All Activity

Everyone is awesome. I got it to work and am making sure that when the trains hit the crossover that it’s a slower speed. My son is running 2 trains and is having fun making sure they don’t crash into each other as they crossover. Thanks again everyone for all the inputs……It is a temporary tracks so not using the cosmetic attachments Interesting - my JR line train runs faster than my Shinkansen N700.

Looks interesting, hopefully someday we will be able to ride one of these, preferably the Red Star to Abashiri to visit our friends there. https://japantoday.com/category/features/travel/beautiful-red-and-blue-star-luxury-trains-set-to-be-new-hokkaido-travel-stars-2

These couplers are gray does anyone know if these couplers come in black and the part number? They are available in black they are 0398 thanks.

I've been here for five days now (or is it six? I'm losing track of time). The writing is going well. I've also been on several very long walks and my legs are a bit toasted. I've bought more unitrack and some other things (including another guitar, doh). Yesterday I caught the Tozai line out to the vicinity of Kato Headquarters and then walked the rest of the way. It was pi#$%ng down, but I had an umbrella so it was quite a nice atmospheric walk through the backstreets in the rain. I was a little underwhelmed but by headquarters itself as the layouts really need a good spruce up. I also got a bit lost on the way back to the station. In my attempt to mostly stay offline on this trip I didn't bother getting mobile wifi or roaming. I'm also thinking about buying a cheap bike for the rest of my stay. I'm here in the the dormitory suburb of Nishikasai for the next week getting work done, and then I'm on a trip taking in Aizuwakamatsu, Nikko, Hiroshima and surrounds, Himeji, and Osaka. A question: Are walk up tickets generally available for baseball games (particularly in Tokyo and Hiroshima) at this time in the season? I haven't really been taking many pictures, but the ones I do take are mostly of details that might make it onto the next layout.

This is a great topic, love all the excellent information. Once our little group gets going and to shows I will be recommending rectangular layouts vs long/skinny, however the set up of the display area has a bearing in this too. At the last show I went to a couple of weeks ago I can't see how we would have been allowed to set up with access all around unless it was monster layout. @cteno4 is this an issue with the venues you have done the rectangular set up at?

I will be going to the Victoria (Sidney) show in September so will be keeping my eyes open for anything I can find.

Yes, the best is to hook one throttle to each loop. If it’s a compete loop with just one crossover in it then you can just put a single feeder from a throttle to a loop and that should do it. You can use the Y adapter to feed a loop in two places across the loop from each other to make sure you don’t get any power drops if the loop is longer. Rule of thumb usually is about a feeder ever 2 or 3m. once separate throttles are hooked to their own loops you can run two trains, one on each loop with their own throttles. when you go to using the crossover you need to make sure both throttles are set to the same direction, then run the train thru the crossover with both throttles set to about the same speed. You may see it speed up for a second while it crossover as for a moment you will get voltage from both throttles and why you should not run the train thru the crossover really fast. the crossover track in the center is isolated to each track on the outside does not short out with the opposite track whe it’s switched to the crossover position. Does this make sense? jeff

We have our free classifieds here on the forum which works pretty well. Only down side these days is international shipping rates are so high… jeff

Yeah but that’s more fun to do with the Bluetooth speaker and trigger it when someone is right at it! You can really mess with them! Best when two people are there at it and they think it’s motion activated and wave their hands in from of goji and you only make it roar for one of the two. Great fun to mess with folks. but yes audio buttons are easy ones. That’s the other advantage of the rectangular layouts as you get a small strip of table to put buttons on, you don’t want anything mounted to a module or someone will poke it really hard. I’ve looked at table cloth clips to maybe attach interactive buttons down the table better, but the tables we use vary a lot! It’s on the list to get back into doing more interactive stuff. Even the dead track in the station to let a train stop and visitor has to push the button to start the train again can be fun. I do have a wireless dcc throttle that I’ve thought of wiring decoders to the track power so a visitor could run a train. Nice thing is you can easily limit the decoder output so that train can’t go past like 100kph. jeff

