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Oh man Chad, I get tired just looking at all the work done! Almost there and into the home stretch hopefully here! Looking wonderful. jeff

Haven't done an update in a while. We are actually way past where these pics are for the most part. The only recent ones are the tile ones at the end. Most of the painting is done and has been done. STill some cut-in at the ceiling, a few really high up last few feet in some halls and a bathroom, and some closets still need to be done. Most all the lights and outlets and switches are in. Jiust a few random ones here and there not. Garage doors were installed -- not sure when and if it was before the last update. Kitchen cabinet boxes were installed between eb and yesterday. The countertops were installed in February. The wall cabinets in the last couple weeks with the final stuff yesterday. Two showers were tiled (but not yet grouted) and the Ofuro (Japanese bath) room floor was tiled and grouted (no pic after grouting though) but the wall not tiled yet. Solar panels were installed in February but just came online a few weeks ago (bureaucratic snafus) and are generating. They're only half of what was planned at the moment due to cost increases in everything else. But it is still 18 panels. I'm tiling the kitchen backsplash today and tomorrow and we'll start putting LVP down asap as well. Most of these pics are older and I need to go around and take a bunch more.

That's kind of cool. Kind of like "desk toy" style for train nerds. (I'm a big fan of "desk toys". They're a little big to have a ot on your desk but a couple for decoration would be cool. I'll have to look for them next time I'm in Japan. (Supposed to be this summer but with our building project its postponed) Or something to put on a shelf in the train room for decoration. Maybe I could sneak some onto a table in the living room or something (when we have a living room)

A Lawson in the view of Mt. Fuji. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/26/fujikawaguchiko-town-japan-block-mount-fuji-view-overcrowding

Great work so far! I'm very excited to see the track plan and the layout develop 🙂

Forgot to attached images.

I'd kind of say they are a sort of O scale, B train shorty. Here’s some behind my HO stuff at Stage One. Sadly the Koki are just a moulded plastic with no articulation whatsoever. They come with a separately fitted handrail that actually is stowed on a underside moulding when purchased. The containers are all steel tin plate with a push lid, like a biscuit tin. They do have a wealth of options in terms of livery across JR Freight and mainstream couriers and hauliers as well as some JNR and larger international shipping companies. They also stack on top of each other very neatly. A recess in the lid matches the footprint on the base. They even sell truck trailers to load them on too. Range availability seems to differ across the ¥100 stores. Some Daiso have little to nothing while others have many container options. Likewise, some Seria stores carry them while others don't. The ones I have are just combination of when I've come across them or new container options in various stores.

Well that didnt work! The aforementioned and screenshot might have been a good idea but for two things. The connecting tubes were too tiny to sit sturdy in the connecting pipes, and the cardan shaft receiving end in the black drive unit connected to the motor would not fit as the shaft was not long enough to hold the inner connecting shaft. However what did work was , simply taking the black motor end thingies, we will call it, off the original broken motor and placing on the new ones, even though the shafts were a bit too small, a quick test revealed there was enough play allowed for it to work, so to help I glued the black motor end thingies giving a tiny bit more length, set back slightly, but not enough to notget a proper purchase, and Voila, Its working nice and smooth and at high speed. I will post pictures later which will explain most of my lack of technical understanding for the relevant parts. IT saved me having to wait and search and buy a used engine from an old train that at the lowest i found for £30 and thats with no guarantees, and selling as faulty with an engine thats losing power. I have in essence , just had to pay £6. So okay, this time for my troubles and convaluted way of going about it, I actually spent, £15 for the stainless steel piping and other experimental motors, but now i will buy a few of the compatible short shafted, type, until such time Tomix might release the original. i think it will hold up as long as i dont make it run high scale speeds of 350mph haha. My concern then would be the cardan shafts, they would not be easy to replace. Will post pics later. And a working video when i put the thing fully together

Yeah, simple sticks are simple but since the post was written a while ago I have used the gas struts and they are like magic being able to just tilt and work underneath or on top. The hard part is to get the correct force with the struts. Initially they were perfect but adding the control panel at the front has put just a little more weight on a long lever arm so they are balanced but more weight will put them on the edge of equilibrium. Even that is not so bad as the ball ends of the gas struts unclip with screwdriver encouragement so I could go up in force level a little if I really do need it. I will post a bit more info when I have some working pix to show how it is going. So far the pine frame is easily coping with the forces involved.

