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I'm a big fan of Japanese culture and modeling, and I've been considering expanding my travels to South Korea. It's my first time planning a trip there, and I could really use some advice. I'm looking for must-see destinations, tips on navigating the public transportation system, and recommendations for accommodation. Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Today was a nice haul day with the stuff I received.

Has anyone here converted Kato 4-wheel freight wagons such as the WaMu (picture one assembled and two disassembled) with Micro Trains magnetic couplers?. It looks as if a MT-10 might fit in there . . . or perhaps I could just ignore the pocket and glue a 1015 / 1023 / 2004 into place.

Some more images from the ChangMing CRH400AF: https://www.facebook.com/100064165236162/posts/818501216965379/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

New video from yukikazeful.

Go west along the chuo line or east into Chibu. Easy to get away from the city for a day. Even a little further north to Gumna.

Thanks for the suggestion. I love that part of Japan, but as Katoftw says, it's a bit touristy. I've actually done a 180 on this and will be staying in Tokyo for the month and doing some day trips. Given the topic of my research at the moment (games, toys and miniatures) this makes a lot more sense. And I think I will find the environment stimulating.

Nice write up, and well done. I see these split gears on other brass models, and with Bachmann ones like their Shay. My understanding is they use a 'plastic' style not only for cost, but noise. Brass on brass can be noisy which is more noticeable on newer engines with quiet motors.

So here are some of the variations you can do with 2-4 8’x30” banquet tables and the number of single straight modules (or the equivalent) needed in addition to the 4 corner modules. The Ttrak loop can grow and shrink a bit on each of the table layouts. 1 table 8’x30” rectangle 4, 6, 8, or 10 2 table 5’x8’ rectangle: 12 or 14 30”x16’ long rectangle: 18, 20, 22, 24, or 26 3 table 8’x8.5’ square: 16, 18, or 20 4 table 10.5’x10.5’ Square spiral: 24, 26, 28, 30, or 32 straight 8’x13’ Rectangle center open: 22, 24, 26, 28, or 30 straight 5’x16’ rectangle closed center: 26, 28, or 30 straight jeff

