tomytec buildings are headed to the bandsaw! cheers jeff

Challenge is with regular cars there is the usual underside details that are usually small and stickers dont stick to as well and then most of the little bit of flat spot along the middle of the chassis usually has some raised lettering on it! Truck surfaces are recessed and can put them over the bogie pin areas. Just a bit of a hunt to find a good consistent place to put them on each train. Some are easy and some are harder. Funny you should mention the exposed gears. Years ago we had a club member who kept having motor cars getting gummed up with smutz. He never felt he had the dexterity to open them up so i ended up out cleaning out a few dozen of them over a year or two. Really could not figure out where he was picking up all the crap as he ran on a layout base at table height I had made for him and he did a lot of perceived scenery so no ballast, just some ground foam around and usual household smutz. After the first dozen I went and put scotch tape over the gear slots on his trucks to see if that could maybe stop crap getting sucked up into the trucks, but a number of them came back mucked up! I was a bit mystified, but just had to assume it got sucked up around the wheels more. Maybe why they didnt bother to close the gears over! He did run his trains a lot and very hard so way more use than the usual train use. Over 25+ years ive only had maybe a dozen really badly mucked up power cars/locos of mine that have required extensive cleaning. jeff

Major hassle - guess I we are lucky in the US as I head to France in a week and haven't had to worry about a visa. Hope you get it sorted. Tony

Another small update to the diorama: I started painting the second building while weathering the platform, which is finished now. I will now need to add details like the station name, safety posters, and so on. I thought about putting a big advert or something on the high wall at the back, but I didn't have a good idea. It could use the space of the four panels on the right side, I think. For the platform, I also need to model the chairs for people to sit on while waiting, and together with the station sign, some safety posters, and people waiting, it should fill the emptiness quite nicely. And all that needs to be done before adding the roof (which still needs its lighting). Another project I'm working on is the inside of the big building. Here a picture a little closer to the building: As said earlier, the right shop is a bookstore, so I added three hints of bookshelves to the wall at the back of the store. The grey area will get a picture of a bookstore to give it more depth. The upper levels will be apartments. In the original building (which currently has 3 open apartments), you have a small room for your washing machine. So I added an interior wall, a sliding door, and something that will look like a washing machine through the windows, and a shelf on top of it. The big white area will get another picture showing the room. Some apartments will have curtains blocking the view inside, too. Already modeled a little thing that will hopefully look like clothes drying on a rack when painted. Let's see how that goes. I hope I can find a figure that looks like hanging up some laundry... The building still needs lighting as well but I will do the interior first to see which rooms would look best with the lighting. Maybe you guys have some ideas for the big poster/ad on the back of the platform.

Been trying to organize a trip to France but it's impossible to get a visa for my wife. It's ridiculous, the company that handles visas on behalf of France has no appointments. You refresh the page over and over all day and occasionally an out of hours one comes up, which costs £60 extra, but trying to book one always gives an error. There is another option, pay them £250 to come out to you... It feels like a scam. Might go to Scotland instead, but my wife has wanted to go to France for years. Should have stayed in Ireland got Irish citizenship, then we could travel freely in Europe.

@Kingmeow Thanks I will keep the tape size in mind when I order tapes. I'll also remember to get a TZ or TZe machine, I think the P-Touch will be the best solution to my labeling side quest. Your examples are great reference material and show a good usage for the P-Touch.

I have to agree, it will offer a lot of flexibility. It would be a shame to have constraints built into the design. Sorry I should have clarified, I like seeing the wires if they are not too overscaled, etched wires are tricky because I could make them to scale but they would insanely fragile. I will try to get them as fine as I can. If I am happy with the results I will release them. Functional wires, darn you have my respect! I will be making the 2nd wire for Yurakucho, using rigging elastic. It is fiddly but I did manage to make a couple test sections that looked reasonably good.

