What did you do on your layout today? (N scale)

[serotta1972]

Kiha66 had this idea a while back and I went and got some of these Daiso Model cases and totally forgot about them.  Been pre-occupied with other things especially RC Cars but the  passion for trains will always burn inside.  Gonna do a couple of little dioramas with these cases and hopefully this will create some momentum and I can get started on my T-Trak modules.  Been MIA but the trains keep coming, these darn pre-orders. 🙂

 

 

[bill937ca]

Repaired the green corner building on my Euro tram layout. Some corners weren't holding as well as I'd like so I moved it to the  work pad and completed repairs during a sleepless night.

 

Edited November 16, 2019 by bill937ca

[Sheffie]

I removed all the trains, vehicles, and containers, in preparation for stripping this layout down for parts for the new layout. Most of this will be reused. But I haven’t had the heart to start ripping up any of the terrain. 

In other news, I’ve noticed how much debris there is on the track. This is entirely my fault, for adding loose “foliage” to the ground when planting trees (especially the super cheap ones), and not gluing it down. 

Edited December 3, 2019 by Sheffie

[cteno4]

Good old hair spray can help with this. Hit the trees with a few fine coats before planting. It can also work as a final fix on ground cover as well. Cover tracks of course when applying. Scenery bits can be bad mix with truck gears and loves to mix with other dirt, oils and electrical oxidation soot.

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

Track bits assemble! And trees and trains obviously. 

I still need half a dozen points, timber and an XPS sheet before I can start on layout 2.0, but it is coming together. The old layout is completely dismantled and all parts were recovered (except for one polystyrene ramp—I have 7 more and I’m not concerned).

[Das Steinkopf]

Finally got the Kura for Myokozanhoncho Ji completed today, the temple is situated across from the up platform of Kamisakaemachi. I used the Greenmax kit as the basis and had to do a fair bit of kitbashing including reducing the length by 18mm and removing the Namako-kabe pattern, I used a fibreglass pen to score the walls and added styrene strip to emulate the wooden panels. I have also done some slight kitbashing of the Tomytec temple by cutting off the roof extension to match the roof of Myokozanhoncho Ji, there will be some modellers license used with making the scene but hopefully I will capture the essence of the site. 

 

Here is a photo I took on a site survey back in 2017. 

 

https://www.flickr.com/gp/david_stannard/Xoqd2r

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by Das Steinkopf

[grimd0rkNess]

Tore the whole previous layout out and started in on a new one, now that I've been given the green light to expand out into the room as a whole. The previous layout didn't offer much in the way of train storage or switching, so the part of this layout that will be along the wall to the right will have more of a yard and a further station in it.

[cteno4]

Oooh railroad expansion! Cool.

 

jeff

[kevsmiththai]

I've started on Hakuho again after a bit of a lay-off but the most important thing in the workshop is I've changed some of the 4 foot Flourescent tubes over to LEDs. What a difference! You don't realise how much the flourescents haxe deteriorated until you see the comparison. Still got the ones over the lathe to change and the one over the workbnch is going to be replaced with an LED Double batten to give my old eyes a better chance. Nice thing is they are simple to change as they fit the same batten you just change the Starter over to an LED one (Supplied with the tube)

 

Kev

Edited January 12, 2020 by kevsmiththai
spelling

[cteno4]

I’ve just about converted everything to led in the house and shop and love it! The replacement led tubes that run to direct ac seem to the most effecient and bang for the buck. Just tear out the ballast and wire ac directly. Now the really thin tubes you can mount directly are great in places like the basement where every inch of headspace is nice and got rid of the taller florescent figures!

 

my older eyes also have really appreciated the extra light in the shop, I was amazed at how much I think I was squinting! Not good for the eyeballs.

 

jeff

[Drunkenclam]

Despite the wife and office doing their best to prevent me from getting out to the layout. I managed to get the side walls in place. Plastered around the tunnel portal and give it a quick coat of paint. Due to budget cuts and such like. The wall was going to be embossed sheets. But the rear side of fibre board will have to do. I'm sure once its weathered and complete. It will look a lot better. 

 

 

 

 

As for the traditional tourist town above it. Still trying to get the road and buildings in a position I like. Its seems Cul de Sacs aren't a popular town planning method in Japan.

[Drunkenclam]

Looks much better after a black wash. 

 

[railsquid]

On 1/28/2020 at 4:29 AM, Drunkenclam said:

As for the traditional tourist town above it. Still trying to get the road and buildings in a position I like. Its seems Cul de Sacs aren't a popular town planning method in Japan.

 

Plenty of dead-end roads around, they tend to just end, or in less urban areas just fade out. The good thing about Japan from a modelling point of view is that "town planning", such as there is, allows you to place buildings very close together.

[Khaul]

The Making of Urban Japan by Andre Sorensen is an excellent book on the topic https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Making_of_Urban_Japan.html?id=KprPdsSvGyoC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

I have been busy finishing my own book in the topic ;-), and thinking about coming back to the hobby. Perhaps during some time forced out of the office because of a certain virus.

 

Anyway, what happen to this thread? Just nothing got done since early February or people are back to post in the own project threads? 