Our club had our Ttrak setup last weekend at the big Sakura Matsuri event and tried did a rectangular layout and really discovered it to be a lot easier to setup and a better presentation of a car full of modules so I thought I would start a discussion in the Ttrak forum about it. We set up the Ttrak as rectangular layout with two 8’x30” tables side by side to create a 8’x5’ ttrak loop. This left a couple of inches of table border all the way around for small hands to grab onto or lean into instead of Ttrak modules right at the edge when you do loops with single table width. We find this presentation really beneficial for a whole host of reasons that I’ll take the time to outline here as it gobsmacked me when I stepped back and really looked at it. Creates Nice Table Boarder/Frame - The rectangular layout creates a nice small 2-3” table border all the way around which is nice visually as well as place for small hands to grab and rest on instead of the modules. This strip is also nice visually with the black table cloths, it frames the layout nicely and mutes module base front differences. Fixes Deeper Module Issues - Eliminates having to lay out deeper modules strategically so as not to butt into deeper modules on the other side of the layout as well as trying to snake buss wires between deeper modules zig zagging. Set up is much faster as we just arrange modules more by scene with no thoughts to depth and this most importantly lets us layout modules so they make nice scenes together and nice transitions across the layout. Allows Ultra Deep Modules - Allows for deeper than 14” modules (some are dreaming of deeper scenes and then they don’t have to creat corresponding shallow scene modules for behind the deep scenes and also power buss routing around module backs on either side). Easier Last Minute Changes -If at the last minute or during a show you have to move some modules or replace a module it’s a lot easier to do than with the long format. Greater Visitor Retention - We are finding the visitor retention much higher for shorter layout and not with the rectangle like this as opposed to a long 16’x30” or more loop. While the longer loop uses up every bit of table space and gets and you can squeeze in an extra 12 single straight modules, folks tend to get on the run around two longer tables and rarely circumnavigate it completely and stop and look at details less. Layout All in Field of Vision - The rectangle allows a nice over view of the whole layout within your field of vision, where as the long thin layout does not. The long strip does a strange visual thing of just screaming more of the same as well. The 4 corners seem to set more of different places on the layout and draw folks over to check each out. It helps also that our club corners are rather unique being built by one of our best modelers and are great scenes of Sake brewery, beach scene (Enoshima inspired), rice farm, and 100 yen store with bit of lake and swan boats. Less Loop Like - The rectangle layout plays down the really long straightaways that long layout accentuates. The long straightaways makes the layout feel like so much more of a loop, one of the big downsides of Ttrak. Fewer Modules Needed - The rectangular rectangle layout only requires 4 corners and 14 single straight modules, which is right at the amount of stuff to fit into one small station wagon or suv. The long layout requires 4 corners and 22-26 single straights which definitely requires 2 cars to transport. Trains Stay in View More - The rectangular layout’s shorter loop length and more of the trains (or at least their movement) usually being more in general field of view. This means trains don’t disappear for long times and more fun watching them off in the distance. Also you get 4 curves ro mix up running on the rectangle and only 2 on the long layout Less Dramatic Front and Back issues - In many of our venue spaces visitors tend to end up to orienting themselves to the layout like there is a front and a back to the layout. We try to not have this, but space constraints, visitor flow and such sometimes just force a bit of orientation to the layout. With the rectangular layout of there is a front then the ends/sides end up being maximized, where as with the long layout half of the layout ends up being in the back where few venture to look at it if space is tighter. Smooths Rough Module Back Edge Lines - The rough back edge of a line of modules is much less jarring in the rectangular layout as it’s not back to back with the rough back edge of the modules behind. With the black table cloth covering the large center hole in the rectangle the two back sides are not grabbing the eye aggressively as it is with the long layout. Avoids Back to Back Scene issues - The rectangular layout avoids the eye wanting to connect back to back modules on a long layout. Even when there is a good 6-8” gap in the middle on the long layout we have had a lot of people ask if the two scenes are connected between back to back modules or why there is a gap there or why it’s different down the layout (most folks don’t see our Ttrak is a bunch of individual modules). We did not get those question with the rectangle format. New Center Display Area - Center area of about 2’x5’ becomes a nice space to do other presentations, displays, and/or signage. Easier to Find a Trottle Home - The rectangle layout center area also makes it easy to find a convenient space to put the throttle, long layouts is a noted puzzle to where to put the throttle and where buss reaches power drops. Better Sign Placement - Rectangle layout allows 4 nice skirt faces to put our club sign on and they center nicely whereas the sign in the center of long layout sides looks odd and also strange on the 30” wide ends. Being in exhibit design 30+ years all these things supporting the rectangular layout are super solid design elements that are very tried and true. I’m kicking myself for not exploring rectangular Ttrak setups earlier and just slipped into the old long table format of out and back that is such the norm. I think that is driven by the desire by many to cram in as many modules and miles of rail as possible in a setup, but it does not take into consideration how visitors interact and react to the layout. This is a real lesson of less is more! This comes up all the time in design. In a couple of weeks we will be trying a spiral of 4 8’x30” tables for a 10.5” square layout or a 4 table rectangle at 8’x11’ with a few more straights at the local triannual train show to see how those work. I would love to hear other’s thoughts and experiences with this topic! cheers, jeff

Lovely cases! Not the crammed to the gills shops I’m use to! jeff

Thanks Dillion! It was very fun and a good show to recharge my batteries on doing shows. After 20+ years of doing shows at times my energy flags on doing them. sorry I didn’t do better pictures as I was busy much of the time talking to folks and keeping an eye on the layout. Also hard to shoot nice module picts with the crowds (don’t like muscling in for shots) and the lighting was half shade half bright sunlight! jeff

Visited this fantastic shop in Subang just outside of Kuala Lumpur last week. Spent a whole afternoon in here, with great customer service from Darren who was very enthusiastic about the products. Here's a few photos of the shop. There was also a testing layout, but I accidentally deleted the photo before uploading it. An absolute treasure trove of older Marklin, Trix and MiniTrix trains.

Nice SW1200 — diesel switchers are the best!

