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Thank goodness the rules are that the baggage limits of the main flight apply to the connecting flights in N America. Unfortunately our last flight was purchased as an Amerian Airlines flight even though it flew on JAL so we just had the 1 bag limit. (US Carriers used to have 2 bags as well to Japan despite charging for every other place in the world but recently they've mostly gone to 1 bag).

The motorized chassis takes pretty much all of the interior which defeats interior lighting. If fact the first step is to remove the interior. With a multi car train the motor car would be dark and the trailing cars lighted. Why bother? Our Rich Kerr thoroughly documents Tomix and Tomytec offerings. http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/tomytec/index.htm http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/chassis_dim.htm

First Prototype is printed: With some strange Warping on the Locomotive's Cab. The final Body will be a bit shorter. It seems like I had some Scaling mistakes. I'm surprised how good it looks even in this state.

Improved the track plan a bit, and added some colours to indicate the various lines. This is obviously not final, since a large part of the layout is still missing completely 🙂 The plum / pink line is the shinkansen line. This is just a simple double track line staying on the same height throughout, and has no really interesting visuals. It's really just a line to show some shinkansen running. To the right, the line will enter a tunnel and probably go into a small hidden yard before looping back on itself. To the left, the line will go down the helix and into the main hidden yard. The green line is the express line. Much like the shinkansen line, there's nothing really visually spectacular here, just a double track line going through some tunnels. Also, like the shinkansen line, the express line will go into a small hidden yard. However, it won't loop back on itself, but instead continue on a section of the layout at the bottom of this screenshot. To the left it will also enter the main hidden yard via the helix. The express line will have an incline, which means that at the left side it's about the same height as the shinkansen line, and it'll gradually go down towards the right. The yellow line is an urban line. I haven't quite decided what to do with this exactly. The idea was to have a small station just before where the double track merges into a single track, but I might extend the double track a bit more, and have it merge around where the 180 degree curve is. I'll then also place the station there. The urban line is quite a bit lower than the other 2 lines, especially on the left side. And like the shinkansen and express lines, the urban line will also have access to the hidden yard on the left. The blue line is an additional local line which I want to go through the mountains and have some switchbacks in it. Currently it goes below the yellow urban line, but I might switch that to going over the urban line. Depends a bit on where I want to go with the rest of that line. There's also a small service yard there, with 4 tracks in the current design, but might cut that down a bit. The totally misaligned grey rectangle here is some sort of loco shed most likely. The dark grey area is an approximation of where taller mountains / hills will be, the lighter grey area is some lower hills. The long rectangle in the bottom right is a divider backdrop so I can visually split the scenery on both sides of the layout. Also, on the bottom, just to the left of the middle, is a little bit of benchwork sticking out with no tracks yet. The idea here is to create a rather large mountain that starts on the N layout, and just keeps on going up so the H0 layout will make use of the same mountain. It doesn't really make sense, but I thought it might be a nice idea. I do need to check how I can keep things accessible in and around the mountain though, but that's rather far into the future. I also want to try and integrate some of the Sankei Ghibli kits I have into this mountain, mainly the Spirited Away bath house kit.

I will be in Tokyo from Sept 8th to 14th

To answer your questions @cteno4, there is an annual prisoners' fans convention otherwise, people are visiting the village but it's not forgotten. The next convention is already announced : https://sixofone.co/convention. you must be members of the Six of One. To be more precise - as you can read there : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion - Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion's architect was not in favour or turning the Village into a Prisoner's Disneyland. Antway, there are visitors. But as this Village is far away form everything, as you need more than 6 hours by train to go there ... it's calm & relax. Playing chess was not authorized whilst I was there (as they were growing grass around). The balloon is called "Rover" in English and "Le Rôdeur" in French. You can easily find the whole serie in French or English on Youtbe for free.

Greetings, I am wondering if any good people here has installed custom lightning on Tomytec N gauge (1:150 scale) trains? The Tomytec trains I am referring to are the ones you buy the static models and purchase the motorised chassis, trailing unit metal wheels and weights and pantograph and assemble them. In installing lights, I mean head lights, tail lights and interior lights. If anyone has done the above mentioned, I would like to know how it was done and if any pictures can be shared will be much appreciated. Thanks on advance!

We have settled on ANA for our trips to Japan as they went way above what I was expecting to make sure we made connecting flights to Sapporo (2017) and Hiroshima (2018) (fun to see the back parts of Narita Haneda). They also allow for an extra bag at no cost compared to the Canadian airlines. But we have to use Air Canada to get to Vancouver (YVR) from Nanaimo (YCD). They are both Star Alliance so AC is obliged to use the ANA baggage limits. Works for us, although AC can make even the 13 minute fight from YCD to YVR a painful experience 😵 Back on topic, my wife says Canada Post delivered a large box "from a hobby store in Osaka, Japan". Of course I am on the road 4 hrs one-way away so my unboxing will need to wait till I'm home. Pretty psyched to see my first order though!