Nice inexpensive set of thin, flexible spudgers with handles. cheers jeff

Hi RS18U, I love my old RSD15 too !!

DF91 had just arrived today ,

hmm, subways are always fun!

Added some lights 3 different colour still pics

Subway station for Level 3 progressing nicely, I think. 🙂 ps.. Waiting for a bulk buy of track to arrive, then I can start looking at Level 2, which I haven't had an epiphany about yet, and the station on Level 3b, above the Underground station. If you can follow the schematic above, the tracks from the Underground station loop around climb a bit and become the Overground tracks. Actually.. just had a thought for Level 2... I have a lot of "olde west" 3D models I could use.... hmmm... possibilities. 😉

Found three 10 series sleeper coaches to finish off a full Nichinan formation. These 3 are coaches 1,2,3 in the formation that travel from Kyoto and were left at Oita, before the train continued on to Miyazaki with a single sleeper remaining until the train terminated at Miyakonojo. HO-513 and 514 were from the 2014 release and are courtesy of Rails of Sheffield thanks to an eBay discount promo. You can see that they originally cost ¥7500 and ¥7800 respectively in their time. The price paid was pretty much the same and are both new with all details and decals unused. Assumedly sitting on a shelf or in someone's collection for many years. Not sure why Rails have so many difficult to find items. Seems slightly odd ordering Japanese stock from a UK retailer to ship to Japan but these things have been either difficult to find or ridiculously expensive in Japan. The Orone 10, especially. HO-5015 was one of the same coaches released in 2019 with the only notable difference being that the A and B sleeper decals on the side of the coach are tampo printed rather than a dry rub decal. This one I found a lone example in Treasure Trains in Kokura. A very lucky find. The 10 series were plagued with issues and reasonably short lived but I’m quite fond of their styling. Seems some of the ones that weren’t scrapped went to Thailand and Egypt. Slightly less exciting but will still be happily received is the order placed for re-manufacturing of Tomix double coupler that I will finally be able to add to my Tenshodo Kumoru 145

The Tomix viaduct turnout piece was Tomix 3063 which is now terminated. https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10009766 But replaced with Tomix 3068. https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10072575 https://www.google.ca/search?sca_esv=97d9339925220834&sxsrf=ACQVn09QngvsbzIsnGszzemfZgN4AsL8rA:1714082851163&q=tomix+3063&uds=AMwkrPtxj9gxR_MVAq5deRmrR9HZQ0opYKHYT3ie82ECEkPTDV_KTQFplsG2xSn6yEVmi6-0gRzRgZYJXuVRVdU6eJkP-toRZY-g8Q2Uw09EVcd8FpxqdgZ-D20-5nx0QzlETmrMTbxVK1NzWkokck23JtEeQGOdQzsGjNe48f_KFvxO2VALkv4k8Kw3zHrrsyOIXDRv8YPECZdR7Gd9ePo0gs_RUlg_rvP0wTo-aprHboCvvInrr88-W1Os774byJH713rI34hJ6eS2929F61FbUaFmb_wRQmqrHmzxozWzqOjz6NEeszk&udm=2&prmd=sivmnbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU59WbsN6FAxX6k4kEHfufB1kQtKgLegQIDBAB&biw=1360&bih=607&dpr=1

Don't give me ideas, you can buy 360 action cameras and mount them on your head...

