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Four N scale Japanese buildings completed recently: the Flor Verde Old Maruyama Electrical Substation, and two Iori Public Housing kits with Kubaru accessories. The Flor Verde kits have yet to have their bases fitted, and were the most complex kits I've ever tackled- 176 pieces for the roof ventilators alone. All buildings brush painted using acrylic paints. I note (8 2 23) that one or two Permil Buildings are still for sale on the 'Model Workshop Permille' website. I'm not sure how easy it is for a foreign buyer to purchase these.

Very nice work Tim! I’ve got a couple of Flor Verde kits but havnt assembled one yet. jeff

Thanks for your welcome message- and the info about Kobaru's reversion to their original business. Yes, I'm working on a layout, in the sense that I'm making N scale building kits from a variety of Japanese manufacturers in preparation for it. Photo shows a Flor Verde kit (another manufacturer that seems to have disappeared) with lots of Kobaru accessories 😀

I have noticed the Flor Verde kits have not been available on Hobby Search now for several yers. Someone mentioned that Flor Verde was the same company as Mokei Kobo Permil (M's craft), but I don't think so. They don't offer anywhere near then same products. Does anyone know if Flor Verde has gone out of business or sells on one other platform? Thanks.

Yeah, the thickness of the plastic roofs is usually the biggest issue, that's why I think using a resin printer would work better for roofs. Resin printers are a lot more detailed and smoother, and don't need much, if any work once cured. So with a decent resin printer you can probably make some really thin roofs. You'll likely need to do them in parts, since printing a piece large enough for an entire roof might make it too fragile. I really do like the Sankei kits though, much more than I thought I would when I bought the first one to test with. I also have some Flor Verde kits, also great quality, but not pre-coloured at all. Flor Verde has some kits based on really small stations, so they're great for a small branch line.

Reminds me of the road to Monte Verde! jeff

The sad fact with most of the lasercut chipboard kits from everyone except sankei seem to be done in a single batch and then seldomly redone. Sankei seems to keep a bit more in stock and not as long to redo runs of kits oos. I don’t get this as the great benefit of lasercut kits is once you have your cut files done the setup and packaging costs are very minimal, it’s just materials cost and laser time. It’s not like an injection mould where even once the moulds are made there are significant setup costs and minimum quantities that add up. you can find sankei at most all the usual sources like HS, amiami, hlj, Amazon.co.jp. Availability varies a lot, but mostly I’ve had good luck on backorders if you can wait a month or two. HLJ is good for this as they have the virtual warehouse and you can just wait for everything to come in and easily bundle them shipping. Margin on sankei are slim so you see less of a discount (or some none), but at times amazon.co.jp has pretty good discounts of 20-40% off on a few kits and their DHL shipping is darn close to Sal prices. The others are mostly at HS, but you will find them here and there at some of the other usual sources although usually sold out if there. i find the sankei kits the best designed and their chipboard is far superior to any of the others. It has a lot or resin in it and has no singeing from the laser cut on the cut edge or face and has the color impregnated all the way thru the material. It’s also the stiffest and toughest chipboard I’ve seen out there. I’ve been trying to source it since sankei started! Most all the other manufacturers use a chipboard that is less resin so you get singeing and also they are only colored on one face with the back face and edged white or gray. This means you need to mind exposed edges and hit them with markers carefully to avoid them standing out too much. Also the cheaper chipboard in non sankei is flimsier and I’m more prone to want to back with some styrene or wood strips on larger areas of walls and roofs (especially on a larger structure) to stop warping in the future.. Sankei also tends to have the most sophisticated design for construction, using layering to get more detail, make stiffer walls, and create interlocking joints plus a lot of use of tabs. That being said I do like sankei much above the other manufactures, but they also make some different and interesting structures that sankei does not! the jio world are prebuilt and basically print out models laminated to foamcore. They appear to wrap the joints with the print out layer in many places to help hide the joints. I’ve only seen one in person and it was ok at a few feet but started to look a little flat and clunky up closer. Using foamcore you can’t do much subtle relief details so it’s more on the print shading techniques that work at some distance but start to fall apart getting closer. There is a thread on them here with some reviews. some other threads with more reviews on other lasercut chipboard kits. Flor Verde https://jnsforum.com/community/search/?q=Verde cheers, jeff