The whole thing looks nice!!!

last weekends Model railway show in Te Awamutu which is in the Waikato district about 1 and 1/2 hrs drive from my home. Our crew took the TT layout along for a display with a couple of new modules added to the layout to make it 8m long. Some running footage here . Also managed to film the 9 Mil New Zealand Railway Layout which is very impressive , but way out of my budget.

latest purchase from a local show last weekend. Not usually tempted by German equipment, but liked the styling on this and the price was very good. Runs like a Kato too.

https://www.dapol.co.uk/blogs/news/fake-dapol-products

There’s a topic on it here it’s just little sushi erasers on some Tomix TORA gondolas. Fun train. Still need to find my soy sauce tanker I bought and make some chopsticks as well as a wasabi car… jeff

The next set of photos. How locomotives can change over time. This is a Montreal Locomotive Works RS 18, based on the Alco RS 11. This is a brass import by Van Hobbies made by Samhongsa in Korea and represents the 1950’s built locomotive shortly before being rebuilt in the early 1980s. This is an example of the RS 18 rebuilds, now called RS 18U. They were stripped to the frame and totally redone, and used for lighter duty road switching service in Eastern Canada and the US. This is a recent release from Rapido and only needed some black paint on the handrails. This is a GP 7. It, along with its replacement the GP 9, were the backbone of the CP mainline power, especially in Western Canada. This one is painted in its as delivered scheme and is an Atlas unit with CP specific details added. As the GP 7s and 9s got replaced by more powerful locomotives, they got pushed down into secondary services and sometimes got some upgrades. This is a model of a GP 9 that worked on the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway on Vancouver Island and it has a few of those modifications including a chop nose and extended rear sand box. This is a modified Athearn model.

A little update...weathered the tracks with Vallejo Burnt Umber and some dry brushing with Silver Grey and Flat Earth. Then ballasted with Woodland Scenics Fine Buff. Still need to add some darkness/rust on some ballasted areas. I tested out the locos again to make sure it runs well with all the paint, there was a lot more cleaning up on the rails than I anticipated. Taking full advantage of the weak Japanese yen, I bought some more World Kougei kits (Kiso Baldwin, diesel and passenger car), decals, World Kougei couplers, Echo Model roof tile sheets and misc parts. I caved in and got myself an Imon scratch brush, I just couldn't resist getting one since I'm already placing an order!

Awesome, I love the sushi train! 🍣 Do you have more pics of it here somewhere?

