What did you do today on your layout? (HO and other scales)

[kevsmiththai]

So today has been mainly filming on Hakuho to finish part two which looks at the lighting rig, flight case and photo extension boards

 

 

More pictures on theHakuho thread itself in the layout building forum

 

Kev

[marknewton]

Between work and feeling crook I haven’t got much progress to report except for this. I’ve made card mockups of the old and new station buildings to decide which one to build. Maybe I should do both and swap them around for variety.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2019 by marknewton

[Martijn Meerts]

I definitely prefer the first one with the 2 buildings. Then again, the other one seems fairly straightforward, so doing both probably wouldn't be that much work either.

 

[marknewton]

I’ve just realised that the new building should be a mirror image, with the doors closest to the track. Oh well, I’ll fix that when I build it. I’m going with Martijn’s suggestion and doing both.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[MichiK]

I vote for having them both and swappable!

[marknewton]

A while back I got a pair of Kato Kumoha12 electric cars. More recently I picked up some of the upgrade sets for them, so I made a start this evening on putting all the bits on.

 

 

 

Cheers,

Mark.

[marknewton]

I started building the structures for my Bakuromachi cameo. These are the walls for the building next to the noodle shop. As the building it’s based on is finished with tiles, I’ve used Evergreen 4501 1.6mm sheet styrene as the base material. Apart from looking good, it makes marking out and cutting the windows and doors very easy.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

 

[marknewton]

I had some time to myself this morning before work, so I assembled the walls to form the basic shell of the building, and added the balcony to the top floor.

 

 

Mark.

 

 

[marknewton]

Roller doors/shutters and rear ground floor wall and window added.

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Martijn Meerts]

Picked up my 9600 today, arrived much faster than I expected, and import / vat / customs fee was actually lower than I expected it would be. Still, this is my most expensive train unless I count my 1/24 scale C62-2, but that one can't be run on a layout 😉

 

The kit comes in a very plain grey cardboard box with a little label on the front that says what's in the box. It's very sturdy cardboard though. Inside, there's an additional sturdy cardboard box which has the boiler, cab and tender shells. This is a more fancy box with the IMON logo on it, and included is somewhat fancy blank label. So this box is likely meant for storing the finished loco.

 

The parts are inside little bags, and several of the bags are then wrapped together in bubble wrap. There's some 7 or 8 of those bubble wrapped sets of bags. Additional space in the box is filled up by foam and cardboard. There's also a collection of parts inside a plastic case, which I believe are the parts that you can have swapped for free to get a different model. This includes the headlight and main driver wheels for example (there's 12 spoke and 13 spoke wheels, and at least 2 different types of headlight).

 

Building instructions are pretty clear, the majority of it is just an exploded view with the part numbers listed. High quality drawings, but there's a gazillion parts 🙂

 

Pictures coming soon 😄

 

Edit: Pictures added to my H0j thread at 

 

[cteno4]

Ohh this will be a fun one to watch vicariously!

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I'm a bit scared to get started on it really.. Just had a quick look through some of the bags of parts. There are bits in there that I don't know if they're actually parts, or just pieces of scrap that accidentally made their way into the bag 🙂

 

The wheels are also interesting, since they have (very close to) prototypical flanges.. As in, there's hardly any flanges, which means I need to be very careful when building turnouts and laying track... 

[marknewton]

Are the wheels mounted rigidly in the frame, or does it have some sort of compensation?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[marknewton]

The second floor balcony has a rear wall and ceiling added. 

 

 

My plan is to complete all the structural elements of the basic shell, paint it, then add details like the window and door frames and glazing afterwards. That should ensure neat colour separations without needing any tricky masking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Martijn Meerts]

48 minutes ago, marknewton said:

Are the wheels mounted rigidly in the frame, or does it have some sort of compensation?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

At first glance, it looks like they're pretty rigid. If they do have some play, it's probably along the lines of several tenths of a millimeter. The tender does have seems to have some play however.

 

I haven't opened any of the bags yet, and obviously haven't started yet, so I can't say for sure.

 

[marknewton]

Progress on the building is painfully slow due to work and various exhibition commitments. But the floors and coping are in place, the roof is made but not yet attached so it can be painted separately. I'm determined to have neat paintwork on this, and I hope that by making the building in subassemblies I can do that without any tricky masking.

 

 

  

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

Edited September 25, 2019 by marknewton

[Martijn Meerts]

Not a fan of the tiled walls, but since it's based on a prototype, there's only so much you can do 😉

 

The build itself looks nice though.

