Hamamachi Station

[gavino200]

That's beautiful. What's your technique for making road surfaces?

[Kiha66]

Love the static grass, it looks very realistic and really blends in well with the scenery.

[Grant_T]

A short video:

 

 

[marknewton]

Looks good Grant. The scenery and the backdrop complement each other nicely.

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[JR 500系]

I love it! The scenery is nice, the rock looks really realistic and the grass is simply... REAL! Love it! Thanks for sharing! 

[Martijn Meerts]

Nice! Runs really smooth as well.

[Grant_T]

On 5/13/2019 at 3:07 PM, gavino200 said:

That's beautiful. What's your technique for making road surfaces?

 

Sorry I missed this. The roads are smoothed plaster painted with acrylic grey paint and then weathered with some weathering powders. Most of the roading still needs a lot of work.

[Grant_T]

Sometimes to progress you have to take a couple of steps back. I was a bit unhappy with how the whole thing was presenting, so I decided to set it in a frame. To do this properly I had to remove some of the current fascia and make a real mess. I then added a new frame made out of 4mm MDF. All of this was a lot more effort and work than I thought it would be. This is only roughly put in and will need additional shaping sanding and painting. But you get the idea. The fascia will also have the name of the layout painted on. Excuse the cruddy pics, it's a bit dark in the hobby room tonight.

 

 

I also changed my mind about extending the back scene to the ends of the layout. Sheffie is right in his comment a page back, I've mocked it up and it does add something. I'm just waiting for the background painting on the end sheets to dry before installing them. 🙂

[Sheffie]

This is starting to look very impressive. The frame is such an  obvious improvement now that I see it — like all great ideas.

[luis_lopes]

Good morning!

 

Great modelling skills! Very nice layout.

 

Can you tell us the size of the layout? I know it is 220cm in lenght, but how deep is it? 

Do you have a trackplan you can share with us?

Keep up the awsome work!

[Grant_T]

On 6/9/2019 at 7:53 PM, luis_lopes said:

Can you tell us the size of the layout? I know it is 220cm in lenght, but how deep is it? 

Do you have a trackplan you can share with us?

Keep up the awsome work!

 

Cheers. The depth of the scenic section is 45cm. I don't have a track plan (it was planned in my head and on the layout itself) but you can see it pretty clearly in pictures on p.2 of this thread.

 

Grant

[JR 500系]

Wow this is starting to look really nice, and that front façade plate is just lovely! 

 

Cant wait to see the diorama details being add on! Thanks for sharing!  🙂

[Grant_T]

So given that I put on a new fascia, there was a new gap to replace. I re-plastered the rocks on the front of the layout. This will be blended it with paint and foliage and then I will spend a bit of time getting this all to my satisfaction. And then, finally, some buildings and scenes. My wife and I have a trip to Japan in early August, so I will be looking out for better building kits and doing a bit of prototype photography then. I'm looking forward next to the next stage of the layout, because as JR500 notes, it will be a chance to model dioramas and detail. 

 

[Grant_T]

Painted this bit and cleaned it all up. I also put the remaining background panels in, though they still need blending with the main backscene.

 

 

Next up is getting the rocks coloured up properly, putting in the remaining foliage, painting the fascia, and then adding some water to the seaside scene. 😮

[Grant_T]

Okay then, the layout needs a proper name. My proposal for your consideration is the very imaginative Shīsaido Station. Does this work? I don't know literally more than 10 words in Japanese (other than the names of foods and, of course, Bīru 😋) so I just googled "seaside." I also want to paint the name of the front fascia. Google gives me: シーサイド for seaside but I know that Japanese is rather complicated. How do I write "Seaside station"?

Edited June 18, 2019 by Grant_T

[Kiha66]

Iirc that is a more of an English loan word, although JR Kyushu does a service with that name.  How do one of these sound?  (For what it's worth, I also don't speak Japanese)

 

[Grant_T]

1 minute ago, Kiha66 said:

Iirc that is a more of an English loan word, although JR Kyushu does a service with that name. 

A loan word is okay and probably makes it more sensible to a Western audience. I like the simplicity of the name. And also that the first character in the Japanese writing sort of looks like a smiley face. 😂

[Grant_T]

Shinagawa seaside station is: 品川シーサイド駅 so my layout is: シーサイド駅 ?

[Khaul]

I like the word "rinkai" for waterfront. Your station could be クライストチャーチの臨海駅, kuraisutochāchi no rinkai-eki.

[Grant_T]

The exterior just needs one more coat of paint and it's done. I'm also finally finished with dust for the plaster and sanding. 😂 I have all this weekend free, so I'm going to try to get moving with finish the basic scenery (static grass tufts, gluing bushes, weathering things etc.) 

 

[Grant_T]

On 6/19/2019 at 5:15 PM, Khaul said:

I like the word "rinkai" for waterfront. Your station could be クライストチャーチの臨海駅, kuraisutochāchi no rinkai-eki.

 

Is that long word the Japanese for Christchurch?

[inobu]

Grant_T that's really good stuff. I wish I would have seen this earlier. You gotta try digital prints on the backdrop. Your landscape is advance level work.

With the digital prints you can manipulate the color and blurring to fool the eye. 

cutting out the mountains images and putting in shadows gives 2.5D. Use matt acrylic spray to smooth out the edges.

Try it.

Inobu  

 

Oh rounded corners help out. I did a 19x10 with rounded corners for a customer it changed to look drastically.

 

 

[Kiha66]

Nice work Grant!  The shadow box looks great, I'm surprised I don't see more US modelers using this method.

[Grant_T]

28 minutes ago, inobu said:

Grant_T that's really good stuff. I wish I would have seen this earlier. You gotta try digital prints on the backdrop. Your landscape is advance level work.

With the digital prints you can manipulate the color and blurring to fool the eye. 

cutting out the mountains images and putting in shadows gives 2.5D. Use matt acrylic spray to smooth out the edges.

Try it.

Inobu  

 

Oh rounded corners help out. I did a 19x10 with rounded corners for a customer it changed to look drastically.

 

 

Hi Inobu, thanks for the comments. I might try background photography on the next layout. I have thought a lot about this. I think I would prefer a painted background on this style of layout because I want to give the impression of the locality without drawing to much attention to it. I don't really want viewers to look at the background. Hopefully this will be evident when I get the detail on this layout. And I think I want a consistent tone and style to the layout, and the realism of a photograph in this case would not fit with the rest of the work. Also, my wife watches a lot of anime and in my mind while building the layout has been to produce that kind of look. My painting could be better though. 😐

 

I am planning another layout for when this is done that might suit a printed background better. 🙂

Edited June 21, 2019 by Grant_T

[Grant_T]

14 minutes ago, Kiha66 said:

Nice work Grant!  The shadow box looks great, I'm surprised I don't see more US modelers using this method.

 

Thanks. I think it is probably because the American thing is to have a sprawling basement empire and this diorama style seems so limited.