@N-Osoi great you are starting on a Ttrak module! Physical texture would be minuscule at scale, so best to just fake that with more visual patterning for roads. like others mentioned using something like 400 or 800 grit sandpaper will give that little feel of some texture. another approach is to print your roads. This is nice as you can easily experiment with various designs easily and make small road lines easily. You add road details like drains and manhole covers as well as pot holes, cracks, blemishes, even the tire and oil lines on the roads if you want. You can easily play with colors you want as this may have to be slightly different than in pictures and your usual viewing distance is like 250-500’ scale away and colors can change at distances. Lighting also is usually much different on a layout (we had that this weekend at a show being at the center point between the big sodium lights and not only punky color bit everything dim and foggy looking) than prototype outdoor sunlight. Print out on a drawing paper that has just a touch of texture and you will get a nice tiny bit of surface texture and help it not be shiny. Best to use an inkjet printer and not a laser printer as the laser printer’s fuser roll and the toner always ends up with a shiny smooth surface when you print larger areas like a road. I’ve really enjoyed doing the printed streets and works great on smaller bits like a Ttrak module. Let’s you play a lot with ideas. You can also use it just to lay out the design and then do it physically later. if you do it physically there are decal sets for road lines out there or you can get pin tape to lay the roads down. 1/64” pin tape is about scale but hard to come by these days but you can find 0.5-0.7mm pin tape pretty easy as used in fingernail art a lot. Search on ebay. of course you can get very detailed with Joe’s etched brass man hole covers and drain and tree grates! cheers jeff

A slight bit of purple in the grey is the magic blend.

Yeah I just don't want it too shiny, or black, or looking like concrete. I'll try the wet and dry paper, and I think someone said you can use nail polish tape or buy thin art tape for road markings. Will experiment with the weathering and scatter @Beaver - any examples of the older tarmac anywhere? What I'm trying for:

Jeff, at the very least you need a button to trigger Goji's roar!

Don't paint your roads black and you have automatically made better roads than most road modelling beginners. 😀 I think any texture on an N-scale road is likely to be out of scale and would say it is only of use if it helps with the process of applying a realistically looking paint cover. However I'm still pretty new with these things, so don't pay too much attention to what I'm saying.

Oh that's a good idea. I'm basically trying to create contemporary Japan, so lots of tarmac, but I'm sure I'll have bits of gravel or dirt paths somewhere eventually. Acrylic paints for the sandpaper?

I have to say, I would love to go to an exhibit with some of my brass H0 kits (if I ever get anything finished D ) And while I definitely prefer not having stanchions, it would also really suck getting something stolen or get the table bumped so a model falls to the floor. Of course, seeing as I have no finished models, no layout, no car and not even a driver's licence, the likelihood of me going to an exhibition is rather non existant. In Dortmund at Intermodellbau a while ago, a lot of layout had stanchions, some so far away from the layout that you could really view much of it. I also noticed at least 1 layout that was fairly high up, but they did have a little step up for the kids so they could still watch everything. Doesn't help wheelchair users of course.

In my experience Popondetta will happily buy from foreigners, but require an address in Japan on the sales form. So residents yes, short term visitors no, would be my answer. Unless maybe you have friends or relatives in Japan who would let you put their address on the form......... Also kato's comments regarding the amount of money given are quite true. In my experience the less selective a shop is about what they will buy from you, the less money they will give you. 'We buy almost anything' usually means 'We pay almost nothing'.

Wet and dry paper is an excellent representation of fairly fresh tarmac in good condition, including the colour. Just shim it up to the desired level with scrap card and stick it down. Older tarmac faded to a paler colour with potholes, patches etc takes more work. I prefer to use Jarvis tarmac scatter, applied densely with a great deal of strong glue, which is then rubbed down with sandpaper after thoroughly hardening off. The colour and colour variation is just right and it naturally has convincing holes and cracks in it (the weaker the gluing, the more holes and cracks.) Gravel or bare earth streets can be done with painted sandpaper for a smooth well maintained street or soil scatter treated as tarmac scatter above for one in poorer condition. Which you need depends on era. Much of Japan had unsurfaced streets and roads well into the middle Showa period. For 1980s or later you can plausibly have tarmac everywhere.