Thanks, just catching up with life here after the long weekend of the event. The Sakura Matsuri went off great this year. We were in a very central spot of the festival so that was nice and the weather was very good, sunny and 70-80 temp so nice. Only issue was some gusty winds at time, luckily just blew over a few unattached tall buildings on one module which were replaced or taped down. Later Sunday afternoon we did have some trains get blown over now and then when running. Our club curves are super elevated double track so trains are vulnerable half way thru the 90 to getting tipped over if the gust comes from the right direction. Crowds were very heavy on Saturday as the street festival gets all the outflow from the big cherry blossom parade along the mall, so the event sort of goes from zero to 100% in a half hour on opening on Saturday. Recent years I had head figures of like 150k attendance. I think this year it was the densest I’ve ever seen it. We had one of our best receptions I’ve seen with out Ttrak. Folks were just super excited, interested, and appreciative. It was fun to watch people approach and their reactions. Many got the big O mouth first then usually a lot of glee expressions and comments of OMG!, “Cool!” (that term is now back in fashion, so I am fashionably cool again as I’ve used it for 50+ years constantly), or “Sick!” Of course every third person would say “I (or family member) had a model train when I was young!” and be back to being a bit of a kid for a bit. Even if we could just give them a moment of being a kid again to recapture a bit of that now it’s a success for us. Many folks took the time to look closely at our scenes and find the fun detains and when they would discover one they would then go on the hunt for more and have great fun when they found one. I think 500 business card were taken! Folks were very praising and appreciative to us for us bringing the layout to the festival which is greatly appreciated by us as it’s a total labor of love and many times at train shows you get little praise and appreciation which really can suck the fun out of doing a show. We only had a single tent this year (we had a double tent last year). They give us a tent and event fees gratis as event fee and tent rental is many hundreds of dollars and we have very little funds as a club. The tent was unfortunately close to one of the adjacent big tents that had kids art on Saturday and a fundraising bazaar on Sunday that at times cause our crowd and their crowd to clash some, but not horrible. One tent apparently didn’t have any concrete block tie downs (they always have huge 2’x2’x18” concrete blocks at each tent pole to keep them from flying off in a good wind) and went for a flight. This has been an issue in some past years as the tall buildings downtown can channel gusts. It was also the first time we have left the layout setup overnight outside and of course nightmares of coming in Sunday morning to a disaster or theft of stuff. But nothing happened. The event is all fenced off and they have security all night. 6’ tall inflatable goji was not so popular this year for some reason. Usually tons of people have to stop and do a selfie or action shot with goji. He got some good love but not the usual. The best thing is I found this little inflator (high volume low pressure) last fall for him that is usb rechargeable and about 6x6x10cm in size and can inflate him in like 3 or 4 minutes! Very quiet as well. It can also deflate him and get all the air out of him easily, which is super hard to do by pushing the air out of him and could result in a blowout if someone was too aggressive. All for $5! In the past we alway have used car tire inflators (high pressure low volume) which are very loud and bulky or I have just sat there for 15 minutes and blown him up with my lungs. Placement of his air spigot on his my body where I needed to inflate him always drew many lewd comments at me I won’t miss! Another one of those things that you smack your head and say why didn’t we have this 20 years ago! Sushi train was and especially big hit at this event and end up out and running almost all the time as it was such a crowd pleaser for this event. While not prototypical it evoked a huge ton of “oh look a sushi train!” by like every 4th person! But it’s actually one of those very fun, unique things that can act as a strong memory point in visitor’s brains to remember the rest of their layout experience. It was a way of starting conversations with visitors as you could say “That’s Godzilla’s lunch!” and it would always get a laugh (important as well to cement memories well). Striking up small conversations on various bits of the layout really increases visitor hang time and you see them take a second and usually more detailed look at things. These are the kinds of things I think are really necessary to give a good presentation and hopefully plant a few seeds out there for model trains as a hobby or just any hobby! I think we were the most photographed thing at the festival at times you would look around and a dozen cellphones and cameras were going at it at once! One year at cherry blossom event a member reverse image searched a picture of layout Godzilla and he turned up in hundreds of fb posts. I expect tons more now with Instagram being more image centric. Very few finger issues. And always nice to let the little kids get their noses right up to the module edge. Most all are super good and the few fingers usually respond well to a gentle “Please don’t touch”. A new one was one little kid did not respond to a couple of prompts and the his mom tapped him on his arm and signed don’t touch to him, so good lesson there. Nothing broken just one or two maybe finger derailments. We set up a rectangular layout with two 8’x30” tables side by side to create a 8’x5’ ttrak loop. This left a couple of inches of table border all the way around for small hands to grab onto or lean into instead of Ttrak modules right at the edge when you do loops with single table width. We find this presentation really beneficial for a whole host of reasons that I’ll take the time to outline here as it gobsmacked me when I stepped back and really looked at it. Makes a nice small 2-3” table border all the way around which is nice visually as well as place for small hands to grab and rest on instead of the modules. This strip is also nice visually with the black table cloths, it frames the layout nicely and mutes module base front