Folks, Many buildings for our layouts can be made from cardboard, called by the Japanese. paper, kits. There are several manufacturers in this field, I'd be interested to get comments on their products, especially those of the lesser known makers. My list of card building makers is: Sankei; Amagi Modelling: Advance: Floor Verde; Mokei Kobo Permil and JioWorld. There may be others that I've missed. Sankei is at the top of the list, both for quality and variety, I'm not commenting on them, have always found them satisfactory. Amagi Modelling is similar in quality to Sankei, both use resin impregnated stock, which is coloured right through Their range is largely limited to models of actual stations, some interesting designs. Again, satisfactory from my point of view. Advance makes large, simple modern buildings, these don't seem to have coloured through stock, they are cheap for their size, not a big range. Mokei Kobo Permil, similar construction to Advance (I think), a fair variety of buildings, reasonably cheap. Flor Verde. this company seems to have been around for a fair while they make an interesting range of existing buildings, I have no knowledge of their construction, they are not cheap. JioWorld, seems similar to Advance, large modern bland design buildings, some interesting smaller ones, fairly cheap. Anyone who has had any experience with the products of the last four companies, or any other paper kit manufacturers, please let's know what you think. Regards, Bill, Melbourne

I might actually see if I can get my mother to bring some wall pieces of a Sankei kit that need to be glued together to this arts & craft store she often goes to. They have a lot of card stock and various papercraft kits etc, so they might know of a good glue. I also have some Flor Verde kits, really good quality ones, but they're not pre-coloured, so it'll be interesting to see what happens to those when painting them. At least I can use an airbrush and just add lots of really thin coats.

FLOR VERDE offers a cardboard laser cut version: http://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/joshin/4582310070660-53-15579.html They don't seem to have a personal website.

Gerry, I'm not aware of any that length. What style bridge do you want? Flor verde has some single track ones at 570mm but they are $200. http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10178052 The kato double track truss bridge comes with a connector piece that makes them into a continuous bridge. http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10226814 Ends up looking like https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Fuji_and_Shinkansen_100_from_Fuji_River.jpg Jeff