[marknewton]

Thanks Martijn. Perhaps I’m just a contrarian but the Japanese buildings and architectural styles that interest me most aren’t temples, tea houses, machiyas or noka farmhouses. It’s these utilitarian structures that are found around every railway station that have the most appeal for me. Tiled external walls seem to be very common on both residential and commercial buildings there, which is good because I'm rather partial to them! 😍

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

Edited September 25, 2019 by marknewton

[Martijn Meerts]

I guess once painted the tiles will also be a bit less shiny / sterile / plastic-y, that should help as well.

 

(I do like my castles and temples and tea houses and such, but variation is great 😄)

 

[cteno4]

I love all the interesting and odd utilitarian buildings along with the very traditional. I guess it’s the fact that they are all there mixed together is what I find fun for the creativity in the hobby.

 

Really is an interesting building. Love the little open deck that has the roof angle cut into it! 

 

Very nice job scratch building this mark! Kudos!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[marknewton]

Thanks Jeff. I had a couple of hours to work on it uninterrupted tonight. I altered a few of the window openings to accommodate the Tichy frame castings I'm using, rather than having to make them from scratch. I think that will make the appearance more consistent. Anyway, I've finished the basic shell, made most of the detail parts, so the thing is ready to paint. Wish me luck!

 

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

 

 

[GDorsett]

Finally started work on a layout.

I was given a large permanent layout last year that I intended to reassemble. I quickly realise that A: I would never get the area I want to put it cleared out in a reasonable time, B: I needed to build new benchwork, C- that in order to build new benchwork, I needed to have the layout together, D- that I couldn't put the layout together without benchwork...

 

So I got confused and started making plans to turn parts of the layout into modules.

Which never happened.

Untill now.

So here is a small engine yard getting sides put on it so I can hopefully turn them into functional modules in the next week. It is in four pieces (yard, yard approach, two maineline pieces) and I'll likely add another yard off of the rear end as a staging and storage yard since the club I intend to run this at doesn't have any storage space. I do not have a turntable for the pit right now, unfortunately, but that will come eventually.

I will be making the legs I need tomorrow and then putting sides and such onto the two mainline pieces after work in the next few days. After that, it's put everything together so I can line up the tracks and secure them in place (as well as finalize track layout), bore holes for locking pins between modules so tracks stay lined up, and then start doing wiring. 

 

All four pieces mocked up together as they sat in the permanent layout

 

Yard with minor track repairs and sides put on.

 

Yard Approach underside. Note the obnoxiously haphazard blocks on one end that was part of the original framework.

 

top side of Yard Approach with the majority of the track fixed. I'll consider this done once I drop wire feeds, but it should at least roll now. I also need to remove the rail extension at the end of the turnout closest to the camera so I can put ties under it. It's fixed in place, but it's sitting on the wood directly and not on ties like the rest of the track.

 

No wire feeds have been dropped yet

Please note the beefy end plates and that the tracks go right to the edge of the module. This is a unique standard developed by this club to ease setup and break down. If anyone is interested, I can make a thread about it and go from there.

Edited October 13, 2019 by GDorsett

[GDorsett]

Why is it adding in emojis!?

How do I turn that off??

Edited October 13, 2019 by GDorsett

[GDorsett]

Next round of stuff.

Trackwork has been finalized on three of the modules. I also made a "disused siding" sort of thing. May have an old railcar added ad some point, but not right now. Also dropped power leads and started painting.

 

Disused Siding

 

 

Grade Crossing

Crossing is not finished because I need to find the switching tower I want to use. Will be attaching said tower and then paving around it. Paving is just draywall spackling that I held in place with small boards.

 

Servicing Platform

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/324530542269956108/636378493072179212/1022192028b.jpg

Not sure what I want to do with this yet, but will have a TGV parked on it for this weekend's show.

 

Ballasting work started.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/324530542269956108/636711577453854725/1023191942.jpg

I need to go through and reglue it though. If anyone has tips for diluting white glue, it would be much appreciated. Right now all I have is a bowl of murky water with goop at the bottom.

 

Disused Siding with some scenery

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/324530542269956108/636711626606903326/1023191942b.jpg

 

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/324530542269956108/636711667455229983/1023191942c.jpg

 

Also needs to be reglued.

[MichiK]

I got a bit distracted from physical railway modelling the last month, but:

Junior demanded a substantial makeover of his room (one isn't four anymore when he's fourteen...), which affected also the layout under his bed.

 

Before:

 

During:

 

After:

 

Surprisingly enough, it's much more enjoyable to work on the layout standing upright than crouching!