differences. Eliminates having to lay out deeper modules strategically so as not to butt into deeper modules on the other side of the layout as well as trying to snake buss wires between deeper modules zig zagging. Set up is much faster as we just arrange modules more by scene with no thoughts to depth and this most importantly lets us layout modules so they make nice scenes together and nice transitions across the layout. Allows for deeper than 14” modules (some are dreaming of deeper scenes and then they don’t have to creat corresponding shallow scene modules for behind the deep scenes and also power buss routing around module backs on either side). If at the last minute or during a show you have to move some modules or replace a module it’s a lot easier to do than with the long format. We are finding the visitor retention much higher for a rectangle like this as opposed to a long 16’x30” loop. While the longer loop uses up every bit of table space and gets and you can squeeze in an extra 12 single straight modules, folks tend to get on the run around two longer tables and rarely circumnavigate it completely and stop and look at details less. The rectangle allows a nice over view of the whole layout within your field of vision, where as the long thin layout does not. The long strip does a strange visual thing of just screaming more of the same as well. The 4 corners seem to set more of different places on the layout and draw folks over to check each out. It helps also that our club corners are rather unique being built by one of our best modelers and are great scenes of Sake brewery, beach scene (Enoshima inspired), rice farm, and 100 yen store with bit of lake and swan boats. The rectangle layout plays down the really long straightaways that long layout accentuates. The long straightaways makes the layout feel like so much more of a loop, one of the big downsides of Ttrak. The rectangular rectangle layout only requires 4 corners and 14 single straight modules, which is right at the amount of stuff to fit into one small station wagon or suv. The long layout requires 4 corners and 26 single straights which definitely requires 2 cars to transport. The rectangular layout’s shorter loop length and more of the trains (or at least their movement) usually being more in general field of view. This means trains don’t disappear for long times and more fun watching them off in the distance. Also you get 4 curves ro mix up running on the rectangle and only 2 on the long layout In many of our venue spaces visitors tend to end up to orienting themselves to the layout like there is a front and a back to the layout. We try to not have this, but space constraints, visitor flow and such sometimes just force a bit of orientation to the layout. With the rectangular layout of there is a front then the ends/sides end up being maximized, where as with the long layout half of the layout ends up being in the back where few venture to look at it if space is tighter. The rough back edge of a line of modules is much less jarring in the rectangular layout as it’s not back to back with the rough back edge of the modules behind. With the black table cloth covering the large center hole in the rectangle the two back sides are not grabbing the eye aggressively as it is with the long layout. The rectangular layout avoids the eye wanting to connect back to back modules on a long layout. Even with a good 6-8” gap in the middle on the long layout we have had a lot of people ask if the two scenes are connected between back to back modules or why there is a gap there or why it’s different down the layout (most folks don’t see our Ttrak is a bunch of individual modules). We did not get those question with the rectangle format. Center area of about 2’x5’ becomes a nice space to do other presentations. We could even put a club sign in the space. One club member brought his O scale C51 display model and a few HO locos that are just nice to see bigger. We would also put the train boxes of the trains currently running for display and ease of grabbing to swap in a new train. I could have brought my 1m Tokyo tower to go in there or eventually maybe the huge Kumamoto castle model. Anojte idea is to make a little platform to sit in there and do mini onetrak in there. Another possibility we have looked at was to do a shallow module viaduct shinkansen loop behind the Ttrak modules. But this requires a larger table rectangle and thus a lot more Ttrak modules and transporting both would definitely need two cars and a lot more storage space. the rectangle layout center area also makes it easy to find a convenient space to put the throttle, long layouts is a noted puzzle to where to put the throttle and where buss reaches power drops. Rectangle layout allows 4 nice skirt faces to put our club sign on and they center nicely whereas the sign in the center of long sides looks odd and also strange on the 30” wide ends. In the end it’s really apparent that the rectangle layouts are the way to go for our Ttrak. Ironically it’s about the same size/shape as the nyc Japan week sectional layout we did at 9’x11’ and that was super well received and had huge visitor retention (it had two ground loops and a double viaduct). Our slightly larger layout 3.0 (still under construction, maybe next year) is based on this because it seemed to keep audiences so well. Being in exhibit design 30+ years all these things are super solid design elements that are super tried and true. I’m kicking myself for not exploring rectangular Ttrak setups earlier and just slipped into the old long table format of out and back that is such the norm. I think that is driven by the desire by many to cram in as many modules and miles of rail as possible in a setup, but it does not take into consideration how visitors interact and react to the layout. This is a real lesson of less is more! This comes up all the time in design. In a couple of weeks we will be trying a spiral of 4 8’x30” tables for a 10.5” square layout or a 4 table rectangle at 8’x11’ with a few more straights at the local triannual train show to see how those work. cheers, jeff

The ChiKi is from Tramway, but the KoKi is made by Tenshodo. The other KoKi I have is from Tomix. I only wanted two or three of them to show steam-hauled intermodal freight. Cheers, Mark.

Finally, YouTube member Japanese train observation channel posted in side view video of a revenue trip on the limited-stop Kagayaki train from Tsuruga all the way to Tokyo: