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

[chadbag]

Those look like the wire snips I have (x4 since they are cheap and always needed).  Are they the same sort of thing or are they somehow different for cutting plastic?

 

[Kiha66]

They are similar, except one side is ground flush so you'll get a clean break.  They are also cut to a much sharper angle so they tend to tear the plastic less.

[cteno4]

Regular flush cutters will do the job, but leave funky edges. The good spew cutters usually cut with one blade so it’s like a blade shearing off in one cut so you don’t get the pinch from both sides and the raised mound in the center like you get from regular flush cutters.

 

the god hand cutters are the nicest, but not cheap, I’ve been going to order a pair, and have to just break down and do it!

 

but don’t cut wire with the screw cutters, they are sharp but very brittle cutting blades.

 

tamiya make nice ones a well that are not the $45 of the top end god hand cutters. The zuron are decent as well.

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

Yeah, I’m expecting delivery on Tuesday. Luckily the set has a second “sheet” of accessories, so I’ll have another chance with those little barrows and carts. Maybe a tiny file can help with taking the sprue marks off the top of the oil barrels too. 

[Pauljag900]

6 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

Yeah, I’m expecting delivery on Tuesday. Luckily the set has a second “sheet” of accessories, so I’ll have another chance with those little barrows and carts. Maybe a tiny file can help with taking the sprue marks off the top of the oil barrels too. 

You can always use one of your wife’s emery boards that they use for their nails as a temporary measure👍😀

[cteno4]

If you are not painting then usually very careful shaving off progressive thin shaves off the bump with a sharp #11 blade works best. Use a new xacto blade when doing this.

 

the discoloration of the styrene comes with pressure stress and trying to force off a larger hunk with the blade or dull cutter can cause it to whiten. 

 

Emmery boards and files work well, but can leave a scratched appearance if on a larger surface. They are great if you are painting afterwards. Use the very fine ones though as styrene is pretty soft.

 

one great thing is to practice on scrap sprue pieces. Carving off nibs is one of those practice, practice, practice things. Also worth keeping sharp blades in while doing this. You can get some very fine emmery boards or very fine grit sand paper (800 or greater) and strop your blades now and then to keep edges clean, but I’ve found over the years it’s worth tossing a 10-20 cent blade (get a box of 100) and keeping focused on what I’m doing. Sharp blades really make a difference in doing clean cleanup and a lot of work in general and it’s just human nature to keep using a dull blade that costs 20 cents on a potentially expensive set of parts! I always have to keep reminding myself to replace xacto and matte knife blades and every time when the new blade cuts like butter I have to slap my head! And I’ve probably changed many thousands of those blades in my life and still forget...

 

cutting sprues connections with a hobby knife directly usually leads to a number of problems. Sprue cutters do a much nicer job and depending on how good the cutters are you can get very flush with them with little or no knife cleanup.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[nah00]

On 2/24/2019 at 3:18 AM, cteno4 said:

the god hand cutters are the nicest, but not cheap, I’ve been going to order a pair, and have to just break down and do it!

 

but don’t cut wire with the screw cutters, they are sharp but very brittle cutting blades.

 

tamiya make nice ones a well that are not the $45 of the top end god hand cutters. The zuron are decent as well.

 

The God Hand ones are worth every penny. Had mine for two years and swear by them. I still use Xurons to cut the pieces from the plastic gates so I have less to take off with the God Hands. You do have to treat them carefully and since they will cut right through anything and can cut too much (which can damage parts or the blade). 

[Drunkenclam]

Due to Mrs Clam slashing my project funding. This mountain hill was originally going to be made from textured sheets. It's now newspaper and plaster. Just wished I nabbed a roll of low tack tape from the office to protect the rails. 

Slowly but surely getting there. Just haven't told Mrs Clam yet  I want 2 sets of the apartment buildings. 

 

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, Drunkenclam said:

Due to Mrs Clam slashing my project funding. This mountain hill was originally going to be made from textured sheets. It's now newspaper and plaster. Just wished I nabbed a roll of low tack tape from the office to protect the rails. 

Slowly but surely getting there. Just haven't told Mrs Clam yet  I want 2 sets of the apartment buildings. 

 

 

 

That crossing looks amazing. How many kits did you have to buy to get all those extra middle bits?

