Wakarimasen

[cteno4]

Ours don't here in the states, at least in this area, I lurk them all the time!

 

Jeff

[Terangeree]

My carpentry skills have never been good enough to be termed "adequate", so it wasn't surprising to find one corner of the frame come adrift today.

So, after some remedial carpentry and an excursion into the back garden to remove all of the construction dust, it was time to refurbish some of the scenery and replenish the water features with some gloss two-part epoxy from an artists' supply shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Terangeree]

I'm not a fan of the Woodland Scenics' variations on artificial water, so I bought some two-part lacquer from the art supplies shop at the enormous shopping centre yesterday. The artists' lacquer was not as expensive, either.

 

So now the canal has better looking "water", the little bit of the wide river that can be seen hiding behind the proscenium stage right has something a bit more convincing that a bit of paint, whilst t'other side now has a mostly-hidden waterfall and a fast-flowing stream in a deep and winding gorge.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2016 by Terangeree

[Terangeree]

I found the missing track piece, which then led me into a frustrating mystery yesterday.

For some reason, when the ultimate track section was put into place, there was a 15mm gap between it and the piece it is meant to join onto.

 

As all the other pieces have been permanently laid, it needed a little bit of scenery removal and track replacement to rectify.

 

So now, all the track is Tomix FineTrack, except for the straight piece that goes over the bridge in the mountain scene. That piece is now a 295mm long piece of Flex-Track.

 

Has anyone else had this problem?

[katoftw]

Only if the track was glued down incorrectly or haphazardly.  15mm isn't difficult to screw up if you attempt to glue it all down one piece at a time, without checks for fitment.

[Terangeree]

One piece was missing for a while, so I just went ahead with all of the rest, which are all snugly connected to each other.

Anyway, it is all sorted out now.

 

Edited January 10, 2016 by Terangeree

[Terangeree]

New station under construction.

A few years ago in Hiroshima Station, I bought a Tomytec F2 station, which seems to be based on a Hokkaido-style tiny station (about on carriage long).

Back home in Australia, it had something dropped on it when I was building Wakarimasen Mark One, so the poor little thing looks decidedly worse for wear now.

Anyway, after fixing the missing link problem, I started contemplating wedging that station onto the shelf between the tunnel-entrance cutting at Stage Right and the bridge across the river in the mountain scene.

 

It turns out that the tiny platform is a little too long, and the station shelter would jut out over the ravine.

 

So now there's a foundation built onto the ravine wall out of cork and Liquid Nails, while the station platform saw the tender mercies of a hacksaw and a marriage with some Peco concrete platform faces.

The station (I'm tempted to name it "Hamigakiko") is purportedly for the use of pilgrims making their way to a remote Shinto shrine in the wilderness inside the backscene, accessed from the station via a narrow matchstick footbridge across the ravine.

I'm sure it won't win any awards for modelling prowess, but it keeps me happy :)

 

 

Meanwhile, on the other side, I've been experimenting with perspective painting and have begun embedding building bases into the scenery.

 

Edited January 10, 2016 by Terangeree

[Terangeree]

歯磨き粉駅 is almost finished.

 

 

[railsquid]

Interesting name for a station ;)

[Terangeree]

When the layout (and the line) is called "Wakarimasen", such names seem to be natural for its stations. :)

 

Future stations planned for future Wakarimasen layouts include the names Hanamizu, Oishii-dori, Neru, and possibly even Titipu (which would be somewhat like Takarazuka, but with an opera house where Gilbert & Sullivan operettas are never far away).

Edited January 10, 2016 by Terangeree

[miyakoji]

歯磨き粉駅 is almost finished.

 

Is Wakarimasen itself a play on words?  I looked through the thread but I didn't see any mention of it.  It could be the わかりま線 or some funny kanji.

[Terangeree]

"Wakarimasen" translates into English as 'I do not understand'. My wife and two stepchildren are Japanese, and, as my wife and I often find each other's native language a struggle, "わかりません" is a very commonly used phrase in our house.

As you may know, "sen" can be used as a suffix to mean "(railway) line" ("Shinkansen" is the best-known to non-japanese: it means "New Trunk Line").

So it just seemed fitting to me to be a bit playful and model parts of the fictional Wakarima Line. If any of my Wakarimasen layouts ever get displayed at exhibitions, most people will look at it and think "okay, he has modelled somewhere in Japan."

But any Japanese people in the audience will immediately see the joke.



Roy.



 

Edited January 10, 2016 by Terangeree

[Terangeree]

Scratch-built a Torii gate late last night out of match-sticks. Also ballasted the bridge and platform at 歯磨き粉駅.

