Is every building always sold out?

[Hayashi]

I'm going through the Hobby Search site and it seems 90%+ of any building I like is sold out or terminated. Is this typical. How does anyone find buildings for sale? 

[katoftw]

Yeah pretty normal.  You need to purchase them when they become available for pre-sale.  And normally they last a in-store stock for another year.  Tomytec and Tomix though do do re-releases fairly regularly.

[gavino200]

What kind of buildings are you trying to find? If you look closely at the Hobbysearch page, there's an "exclude sold out" box to check. That narrows the selection down to items they actually have in stock. I used to find this infuriating, but I've come to like it. The advantage is that you can use Hobbysearch as a database of all Japanese train products, if you want to track down an out-of-production item or get some reliable information about an older product.

[katoftw]

I didn't mention it in the previous post.  But Kato/Tomix buildings you need to stock pile ahead of time.  So if you are beginning a layout, then you need to buy when you see them.

 

Greenmax on the other hand.  If you are handy with a airbrush, then you can nearly always get their unpainted kits at any time.

Edited February 14, 2019 by katoftw

[bill937ca]

Tomix has recently reissued many long standing buildings, so the original version will now show as Sold Out or Terminated

 

Several years ago Greenmax went from packaging in boxes to plastic bags with cardboard closures. The original Greenmax kits now show as Terminated but  in almost all cases there is new version with a new stock number.

 

Kato is slower to reissue its buildings. When they come available for reservation you would be wise to pre-order.  In some cases if you do not pre-order you may not be able to get the item at all.

 

Many of these buildings or kits have a life cycle of 20-25 years.  Many of the Tomix buildings have been around since the late 70s or early 80s always in the same colors.

 

This also is fiscal year-end for Japanese businesses.  March 31 is the end of the fiscal year and stocks usually are lower at this time of year.  Stock levels will start rising again towards the end of the summer.

Edited February 14, 2019 by bill937ca

[Hayashi]

Not quite ready to buy yet, but trying to put together an inventory list of all sorts of buildings. I need tall office and retail buildings for the back end of the layout. I found almost nothing available. Need a warehouse or factory or two...not much there either. I'm happy to buy GM buildings. They appear to have good detail and I'm a modeler. I have a couple GM houses that I bought in Japan in the mid-90s when I got my one and only shinkansen (series 1 green -- like the one I road to Nara).

 

I'm familiar with HS's exclude sold out box. It feels like I'm left with the last piece of cold pizza. I just have to get used to it or as suggested, use HS as a way to identify buildings and then search elsewhere. Thanks for the fiscal year info too. End of summer will be a good time for me to start some serious ordering. Table and track should hopefully be laid or nearly complete by then.

 

[JR 500系]

U might check ebay, there are some sellers that sell really nice high rise buildings, though they are not the main makers. I have some of these buildings, they look nice and fit in perfectly with the other Kato, Tomix, Tomytec  buildings

[cteno4]

Check with Nariichi San at model trains plus, he may be able to dig up some on your want list. Some shops have stuff from physical retail stores as well like poppendetta. Amazon.co.jp as well may have some (even at times Amazon.com) but it will probably be more to ship and only some will ship overseas. There are a wide range of buildings with Tomytec and it would be hard for them to keep the whole line in stock all the time. they do get rereleased now and then so sometimes you need to wait. While there is way more variety in Japanese modeling it’s not all available all the time. Better than trying to find any contemporary city building for us modeling!

 

there are also some Chinese building kits (Outland) made with CNC routers that pop together with a mortise and tendon joints. They do have a tiny curve in the window corners due to the tiny router bits used to cut them out with, but you can square them with a file or blade. They are kind of like green max kits but lacking some detail, but a number of 4-8 story buildings to fill things in, especially in the background. They can use some paint, glazing and details.

 

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR3.TRC0.A0.H0.Xoutland+building.TRS0&_nkw=outland+building&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=144+building

 

sankei has a few mid sized buildings and because laser cut the seem to keep a lot more in stock.

 

Jeff

[Hayashi]

Thanks everyone! I knew about Kato, Tomix, Tomytec, Greenmax, Sankei, Kobaru, and Studio Mid, but not the others or the additional seller sites. 

[Yavianice]

8 hours ago, cteno4 said:

there are also some Chinese building kits (Outland) made with CNC routers that pop together with a mortise and tendon joints. They do have a tiny curve in the window corners due to the tiny router bits used to cut them out with, but you can square them with a file or blade. They are kind of like green max kits but lacking some detail, but a number of 4-8 story buildings to fill things in, especially in the background. They can use some paint, glazing and details.