Here's how we did it (if I am understanding correctly what you are asking): The secret for us was using the single track viaduct straight pieces. This track arrangement also lets trains coming on or off the branch go directly to or from either station track. Rich K.

Streetview is great for getting scenery ideas and details. Just clunky and irritating now and then and a bit distorted on the views but still really useful! You get angles on things you never see when doing image searches as the useful angles to get the details are not usually the angles folsk take pictures of things! jeff

Really nice bench work! Hinge up design is great. Instead of gas struts what about a couple of simple sticks that can hold the layout in the up position ala car hood prop? They will be a bit in the way but I agree the pressure in the frame with a gas strut will be intense. If holding near or at vertical not a lot of force needed to hold it upright so sticks could be at a diagonal only part way out the legs and bench top. They also sell hinging locking mechs to hold the lids up on good sized chests that might work. will be fun to watch this evolve! Kudos on the bench work, nicely done. jeff

Lots of nice liveries too! ❤️

Sounds like it's time for a livestream walk 😄

And Japanese N scale at 24:30 😄

Building the Adorable Railway or ‘Airashi Tetsudo’ Firstly, why is it so adorable? The dimensions are 3m x 0.8m so that it is just the size of a very tall household door! So ‘A-door-able’ suggested itself and links with the very Japanese idea of ‘joyful trains’. This layout is small and that is because it is used at one end of a single car garage. The usual inside width of a one-car garage here is around 3.2m so it means the layout fits and is able to be moved about when needed. I have downsized from a large home to a more modest villa with a garage and still want to have some modelling potential. The design allows enough space to partially put the bonnet of the car under the layout so that positioning the car in the garage is not critical. The requirement for car space is also the reason for no cross beams or bracing at the front. The rear “hinge beam” is attached to the legs by big plywood corner braces to make sure the whole thing is robust. While in general I think it will work just fine, I think that I will keep the car out from under when still hot. I can imagine that the timber frame may take offense if a hot engine is left too close too often. It is also designed to come apart in 5 modest sized and ‘flat-ish’ pieces so that it can be transported easily if needed. With such a small structure it was an easy decision to paint the lot. An earthy colour for the visible part that will have track and scenery, light colours under the board to make wiring comfortable and white strips on the front of the legs as a visual reference to avoid hitting the layout when parking the car. The first image below shows the basic dimensions and the 5 major components. It is a very light construction of pine battens and 7mm plywood; a lot lighter than I would usually build! It is glued and screwed to give as much strength in the joints as possible. The legs are a similar construction with the plywood panels helping to provide bracing. Casters on the legs make it simple to move around for general access but it also has a hinge along the back to allow it to be tilted to wire under the baseboard in comfort. An experimental feature is the use of gas struts to hold the whole lot up when working underneath. This has been successful so far but I am also aware of the significant force from the gas struts on the frame when the board is horizontal. I want to keep to light construction and am hoping that there is no long-term warping of the timber by the gas struts. [I used two 200N struts which means support for a 40kg weight. The baseboard is about 20kg bare but with about 2:1 leverage the board has on the struts this is close enough.] That is the build details, so what of the track plan? Basically a 4 track double-end staging yard behind a scenic backdrop. From this, a single track mainline will lead to a small junction station which has a branch to a terminus. The mainline then returns to the staging yard. A basic loop in other words. The station layout is loosely based on Kobuchizawa on the Chuo East Mainline. The track plan is designed to allow typical Japanese passenger operation of Limited Express, Rapid and Local services as well as branchline operation. All trains will be diesel/diesel railcar as I have not got the patience to manufacture N scale catenary but feel a bit uncomfortable running electrics with no wire (just a personal foible!) I will also cheat and have more freight than normal so that I can have some shunting operations as well as through running JRF block trains like tank, container and refrigerator. Yep, no Shinkansen. I am trying to capture the regional flavour of Japanese railways and my little baseboard does not really have space for a high-speed line. I might squeeze in a short tram line though!