The black things on the sprues are non working scale models of the remote controlled motors used to operate the points on most modern Japanese railways. Since you appear to have modern trains these would be appropriate to fit. The grey and black things are sleeper and ballast base extensions to mount the model motors onto. The sticking out hook things clip into a couple of small apertures on the side of the points next to the tiebar. Since a scissors crossing is made up of four points you logically need four motors, one next to each of the four tiebars. There should therefore be four apertures to attach them. However these cosmetic attachments can be quite vulnerable to damage if the track is used in temporary layouts. That is why they are supplied as separate parts. If you intend to continue running trains on the floor then it is probably best not to fit them as they will likely get broken. If the track is attached to a baseboard they will be fine, and create a much more realistic appearance.

I'm making one. I have some leftover 9mm ply so I will use that as the base. I have cut some cardboard as pictured to the same size to help plan. Will have roads between the buildings and across the front. What do people recommend to make a nice road? I saw some 2mm EVA foam sheets in a craft shop and they looked to have a good texture for roads/ground.... anyone painted them? I have a few tomytec buildings so I will have spaces for them but won't fix them in place. I found a thread here that noted the differing floor heights - my three are a case in point, so I'll adjust their base height. I think I have some of the #00 screws on the way too. Not sure what to do next! The ply is cut and I have holes for the power feeds. I also note that the Kato catenary pole bases match the required T-track spacing! (33mm)

From what I've heard Hobby Land Pocchi can a bit "weary" of foreigners, so I'd assume selling to them could pose a bit of a challenge. So probably not worth it to try selling it in Japan. Personally I would try to sell it locally or post a classified. Pretty sure someone here would be interested in the set for the right price.

I'd say not worth it also. Second hand / used prices are so much cheaper in Japan. So the buy back prices for you will be much lower.

I'm heading back to Japan for my third trip in a couple of weeks time, and I have been wondering about something: how easy is it for foreigners to sell stuff to a train shop or second-hand dealer that deals in trains, and would it be at all worthwhile? I have an older Kato 10-382 500 series Shinkansen and it doesn't quite fit in with my collection anymore. I've thought about selling it locally, but there's not much interest in Japanese N locally. So my thoughts have shifted to whether it's practical to take it somewhere like Popondetta or Mandarake while I'm in Japan and see whether I can sell it there. Sure, I won't get terribly much for it, it's an older set without any of the add-on sets, but at least it might stand a chance of being moved on to a caring home, and I'll have some cash to spend on new trains, a meal or two, or experiences. I've had a look at this thread, among a few, which seems to suggest that in some cases it might or might not be possible, there doesn't really seem to be any hard and fast 'yes' or 'no' in place. Hobby Land Pochi doesn't clearly state whether they would or wouldn't let foreigners do it (although I suspect from the wording that it's more for domestic Japanese residents), and the same goes for Popondetta. Any thoughts? Alastair

And some unmissable did, in fact, come up. Quite unexpectedly. Our national Märklin retailer Geoff recently helped a terminally-ill local modeler move on his collection of (mostly) Märklin and European H0 scale stock, and we at the Christchurch Märklin Model Railway Club were very lucky that he came down to see us after getting as far north as Nelson. While most of the stuff on offer didn't appeal to me, this 26533 Metronom commuter train from 2006 did. It was very quickly purchased for $275.00 and is now in fact sitting on my layout after getting a quick test run yesterday to prove it still worked; it does, but it needs a service and three new replacement horns which thankfully I can get from eBay. While I have got another bilevel train tucked away and unrun in a very long time, I decided to buy this one purely for the fact that my grandfather had one when I was in my early-mid teens. I'm not sure if this is the same train, as he had sold it by 2009 or thereabouts with assistance from my uncle, who, when I spoke to him yesterday did not remember where it had gone. Irrespective, it's nice to have another train in the collection that I once played with as a kid. Alastair

As I feel @cteno4s answer does not bring out the answer you wanted (but its a great and absolutely correct explanation), i wanna rephrase this a bit. When you want to run DCC, you need a DCC Controller. In DCC, Locomotives (once they got a DCC chip like @cteno4 said) get an "adress" (either short 2 digit or long 4 digit) and the Controller can be set to that specific adress and control that train. You can change the adress of the "to be controlled" train on the Controller anytime and switch around to run multiple trains at once. Normally, no specific Software is needed, unless you want to start creating automatisations. Keep in mind that normally, dcc trains and dc trains cant be run at the same time