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Has anyone attempted weathering their Sankei paper buildings? Or, stumbled across any videos or sites that show how it's been done? I've just spent a bunch of time weathering a scratch built engine shed and would hate to plunk some brand new looking Sankei buildings beside it. Wood and plastic I can figure out but I've never attempted weathering card stock. Cheers eh, Todd

Looking around on the interwebs I've seen some interesting structures that I'd like to have. With access to a laser cutter and having a bit of scrap mdf and Polybak lying around I thought I'd give an engine shed a go. I played around with SketchUp to imagine what it would look like in 3D and then Adobe Illustrator to draw up the files for the laser. Here's what I came up with. Here are the SketchUp drawings. And here is the file I drew up in Illustrator. The red lines will be cut by the laser and the black lines will be engraved. And here are the laser cut prototypes. This is the third iteration. I had to make the frames and posts thicker as it was a bit too delicate as drawn in SketchUp. I always have a pile of cast offs when going through a process like this. I may still make these a bit thinner though. Cheers eh, Todd

We had a discussion recently about weathering a Hobby Center Kato Kotoden Takamatsu Electric Railway 30. Tonight I came across a video dealing with this subject and installing the lights. It is from a You Tube Channel full of individual videos on various recent trains. locomotives and some freight cars. The videos are short, without narration and well photographed. EDIT: It appears these are videos and blog entries by a small hobby shop and some of the items might not be readily available. https://www.miyakomokei.com/ There is one caveat. I notice he uses Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color. This is an enamel based paint that Tamiya cautions on its use on plastic. ※Plastic parts may become brittle. Avoid using on movable parts and take care when applying to load-bearing areas. ※Apply over base coat of lacquer or acrylic paint. Accent Color paints may damage underlying base coat. Test before applying onto the model. ※Take care when applying on flat base coat colors as Accent Color paints may permeate more readily. https://www.tamiya.com/english/products/87131_133panel_accent/index.htm I looked at a similar product recently called Mr. Weathering and it also is an enamel paint which would have similar risks. Perhaps diluted black acrylic paint would be a safer route. Given the number of trains in second hand shops in japan, I think we may well hold on to our trains much longer than many Japanese modelers who are limited in their storage and display space. When weathering an Kato E5 he outlines the edges of doors and applies a bit of Panel Line Accent Color mainly to the skits which would attract track dirt. As passenger trains I assume the K5 and other Shinkansens would be washed frequently if not daily. This is the full miyakomokei You Tube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPWCVnw9-ijS7aHH47YnMJQ/videos There is also a blog that links to videos from this channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPWCVnw9-ijS7aHH47YnMJQ/videos

A very good program by Fuji Broadcasting. Mr. Morohoshi is one of the masters of micro layout and diorama railways- he has done work for NHK also, I believe. I think the HO scale modelers will appreciate this, especially Mark Newton. *thanks to tossedman for pointing out the blog where I found this clip.