BTW, in the first picture you see the "exposed" gears in the truck? They are actually slightly recessed so you can stick a P-Touch label over them with no ill effects. @cteno4 in case you can't locate space for your labels on your trains. As a matter of fact, people use a piece of blue painters tape to purposely cover those gears to prevent dirt, small pieces of foam, etc. from being ingested. Especially at a train show where the environment is not exactly the cleanest. Having to get out an ingested piece of dirt/foam that's inside all those gears is a royal P-I-A!!!! Often you have to take apart all the gears in the truck to find it! 🤬

9mm or 3/8" is the height size of the label. I found that to be just right for N-Scale. 1/2" is a bit too big. Unfortunately I bought my machine about 30 years ago! But it can still use all the modern tapes. If you are going to buy a machine today, make sure it can use the TZ or TZe tapes. Those are laminated tapes. Basically the printing is laminated over by a clear tough layer. There are cheaper machines that uses M (I think) tape only and there's no lamination with those. Rough handling over time will scratch off the print/toner. You can not mix tape types with machine types. DO NOT BUY imitation machines or tapes! I told one friend that but he wanted to save a few bucks. "Look! I can buy 5 tapes (from China) for the prices of 1!" He ended throwing the ENTIRE system and EVERY tape away due to frustration and lack of quality. And who knows what residue the tapes will leave over time. P-Touch tapes have been proven over time. Here is a 9mm or 3/8" tape I used on the fuel tank of a Kato SD70MAC. This is to prevent ownership mix ups at train shows. Yes you can! But I'm lazy with MRR equipment as the places I put them on normally no one can see. I use the same methodology for all my camera equipment. For that I use white print on black tapes as the tapes are visible. Looks really professional. I even use it to label Kato book cases. I use white print on (neon) green. It's not an exact match but "good enough" to blend into the Kato green. I wish Brother would make a dark/forest green tape. 🙂 After printing out a long label (I do a few at a time as each print job wastes a little bit of label for the leader/header), I cut them on a paper cutter to be as square as possible and use a tweener or the tip of an X-Acto knife to apply them after peeling off the backing. Here you can see the "F" on the front truck on an EF510. Again, 9mm or 3/8" tape. Now I don't have to use a magnifying glass to see where the "1" or "2" is! 😎 Extremely tough. I use them on my R/C airplanes and they go through much rougher conditions than my trains. Again, be sure to use TZ or TZe laminated tapes - genuine ones! As I mentioned my unit is 30 years ago and even with that vintage its has built-in fonts with circles, framing borders, special symbols like arrows, lightening bolts, stop signs, caution triangle, etc.

Usually with class action suits, the lawyers get all the money and the consumers, maybe, just maybe, get 10 cents on the dollar back, if that! It's usually zero. Good you got some money back!

Yes thats my hope as the Avery labels are quite tall. I forgot to mention the other trick with orientation is to just place the labels on one end of the car so they are always facing the same direction. Only issue with this is finding appropriate spots to stick the stickers on one end or the other on some trains. I guess i just got lazy as i stopped labeling trains many years back. Probably was i had labeled a lot of the longer trains when we had the larger club layout and with Ttrak usually smaller equipment now and easier to figure out car order. And maybe just lazier with age… jeff

I would think the P-Touch labels would be thinner and tougher than Avery labels. That's a good alternative suggestion. After a lengthy search, I found numbers in circles in font form. So I could print those onto decal sheets and apply them to the train cars.

One of my key inspirations for my European tram adventures was a 1976 ERA Headlights article Why Not a European Vacation? written by the late John Bromley. John was a long time member of the Toronto Transportation Society, a group focused on buses and streetcar operations. I am also a long time member. John recommended eating in train stations and this was the first time I have done this. The Man in Seat 61 recommended a schnitzel & fries or bratwurst & rösti and decent beer at the Brasserie Federal on the north side of the main concourse. As this was the type of food I wanted to try I was all in. Its not cheap, but nothing is in Switzerland. Third photo is after my model train store adventure.