John, The other thread has a lot but basically here is the scoop. All will do you well and mixing an matching works well, just some detailing and weathering to blend things a bit. I like them all and they all have their pluses and minuses, but rarely have I been diapointed! you want variety in your Japanese scenes as you can have the oddest things right next to each other in Japan! I'm sure others will have details I've left out or other opinions! Kato Mostly premade buildings in precolored plastics (some have some paint) with stickers to add. These look nice, but are a bit new and plastic looking out of the box and to be more realistic can use a hit of dullcoat and some weathering. They have a few kits that are again precolored plastic and pretty much snap together w.o glue and finish as above. Mostly it's the taller buildings and a few stations that kato is best with. Some of the 5-6 story city buildings you can pop apart and add more sections into easily if you want taller buildings. Tomix Pretty much the same as the kato above except their kits require glue. Not a lot of these around as tomytec is where they seem to be putting most all the effort. The tall office, apartment building and medium office you can make taller with sections from a second building easily by just popping apart and clicking sections in place. Tomytec (now the parent company of Tomix and the broader brand name, tomix is the brand name for mainly the trains and track now, confusing I know!) - these are preprinted and weathered very simple snap together kits. Takes 5 minutes to pop them together and made to not require glue. They use a bit cheaper abs plastic and can come a little warped or warp a little with time, but some careful bending and then gluing the parts can fix this. I've had some for 10 years now and they are holding up very well. They look very nice and have a huge vaiiety in small to medium buildings and are reasonably priced. Usually come with quite a few detail bits to go around the structure that is more than most others. A few of the medium city building you can easily make taller with more sections from another one. Small building not a lot of kitbashing can easily be done as preprinted and what they are. Greenmax These are solid color kits for the most part that you need to glue and paint. They have taken to doing some of the smaller accessories in a precolored plastic in one or two colors to make the base color and then just paint the details, but the buildings for the most part are plain gray plastic. These kits take a bit of work to detail as things like window and door details are moulded into the walls, inot separate parts, so if you want it super nice there is a fair amount of careful detail painting required. The medium to large buildings are easy to kitbash larger by sawing up parts and fusing together as most traditional building kit-bashing. They do have a couple of prebuilt buildings. They have been repackaging and rereleasing their kits over the last year or so and still in the process of this. Some of the older building kits have been oos for a long time and hopefully they will rerelease them in the future as the 4-6 story buildings were great for kitbashing. Aoshima Big model company and they have released tow larger 1/150 structure. One is a large parking structure and the other is a large apartment building. Nice very large kits, come in a few precolored plastics and then detail painting or custom painting. Sankei These are quality laser cut precolored chipboard models. Very nicely done and with a bit of careful weathering and a few detail bits they fit in quite well and have been producing small to medium building styles not covered as much by the others. They take some care to glue together as they layer the walls to stiffen them and give them detail depth on things like window and door frames. You just need to carefully layout the pieces first and write the numbers and orientations on them before starting. They take a bit of time and care to build but are not super tough to build. They also do some laser etchings roof materials, etc for detail. Kits come out very nice. They do need a bit of exterior details around the building to finish them off. Only downside is there are no rounded detail bits. But from more than 6" away you will never notice this. It is smart to try to seal them with dullcoat inside and out and larger structure brace a little internally on walls and roofs to help avoid warping in the long run with any changes in humidity. Sankei also does a range of laser cut detail bits like chairs, fences, bikes, etc. Permil, flor verde, and a few others Like sankei these are laser cut chipboard models, comparable to sankei. Usually a bit larger structures and more expensive. Cheers Jeff

That's basically what I'm starting with.. just a single track local line with small stations. When looking for small stations I noticed Flor Verde does quite a lot of them, and the 1 I've (partially) built so far is from the Ueda-Bessho line, which looks like a nice one to use as inspiration. Of course, time is very limited in my case as well considering I can't concentrate/work on a single project at a time :)

So, I was planning on doing a lot of stuff during my holidays, but of course, I managed to stack up so many things I needed to do, that I ended up only really working on a few projects. Unfortunately, most of those projects had nothing to do with trains. Of course, it didn't help that I kept running out of materials and components, and due to the whole holiday season it was difficult getting new stuff. I did work a little on the Flor Verde kit of Yagisawa station. It'll be used as the basis of the first actual T-Trak module I'll be building. I've also put a little more work into the schematics for the laser cutting, so hopefully I'll be able to send another batch of drawings to be cut soon-ish. The laser cutting place actually had holidays during the same time I had holidays, so haven't been able to try the 3mm ply yet ;) Anyways, here are 2 pictures of the station. I haven't done any pictures while building, mainly because there's nothing special about the way the kits are designed. They're much the same as the Sankei kits, and pretty much any other paper craft kit. While the kit is pre-coloured, I don't think they actually put a lot of thought into the painting process. Some parts that should really be painted on both sides are painted on just 1 site, and there's quite a few cut lines visible, so it definitely requires a little extra work to fix all the unpainted bits. It's not a lot of work, but getting the colours to match will be a pain ;) Image 007: Front (platform side) of the station. Image 008: Rear of the station.

Some pictures of the Flor Verde kits I received a while ago.. This one is the unpainted kit of the Nakanocho Station. Image 001: The base plate, which is fairly thick card stock. Image 002: Close up of the base plate, (hopefully) showing the detail that's either stamped or engraved into the actual card stock. From a scale perspective, the detail is probably way too rough, but it does look pretty good from the normal N-scale viewing distance. Image 003: Sheet with all the exterior walls and and interior support. Image 004: Detail shot, again showing all the detail engraved in it. Image 005: The instructions sheet. This one is actually pretty well done compared to the other kit's instructions ;)

Got my 2 Flor Verde station kits yesterday. 1 is pre-painted, the other is just regular white card stock (or, more like an off-white card stock with plenty dark spots around the cutting lines ;)) I don't have any pictures yet, but I'll likely post some soon-ish. 2 things I noticed is that Flor Verde seems to use thinner card stock for the detail bits, which can be a bit of a problem with glueing them. On the other hand, they do seem to engrave a lot more details than for example Sankei, including having fully 3d roofs. Building instructions are very basic. In fact, one of the kits just shows a few pictures of someone building the kit ;) Anyway, now that I've got the kits, I can measure up the dimensions and start planning some T-Trak modules around them.

I finally ordered some stuff again .. 2 Flor Verde paper kits of small train stations. First time I'm buying Flor Verde stuff, looks like they're doing a lot of the small, local things. The type of stations that you wouldn't even think of as a station if you see it ;) http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10197417 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10197408

mea culpa! im sorry i got them switched in my head with Flor Verde! those are the pricy ones! http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/6959-permil-train-depots/?hl=permil jeff

brian, forgot some of the others flor verde kits, not cheap! http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10190840 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10190832 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10178053 and sankei http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10106637 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10102880 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10092633 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10092444 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10092435 and of course the old green max http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10182137 and tomix http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10009822

interesting new kit to do a radio tower with observation deck. 1/150. not cheap $306 unassembled unpainted http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10222423 $409 unassembled prepainted http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10222424 video of real thing cheers jeff

Not Tomix. The only chance is a small vendor like Flor Verde. Here`s one but its not curved. http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10197412 EDIT: Under B-train shorty track & structure on HS you will find some very short deck and gutter bridges by Cosmic-- all about to be released with reservations closed. But again they are all straight--but very short. http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10130178 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10130174

Flor Verde (Permil/M's craft) is releasing a couple of n scale paper craft public housing kits http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10162526 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10162525 and a station in HO http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10162524 never tried any of their paper kits, the ones they have out earlier are pretty pricy but do look very detailed for papercraft kits like this one http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10150768 anyone tried one of these yet? jeff

ciao, teacher > maestro (for kids and boys until 15 years old, first and second scholastic period - scuola elementare, scuola media) teacher > professore (for boys over 15 years and young man third scolastic period and university - scuola superiore, università) precettore is a really old term that nobody use today (in the past was a private teacher for people with a lot of money that can study outside of public school) si è la ferrovia Kubiki esatta, mi piacciono i kit ottone del sig.Kenji e di Arumodel yes is the right Kubiki Railway, I like the brass kit from Mr.Kenji and Arumodel http://www.tomamw.com/ http://homepage3.nifty.com/arumo/aru9.htm Questa è la locomotiva italiana più bella (per me) This is the much beautifull italian locomotive (for me) http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotiva_FS_E.626 and more http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotiva_FS_E.428 http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotiva_FS_E.326 Anche a me piacciono i treni blu, io preferisco le carrozze serie 20 blue trains like me too, I prefer the 20 series cars dimenticavo, mi piace anche la versione verde chiaro dei treni blu coem il vecchio Tsubame con la EF58 ops, I forget it, I like light green version of blue train like old Tsubame with EF58 Tsubame > Rondine Hayabusa > Falco and more... in Italia solo un piccolo gruppo di locomotive ha ricevuto un nomignolo di animale in passato in Italy only a little group of locomotive recived an animal nickname in the past E444 tartaruga (turtle) E632 and E633 tigre (tiger) E652 tigrone (big tiger) is like the E633 but much powerfull E656 caimano (cayman) i treni italiani avevano un nome fino al 2009 adesso solo numeri italian trains had a name until 2009 now only number http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treni_italiani_con_nome se tu hai bisogno tu puoi chiedermi tutto quello che vuoi dell'Italia if you need you (and all the people in this Forum, of course) can ask me all you want about Italy ciao Massimo