"Obviously, all of this came from our favourite no batteries, no glue seller 🙂" I know who that is lol.

@Tony Galiani Dōmo arigatō! Thank you so much that is exactly what I need. Now to buy the turnouts 😁

Thanks.

Easy to use and most companies have online instructions on how to use them. First and only time I used them was in 2014. IC has spread wildly since then.

Personally I would love it if Nj took off more. It just looks so much better than regular N gauge for japanese trains.

The accompanying Digitrax instruction booklet that came with the decoder has pictures on how and where to apply the Kapton tape to prevent the short to the motor. https://www.digitrax.com/media/apps/products/mobile-decoders/dn163k0d/documents/dn163k0d.pdf

The three D51 class 2-8-2s in this picture are hauling the daily limestone train at Nunohara on the Hakubi line in Okayama prefecture. This was a very popular spot for photography with railfans in the closing days of steam locomotives. I also have a vinyl record featuring trains here. Cheers, Mark.

I will be in Tokyo in August for JAM, if anyone is there I am game.

I've seen those change machines on busses before. You're right, if you didn't know how they worked it could get embarrassing. We used to use the local busses with change in Amagasaki but later we started with the IC cards. I think I'd be in trouble if the IC cards stopped working.

Here you go. I am having a quiet day at work (since I was on call Saturday and worked Sunday) so taking some time to check the Forum. Survived a surprise visit from friends from Ottawa on Saturday and our Commencement Program on Sunday - awful speech, student demonstrations, general craziness - which cut into my planned modelling time. Last night I was poring through some of my Japanese layout books since I was too tired to do any actual layout work when I ran across this after seeing your post. Hope this is helpful. If you want more info from the page on this layout plan, just let me know. Cheers, Tony

Tony thank you so much for the offer, I don't have the 50 track plan book so this would be most useful. Hopefully the moderators are OK with it but I will understand if they aren't.

Thanks for the awesome pictures Madsing

These are photos of my EH500 install with the same decoder. Marc

@Grant_T - sounds like your travel is going really well! Cheers, Tony

Been a while since I've had an update on this. Of course, most my model train time has been spent on the H0 stuff. At one point I considered not doing anything with the N layout anymore at all, but taking down the yard and helix didn't feel right either. I've been thinking about a multi-deck layout with the lower deck for the N layout, and the upper deck for the H0 layout. Recently, I was at Intermodellbau in Dortmund, where they had a layout / diorama that was around 140cm above floor level, so for me that would be just below eye level. This height (give or take a few cm) really struck me as a really good option for the H0 layout. It's low enough to still get a good view over the layout, but also high enough to really be able to get sucked into small scenes in the layout. With this in mind, I did some testing at home. I took the first section of the yard back out of storage and put it in place. Then I took a temporary frame and suspended that above the yard at about the height I would want it to be at, and then checked clearance between the N layout and the H0 layout if that would be at around 140 height. The N scale layout will be quite low, but I always designed that to be optimally viewable when sitting in a chair (this was because my father wasn't able to stand for long periods.) So, anyway, I will continue on the N layout, while at the same time working on the H0 layout above it. I hope to be able to get some plywood cut soon to build the new frame for the N layout, which will also get some supports for the yard. That way I can slide out the entire section with part of the yard included. Currently the yard is on its own legs, and the main layout sections above it were of different lengths, which made things really awkward. I will also get some smaller plywood sheets so I can experiment a bit with a frame for the H0 layout which I can then temporarily mount to the wall above the N layout. A revised track plan for the N layout is already being worked on. Once I have something presentable, I'll post it here 🙂

Been a while since I got new N-scale stuff.. Last weekend I received: - Tomix 0 series shinkansen NH16 formation - Kato EF55 with old passenger car set - Kato C12 with Temu 300, Tora 45000 and Yo 5000 - Tomix E2 power unit (replacement for the Tomix 300 series that had zinc pest) Obviously, all of this came from our favourite no batteries, no glue seller 🙂

I'd be okay with the machines if they made them less confusing. I thought I understood the Japanese mindset, but maybe Japanese people find them difficult to use as well. It seems like you just need to know how it works, because it's not written clearly anywhere. Express trains are a good example, where you need a special express ticket in addition to your normal one. Or multiple tickets for the Shinkansen. None of the navigation apps seem to explain it either. Busses can be a pain too. The ones with numbers are easy enough, at least once you figure out how to pay*. But the ones with just the destination on the display... It never seems to match what it says on Google Maps, or on the signage at the stop. * In Nagoya I was on a bus that didn't accept IC cards. I think the system was down or something. Anyway, I didn't have the change but I saw there was a slot for notes and a dispenser for the change, despite the sign that said "no change given" in English. So at the terminal I put 1000 yen in, it spit out some coins that I scooped off, and off I went... "Gaijin-san!" the driver called after me. Turns out it's just a change machine, you then have to put the coins and ticket into the slot yourself. How embarrassing.