[Drunkenclam]

3 hours ago, gavino200 said:

 

That crossing looks amazing. How many kits did you have to buy to get all those extra middle bits?

 

I brought a used one off YJA that had one extention piece with it, but had damaged wires for the track sensors, also missing the ramps. then brought 2 more extentions and a couple of the wiring extention kits to replace the damaged wires.

[Sheffie]

I realized that if I move my crossing to the other end of my front straight, I can add 62mm to each of the sidings in the freight yard, which is very nice. (I initially thought it’d be 124, but testing indicated I wouldn’t be able to back my long cars over the points at anything more than minimum speed, if the points were right next to the curve.)

This change also puts my road crossing in a great position to serve my freight and passenger platforms and my freight warehouse. 

The only real cost was doing some minor wiring work to move the super crossover 62mm down the line. 

So I’m still counting it as a win-win. 

[Khaul]

It's been difficult to do anything train related lately, but today I managed to find some time. I almost forgot how much fun it is! I didn't do much in the layout other than exploring the possibilities of a double background. I did not even powered the tracks to at least get the trains lighted. 

 

That's the rig: a double background to (almost) completely camouflage the entrance to the module.

 

Ta da!

 

Featuring TaKi 43000s and a souped up Tomix HG 103.

 

A view of the 103. I painted the door rubber lines with a Gunpla pen. They are not perfect, yet.

 

Pity not to have the lights on.

 

Shifting the background location we get this very Tsurumi line atmosphere.

 

My son says the interior of the station does not look so good. Well, the rest does look better.

[cteno4]

Nice work khaul!

 

jeff

[Kiha66]

Looks great!  I really love the figures in the car, I need to start doing that on my trains.

[Khaul]

Thanks Kiha. The figures in the car are the cheapo Chinese ones from eBay. I am not combining those with some nicer Tomix and Kato ones.

[Khaul]

I said I don't like the interior of the station. I did something to improve it today. 

 

Before. There is a gap on top of the ticket vending machines and the internal wall looks a bit wonky.

 

I cover the gap with a timetable and I strategically placed a column to make the wonkiness less apparent. 

 

[EH500 (12)]

 

Just when I thought I was done I ran into a bit of a problem that took me a few days to solve, but now everything should be working as planed.

All thats left now is a bit more coding.

[gavino200]

I finally got around to detailing and lighting my Imperial Train. I was able to use the last of my Kato lights thanks to @Waisneed for giving me some diffusers he had. The roof details were particularly difficult to apply. It took a while.

 

[railsquid]

Oooh, I must do mine up before the end of April to commemorate the current Emp's retirement.

 

(I thought about applying for the job as it come with your own train, which would be cool, but apparently you need family connections and there are some onerous citizenship requirements).

[Khaul]

I have been doing some lighting work (more about that soon) and considering an idea. Instead of having a large factory courtyard as shown in the first two pictures below:

 

 

Put the Greenmax factory shed there with a short piece of track and a loading dock.

 

 

I think it would look nice if done well, but I am not sure if that would be too much.

 

[Pauljag900]

Nice idea👍

Truth is you wo nt know until you try it.

when this happens to me I always try to do it without fixing anything and just lay it loose so you can remove it if you do nt like it👍👍😀

[Sheffie]

Assembled the engine shed, shown with engines parked for the night.

Added the tanker to the freight train and placed the new trucks ready to load and unload goods. 

 

And (not illustrated) performed some more surgery on points, in an attempt to buy me more space for sidings, realized that was futile, rebuilt the freight sidings again and revised the likely rolling stock that will fill them (TL/DR: more Kokis)

Edited March 13, 2019 by Sheffie

[malcoJOJO]

Layout update video.

 

 

And, a little video bumper I was playing around with.....

 

 

I really have not been checking in here as often as I wanted to. I was saying to a buddy of mine that I need to stick a post-it onto my computer to remind myself or something! heheheh

Cheers All!
https://n-rail.blogspot.com/

 

[JR 500系]

Hi that's an impressive layout! I love your customised buildings and those signs! Very nice indeed! Thanks for sharing! 

[Drunkenclam]

Waiting to get a bit more plaster from another engineer to finish off the incline section. Did run the hoover over the excess plaster. Took up the rails to scrap the plaster off them. Just eyeing up which apartment buildings I want. I like the aoshima ones.