 

[railsquid]

"Wakarimasen" translates into English as 'I do not understand'. My wife and two stepchildren are Japanese, and, as my wife and I often find each other's native language a struggle, "わかりません" is a very commonly used phrase in our house.

 

As you may know, "sen" can be used as a suffix to mean "(railway) line" ("Shinkansen" is the best-known to non-japanese: it means "New Trunk Line").

 

So it just seemed fitting to me to be a bit playful and model parts of the fictional Wakarima Line. If any of my Wakarimasen layouts ever get displayed at exhibitions, most people will look at it and think "okay, he has modelled somewhere in Japan."

 

But any Japanese people in the audience will immediately see the joke.

 

 

You could have some fun with ateji, e.g. 若里魔線  ;)

Edited January 11, 2016 by railsquid

[miyakoji]

I was going to go with 和加理間線

[Terangeree]

I was going to go with 和加理間線

I like that one. Seems like the story of my life condensed to a single phrase.

[cteno4]

nice little station. you need a single school girl waiting there to be topical!

 

jeff

[Terangeree]

Have been exploring the world of T-track modules, largely due to discovering some idle Kato track sections recently.

 

This is a double module, about 60cm x 30cm in dimensions, with an urban theme to it (and overhead catenaries). Most of the buildings are from Tomytec or Kato, but I've tried to make them look less like the mass-produced products that they are. The plan is to add interior lighting to most of them.

 

Tentative name for the module is "Umegaoka".

 

     

[Terangeree]

After three months of horrifying distractions, I've come back to the tabletop to install piano hinges on the lids and LED strip lights to emulate "daylight" on each side. The retaining wall on the gorge side is a bit more believable than before.

The new, triangular house in the village is cardboard and built from a floor plan found on a Kyoto real estate website. The original house has a footprint of 20 square metres (215 square feet) and can be bought for 7800000円. My scratchbuilding skill still isn't quite up to scratch, I'm afraid, but I think it might be improving.

At least it doesn't look like a standard Kato/Greenmax/Tomytec plastic model. :)

[cteno4]

Fun and as you say not the regular greenmax/tomytec/kato kits!

 

I love the real estate offices that provide the PDFs to build your own model of the units they are selling!

 

Pm me if you want to get access to the free PDF building files I've collected.

 

No worries these scratch built structure just takes practice! You don't see many here even attempting these! You are getting good at freelancing them now. Keep at it, certainly helps on the budget as well!

 

You might also play with printing various textures of boards, bricks, etc onto colored construction papers or cardstocks as well. you can dins some interesting combos that work better than on white cardstock.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[Terangeree]

The village level crossing is now protected, somewhat unprototypically, by Peco UK manual crossing gates. More paper buildings have virtually finished the village now, including a police station that is a paper model of a WW2 RAF control tower.

Now it needs to be baby-proofed again...

 

 

[JR 500系]

Nice! But I would seriously recommend getting one of this:

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10304604

 

 

 

The Peco gates looks seriously out of place ~  :)

Edited June 12, 2016 by JR 500系

[Terangeree]

I know. :)

[Staffy]

Could you tell me where you got the free card building models from please? Don't suppose there are English instructions?

[Terangeree]

Sure. They come from various sources, though.

The police station is actually a British WW2 airport control tower.

http://kampfgruppe144.com/downloads_All_00.htm is the URL.
 

For a lot of the others, I tend to go through a portal such as Papermau and hunt around for something I can download. Most of the Japanese spec. houses were found through that way.

The "modern farmhouse" comes from Kiyama House Plans' website. It is all in Japanese, but if you click on the "PDF" button you should be okay. There are two models there -- one is in 1:100 scale, the other is in 1:150.

The other new house (at the station end of the narrow street) is from the Tokaworks website. The models are all in 1:150 scale. All of them have printed windows. In a moment of brainless inventiveness, I cut out all the windows and replaced them with clear acetate, and also inserted internal floors, walls, and some rudiments of furniture (most of which will be invisible to the viewer).
 

The scratchbuilt small houses (such as the triangular one at the back) were made through floorplans taken from Japanese real estate websites (mostly Kyoto). Century 21 is a good source, I find, as is the "Kyoto Real Estate" website. (rooms are measured by the number of tatami mats that will fit in them, and a tatami mat is about 6' long and 3' wide. Doors are generally about 6' high, so scaling from a floor plan is usually pretty easy).

Instructions are rarely in English, but I have found that instructions are rarely necessary, as the parts are laid out in a pretty self-explanatory way.

Have fun, and good luck :)

Edited June 15, 2016 by Terangeree