[Sheffie]

I’ve been posting on my own thread in Layout Building.  Otherwise this place would be full of spam 

[cteno4]

Like most things topics like this ebb and flow.

 

this thread was intended to be a place to post little bits folks did as a quick and easy way to show off new things quickly to other and spark discussion. We do prefer big layout stuff go in folks own layout topics as it’s nice to have all the big discussion of a layout and it’s evolution be together, other wise it’s scattered over the going on now 2700 posts in this thread! We call this one of the water cooler threads where folks gather casually to chat a short bit on something small, helps with a sense of community with some little casual spots.

 

that being said we realize not everyone is up to doing a full layout topic on their own layouts (but we really encourage it as it’s super useful and enjoyable for everyone!) or doing major updates all the time if you have one, so cool to post little bit here if you have your own layout topic. Also cool to post a little bit here and also add it to you own layout thread so it’s there for historical sake, but not everyone looks at all threads.

 

forums are messy for content as it’s a lot of conversation and it can wander. Always a balance between highly ordered basic content (but that can severely limit interaction and intimidate some to not posting) and the community chatter that is a lot of what the forum is about with discussion and exchange of ideas on top of basic content.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

So, today I installed the catenary poles on the double track main line. The places where I cannot install them due to points and platforms bother me, but an outsider might not see the problem. 

 

Let me know what you think.

 

Edited March 14, 2020 by Sheffie

[Tokyo West]

Hey all,

 

Not something I finished today, but I built a whole load of custom viaducts for my Tokyo centered N scale floor layout. There are certain track pieces in the Unitrack system which you can't get as viaduct pieces, so in order to get dynamic, easement curves for my Shinkansen, I decided to build my own viaducts with card, to match the ones available from Kato themselves. The whole thing is about half and half manufactured pieces and the rest I built myself, mixing the 718 radius curves with the regular 418 ones. Since there aren't 'inner' or 'outer' radius 718 curves ( there's no 705 or whatever) I fixed the resulting misalignment with various combinations of short unitrack pieces. 

 

You also can't get any switch pieces, so I built several switch pieces to allow me to have two passing loops on my dumbell-shaped viaduct line. A Shinkansen can be stored at each end, with a third running. Where that track switches off apparently to nowhere, there will be a single track which leads to a two-track viaduct station platform above my main Tokyo station (under my work table!). Then I can have a 4th train staged in the station. 

 

It definitely feels so much better to have the Shinkansen on a separate line which goes into another room, and the regular express and commuter trains running underneath. 

 

Eventually I plan to add an off-ramp so that the two lines are connected. I'm definitely going to need some hidden staging ( currently petitioning for planning permission from my better half for some storage tracks under the couch!) once the two Odakyu Romancecars (7000 and 10000, both in the wine-red scheme) and Tomix E7 Shinkansen I ordered all show up!

 

This was a long time in the making, it took a few weeks of slowly building and designing the viaduct pieces and testing various ways of strengthening them. 

 

Hope you enjoy the photos!

 

Michael

[cteno4]

Wow that’s quite a floor empire! You have an understanding better half, I think I would be skinned and hanging on the wall if I tried that outside my office or basement (except for one day setups when grand nephew is here...)

 

nice hand made viaduct!

 

start your own layout topic on this, looks to be growing! 
 

cheers

 

jeff

[Cat]

Wow.

Next step, it needs a long run of Hot Wheels track running room to room so the cars can race the Shinkansen.
: 3

[Martijn Meerts]

Or just a Unitrack looping 😉

[Sheffie]

I put the Tamiya 5mm foam to good use, and built the container yard. It’s smaller than my original plan, but the way that the track has evolved means that I should have room for around 21 Koki wagons eventually. 

The paint is Tamiya “Dark Sea Grey” (which possibly ought to have been translated as ‘naval grey’).

 The lines are memory’s 1mm road marking tape — a very easy product to work with, and adjust. 

 

 

Some mess is visible near where two pieces of foamboard were glued, and then puttied, together. This is about level with the middle of the 31ft container on the truck. 

 

Fun fact. Those plain containers in the "stack" are glued together with PVA (eight on the bottom layer and a separate four on the middle layer) so that the stack stays neat and isn't always in need of adjustment. 

 

The foamboard was fairly easy to cut at 45º although i didn't do a perfect job and filled the gaps with putty. A concrete freight terminal shouldn't look perfect though, after its first day.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Sheffie

[katoftw]

Just looks like old crumbling concrete. Which is perfect for aging the layout. Said fail actually ends up being a win.

[Sheffie]

One of the nice things about adding ballast to the stock yard...

 

 

... is having to move all my trains out of the way. 

 

[bill937ca]

Assembled a Greenmax 2562 - prepainted Trainman Office that will sit on the site of the station.  I need to scrounge up a baser for the station area. Later this small building will migrate to the train museum. The museum itself is coming along.  First train is a Tomytec 12m electric car aka  the "mule". Aldo did a little bit of touch up painting on the old foam base.  The semaphore is from Tsugawa (TGW).

 

 

Edited April 19, 2020 by bill937ca