 

Some time ago, someone on JNS posted about very modern looking skyscrapers in N gauge from a chinese ebay source. But I'm having trouble to find them again (they are not the ones you mentioned, and they are also quite expensive). Do you remember @cteno4?

[EdF]

This is what you're thinking of.

https://www.m.ebay.com/sch/i.html?sid=scenemodel&isRefine=true&_pgn=1

[cteno4]

Yep these are the beasties.

 

i have these two

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-1-160-Modern-scientific-research-building-/302526458068?nav=SEARCH&redirect=mobile

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-1-160-Modern-Gemini-Building-/303015283518?nav=SEARCH&redirect=mobile

 

very nicely done models. This is a professional model building company and they know what they are doing. The center core of floors slide outso you can light and detail floors if you wish. They are using laser and CNC router cutting so everything is very cleanly done.

 

not cheap but for the size and quality you just won’t find it elsewhere. In the future I want to make more of these kinds of buildings, but they will be a lot of work to scratchbuild to the quality and details of these two for the price.

 

very little out there in the way of larger buildings. Only the old atlas kit and the old weird ho/n helljan really. Few cast things for older us skyscrapers but pretty rare. Even the old atlas kits with very little detailing go for big bucks on ebay.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Yavianice]

Can you make some pictures of them on your layout, perhaps?

[cteno4]

No layout currently as the last temp layout in the basement was taken down to work on the new club layout and Ttrak. Next time I set up the urban streetcar I’ll add them to the mix. I purchased them preemptively as was not sure if they would keep selling these on ebay and I liked them being a bit different.

 

Forgot to mention the 4 large Kato buildings, those are about the largest buildings in production.

 

when I get some time I’ll take some shots of these with some other Kato and larger Tomytec s and Tomix buildings. Odd I thought I had posted some pictures of the research building but don’t see any, I’ll look for them.

 

jeff

[James-SNMB]

On 2/15/2019 at 10:10 AM, cteno4 said:

The center core of floors slide outso you can light and detail floors if you wish.

 

My apologies for resurrecting such an old thread, but it seems as though you've answered an important question I had about these buildings from scenemodel, and I just wanted to say thanks! Have you actually gotten around to detailing one of these buildings, by chance?

 

I've been in a slow Q+A cycle with the seller trying to clarify this, so I'm glad to have an answer from the forum. It's a significant purchase, and I'd be pretty upset if I couldn't detail and light it the way I want.

 

I may try to pick up the Gemini Building before it sells out again. Already missed out on the Scientific Research Building. (I assume they make them again periodically, as I have seen buildings come and go and reappear on their ebay store).

[cteno4]

Glad the info helped. Yes it was a bit tough communicating with them on the same question on one of the buildings where they didn’t show the core removable in the pictures like on of the others did.

 

nope not gotten to detailing, that will be off on the future, too many other projects need doing first...

 

I hope they do more of the more plain designs, the ones left are sort of silly and small for what they are going for.

 

jeff

[James-SNMB]

Yeah, I want to have some architecturally intereating buildings in my city, like those offered by scenemodel, but most need to be more plain. But the buildings they do offer are really nice and I have little hope of scratchbuilding anything comparable. I have ambitions to scratchbuild some more ordinary looking buildings (got to build some skills first), maybe employing some 3D printed pieces if that works out to be economical. But I've got my hands full with a four year old and two four month old kids, so it will be a while! It's a lifetime hobby anyway, so no rush...

[cteno4]

James,

 

actually scratch building more plain ones is not horribly hard. Look at the atlas building. Simple etching of the tinted plastic or gluing on thin strips of styrene for floor lines and pin tape for window lines can do a lot easily. Granted building the interior floors that t can come out for detailing and lighting are some work but doable! Mainly a lot of styrene cutting and gluing. Many high rises like the atlas you can’t see interior details during the day and some have privacy glass so obscured a little even when lit up at night, mimic this by very dim lighting inside to show some light but no detail. Mind’s eye will say lit offices,

 

many of the buildings are jsut big glass walls with a few very thin window seam lines.

 

simple approach is to just have your tinted or clear styrene wall and put vertical glass seam lines with pin tape all the way up the wall. Then put a thin strip of painted stryene horizontally to mimic the usual 2’ or so floor waffle and mechanics layer for each floor. Only challenge here is the corner joints and doing overlaps of the horizontal pieces to match up and hide joints as best as possible. Some building have additional structures at the corner joints you can adopt to try to hide the seams. Take a look on google street view and google image of Japanese cities to get some ideas.