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Added wooden planks on top of the bridges, glued the structures in placed and touched up the edges of the structure foundation. I've been stockpiling figures and parts for two years and now I can finally take them out and utilize them. Which means many little small parts to prime and paint!

Lots of neat items, including a camera car, American B-Shorties and 3D printed figures..

Yes i think you got it most pork cutlets like that in the us are very lean and konkatsu needs that bit of fat on the outside there to keep it nice and juicy. Ive also noticed that the tempura and other frying at many us japanese restaurants is declining. Getting just the right delicate crust and keeping the inside nice and juicy is a very delicate balance of the batter and oil temp. Timing is so crucial as too long and the crust gets hard and oil ladened. Delicate crust lets the oil drain well also. I grew up watching our Nextdoor neighbor making tempura at his restaurant, he was a high end japanese chef and ran a fancy restaurant. His tempura was a work of art! Jeff

We are semi-fans of the Katsukura chain. https://www.katsukura.jp/en/ We have tried to replicate a tonkatsu meal at home. The most difficult part is finding fatty pork loin in the U.S. Most of the pork in the U.S. is far more lean. We did find the magic extra fine cabbage shredder tool at Tokyu Hands (now just "Hands"). You can get it from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Cabbage-Shredder-Non-Slip-Julienne-Vegetable/dp/B08MDYDCZC?th=1 I credit my wife for finding the sesame seed grinding mortar and pestle. https://mtckitchen.com/products/japanese-style-mortar-suribachi-medium-30-fl-oz-7-44-dia Bull-Dog tonkatsu sauce is widely available in the U.S. and is okay if not as good as Japanese restaurants have. http://tonkatsu.bulldog.jp/bulldogsauce/

Sadly our little d210 puts full leader spacing between the sequence of numbers when using numbering, so about the same as doing them individually! Brother does everything they can to make you waste the tape, it’s how they make their money. It also does not let you turn framing on and off. We had an older model that was more sophisticated that let you turn all the formatting on and off for some of the characters in a label, but that one is long gone. I remember doing a project with a ton of small labels and doing a bunch in a row with different formatting and just spitting the whole thing out and chopping it all up to save tape. I’ll mess with the Bluetooth one tonight it lets you do a lot of editing and layout with the software, but is very unintuitive. Jeff

Oh, what the heck. Here's the entire kit. 😁

OK, I was curious and went and look. It does have serialization. Brother calls it "auto-numbering" and the function happens just as you are about to print the label. Take a look at the instruction in MY manual. Could be model dependent. BTW, my model is PT-2030VP with carry case (room to store blank tapes too) and AC adapter. It was purchased in February 2013 for Buy.com (not Rakuten I think). Must have been some kind of deal/sale as I paid...what for it...$15 new, which included shipping! The outfit was in a mini typewriter (remember those? 🤣) plastic carrying case.

Droolllllll. Oh for some tonkatsu like that around here! Usually nothing special even at better places around here. Not very crispy and juicy like that! jeff

Nice! Yes its always a process of trial and error, but you learn from success and failure and usually learn more from failures, so a bit of a payback for the frustration… cheers, jeff

Great it was a hit! Extensions look good. Always nice to have passing tracks like that to easily bring out different rains fast. With visitors around its usually good to have operations as simple as possible as easy to get distracted with people talking and such and keeping the train rolling helps keep folks attention, some get frustrated with more complex switching of trains on and off sidings and leave at that point. Also easy to direct public operators to stop at the station, you switch the points and then they take the other train out, fun for them and easy to direct. Are you planning on some different depth modules to get more scenery bits into modules? jeff

Some small progress in the back corner. Still a bunch to do here, but starting to look like something... learning lots of things ("Dammit, I should've done X instead of Y...."), but that's the primary point of this exercise.

Oh ok, I see there's an 800 # 8 may give them a call.

Great photos and additional information. Love riding the Swiss Railway network (a bit closer to the UK than Japan is). Have done the 3 main tourist trains and quite a lot of the main network but barely any of the branch lines. Hoping for another visit sometime this year.

FedEx is of no help, just saying well it’s delayed in customs and may need paperwork from the sender, we will get back to you. Putting on patience hat. I can see if us customs has changed their paperwork its going to take time for other countries to update thier customs forms to supply the needed info to us customs. What a mess and still no information out there on all this to help clarify it all. well yes coming from Sakatsu its a very small package but about 40 or so tiny things in it so it adds up in price to a couple of hundred dollars [so easy to do when you shop at Sakatsu]! Im pretty sure they are all made in japan, but maybe seeing so many items they wondered if there was stuff from china being transshipped or resold thru japan. Maybe a small, expensive package gets notice as well… who know. jeff

They look a tad longer than btrains and maybe a tad less pudgy? But maybe thats just from being a tad longer if thats true. Out of the box they use a long snap in drawbar like btrains, but they show it using the standard tomytec rail collection wheel and coupler sets to upgrade them. Looks like the same system as the prototypical tomytec rail collection trains. So you should be able to connect them to btrains. I have such a ton of btrains i got on sale over a few years there I probably wont be buying 10 box sets for now. cheers jeff

I remembered reading about serialization in the instruction manual for my unit but I have never tried it. I think it depends on the firmware of your unit if it can do that or not. Check your instruction manual. I *believe* my unit can do it but I have no need as I don't need too many of these at a time. 🙂

I am not sure how effective my ordering "pause" is at the moment. Here are the items I picked up during Suruga-Ya's recent 20% discount and free shipping sale. I spotted two items I really wanted - the truck with the JR container and the JR Shikoku Series 1000 DMU, both of which bring back memories of my first trip to Shikoku. I then added some items to get above the ordering minimum for the sale. Still very economical. Some additional container trucks, a Bandai truck (to see what they were like) and some other scenic items. The film crew as 1) it was really cheap, especially considering the current prices for figure sets, and 2) because I always see people taking pictures of the trains when I travel in Japan. Packing was somewhat haphazard as is par for the course with Suruga-Ya (and I would not be likely to order anything delicate from them) and pretty quick - ordered on May 11, shipped on May 13 and arrived here on May 19th. As to the memories - I tend to get down to breakfast early but then hangout over coffee while waiting for Mira. I was at the JR Hotel in Takamatsu which has a wall of windows, relaxing with my coffee when I was surprised to see that truck zip by. And, when we went to Oboke Gorge, we were passed by a larger truck with three containers as we walked to the boat landing. After we were back at the station, waiting for our ride back to Takamatsu, a Series 1000 pulled in and sat waiting for the limited express Nampu to arrive for its connection. It was running late and I noted the driver of the DMU apparently nodding off for a nap while waiting! Ciao, Tony

Trams have the right of way in Switzerland primary because of their braking distance. There is direct democracy at all three levels in Switzerland and since 1971. Zurich trams have had priority at all times. Planners prefer to separate modes so trams and trolleybuses generally have their own lane. Switzerland is very much a rules based society. Over half the adult population are active in military reserves. Tram stops have crosswalks at both ends and all minor traffic charges are criminal. Speeding 5mph over the 50kpm limit results in a big fine and can result in two years jail time. For dodging a public transport fare a wide range of doors close: applying for a rental lease, citizenship applications, credit card, mobile phone and mortgage applications all typically grind to a halt. Seems to be very much like bankruptcy. I sense the impact of direct democracy here. Tram lines run every 7.5 minutes, every 10 minutes evenings until 11pm and every 10 minutes Sundays. In many places lines are double up and frequencies are much less. Zurich's tram system is a marvel of investment and engineering. There is one four track section, and three track sections at Bellevue, Stockerstrasse and Bahnhof Enge. Several tram hubs free of auto traffic including Bellevue with 7 tram lines, Paradeplatz with 7 or 8 tram lines depending on the time and Bahnhof Enge with 2 loops and three loading positions. All of these have pavilions for waiting passengers. Bahnhof Enge has a banana curve on the tram 7 platform (see photo). Bellevue used to have a two banana curves but these were straightened out when the junction was rebuilt in 2015 "for better mobility". Tram assignments have are determined by the length of some tram stops. The shortest can only accommodate trams up to 36 meters. The longest trams are 43 or 43.5 meters. Something else to research and photograph! The old Tram 2000s apart from one small group will be gone by December 2025 when there also will be a major routing change. Photos 1. Gauntlet track on Bahnhofstrasse leading to the four track section between Bahnhofplatz and Bahnhofquai. 2. Four track section between Bahnhofplatz and Bahnhofquai. 3. Entry to Bellevue tram hub. The pavilion has tracks on all three sides and there is a loop around the complex. Starting point for many special tram operations. 4. Paradeplatz in the heart of the city. 5. Bahnhof Enge

Start laying the buildings and thinking how it could work. Where and why go from one to another, etc. If you also have vehicles, put them also and play a little with the space. Martin

Those are good suggestions that I'll use for the next set of labels. Do you know if you can serialize 1-10 with the frame. Hopefully I won't need to shrink the font anymore than what they currently are. I'm 99% sure that they'll fit even with the limited space underneath the E321 hopefully lol.

Very promising!

@Kingmeow - Yes .... and no. I'm not sure our sesame grinding skills were up to the task! If you watch STJ's video, you will see an excellent sesame grinding job while ours was a bit rough. We got better on our second visit - hopefully we will improve our skills in the Fall! I did enjoy our sesame seed grinding lesson in Fukuoka however. Our server did not speak English but he pantomimed the proper steps. Including adding the sauce. That's when the pressure was on! Tony.

Have to remember this for the fall!!!! I would think grinding your own sesame seeds would be wonderful, the ultimate in freshness. Like grinding coffee beans just before brewing. No?

Oh dear! Please keep us posted. I'm assuming it's not a very big package to grab attention?

I was thinking the same. But hey, you do get some balsa too! 🤣