Mitakihara Diary

[nah00]

So this is something I've always wanted to and my recent bout of frustration led to me to want to do something positive so I decided to more fully share my layout, Mitakihara. I called this thread Mitakihara Diary because I have a lot of 'in progress' pictures that I want to go back to and post from the layout's humble dining room table beginnings to where it is now. As for now though I'll post some pictures of the layout as it is now and revisit this thread with some of the early photos and updates on the layout.

 

 

First thing you see when viewing the layout is Kazemino, a seaside town home to a station and a container yard. Also of note is my 'unique' way of storing rolling stock. An EF81 rolls through in this shot.

The end of the yard has an engine depot and truck loading facility. I'm still working on ways to improve the truck dock and I kind of regret the placement of the engine depot as it is hard to get to but if I use it as a car shop instead it makes sense. Also in view is the Mitsurugi refinery and the as-yet-unnamed small town next to it.

A better view of the unnamed town. I used to have a grain elevator here for some reason and it saw very little use (turns out industrial switching isn't as fun as I thought). About the same time I was wondering what to do with these tracks I realized I had a bunch of DMUs and EMUs that didn't have a smallish station to go to and that adding one would give the up-and-over track more use (visible in the background). Overall I'm very happy with the change but need to add a bridge since currently the residents are stranded. Believe it or not keeping track of the switches without a panel isn't too tough.

Better view of Mitsurugi refinery. Evidently this refinery produces LPG, gasoline and chlorine... The silver gas tank behind the three smokestacks isn't something you missed from the diorama collection, I messed up the legs on one (glued the X-supports in upside-down) so it required some disassembly that also made it need a new paint job. Also the wall sections will eventually glued down and the wall itself is made out of a piece of finish cut to sections.

Going to the other side, one my favorite scenes I've made so far, the greenhouse and orchard.

The focus in this one is weird but I like it, the container yard at Mitakihara. Part of me wishes I had flipped the layout at some point and had the station on this end but I would like to update to Kato's wireless controller for at least this loop so I can walk around and do the uncoupling and some work in the yard.

From the previous photo you can see the yard also has a track for steam engine service. This is just kind of fanciful on my part, I imagine the actual facilities for servicing the surviving steam locomotives in Japan are decidedly more modern. Nice action shot though.

Mitakihara town proper with the temple in the center and the up and over to the refnery and town.

Mitakihara Station with tunnel in the background. Painting the inside black made a HUGE difference on how good the tunnels looked.

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by nah00

[nah00]

...cont'd

'

Another view of Mitakihara town. Honestly I thought I was going to use the bus system a lot more than I did. For whatever reason mine seems to go through batteries like crazy. Also the track needs a thorough cleaning before you use it, any dust is essentially ice to it. I know if I had an RX7 I wouldn't park it that close to a high voltage line...

Yes the elevated line is REALLY close to the edge here. I do want to put a backdrop on this side of the layout at some point but also don't want to cut off easy access to the container yard so I may some kind of tongue and groove system so I can take it off or keep it reasonably short.

Mikasa Airbase with it's siding. Inspired by Yokota this is obviously a bit different. I do want to make a garage for the fire engines and the empty spot is for the Tomytec control tower (when I get around to building it...).

Mitakihara Station from the tunnel side. Being able to fit 8 cars would be nice but even 'only' 6 makes it look busy, particularly here with an ET127 passing on the left and the 201 series Shikisai, 583 series and 485 series Irodori all stopped at the platforms.

Now for a part I'm kind of ambivalent about. This freight depot and LPG dealer served by rail. Definitely a carryover from modelling North American prototypes and I doubt that many (if any) such small industries are served like this today. One thing I plan to do is to take out the black fuel-oil tanks and silver refueling stand to give this scene a bit more room to breathe. I've also thought of replacing the freight house with a sawmill (there's an old Pola kit that is about the same size) as before I had the Diorama Collection woodshop/lumberyard here.

 

That's it for now, doing this helped work through some of the negativity I've felt lately. Look forward to updates both from the past in building where it is now to things I do going forward.

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by nah00

[Grant_T]

This looks like a lot of fun. I would love a space like this.

[Keith]

Thank you for sharing your layout, there is a lot of inspiration in it.

 

keith

[JR 500系]

Wow this looks amazing! Thank you for sharing this!

 

I quite liked how the surrounding hills around the air base looked, and the view of that station before the tunnel is pretty interesting too! 

[nah00]

Thank you guys! The hills around the air base help serve as a scene divider and the station did turn out better than I thought. At first I was worried about clearance with the turnouts (they start in the tunnel) but the portals I used have enough space on both sides the let anything through. 

 

Technically it's a very simple layout, it's the two loops around Mitakihara and then a longer loop around the perimeter of the layout. Total size is approximately 10 foot by 8 foot.

[marknewton]

On 1/28/2020 at 1:40 PM, nah00 said:

A better view of the unnamed town. I used to have a grain elevator here for some reason and it saw very little use (turns out industrial switching isn't as fun as I thought). About the same time I was wondering what to do with these tracks I realized I had a bunch of DMUs and EMUs that didn't have a smallish station to go to and that adding one would give the up-and-over track more use (visible in the background). Overall I'm very happy with the change but need to add a bridge since currently the residents are stranded.

Nah, your whole layout is impressive, but I particularly like this view of the unnamed town. I'll be interested in seeing how you develop it.

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

[cteno4]

Nah,

 

donut is great fun! Being in the center with the trains running around you! It’s nice, it’s got personality, it’s looks like you are enjoying yourself with it! Love the high tension towers, they really are nice vertical visual pieces. We have 3 on JRM 3.0, but your red and white are much nicer than the Tomytec silver so I’m going to paint ours when we start to get 3.0 going again.

 

You got a great playground to play on! Kudos!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[nah00]

Some changes to the small industrial area. Rationalized some of the trackwork to make a small passing siding and took out the steam locomotive service facility:

 

These ones show the changes better, was able to eliminate one switch (the track running around the container yard didn't make much sense to me and could be better used for scenery/making the terminal bigger) and made the entrance to the small industrial area off of the passing siding so I can drop off WaMus and TaKis and then pick up empties and also allows me to shuffle the KoKis in the yard better. Also added a feeder to the elevated track at the pier on the left of the photo, Kato made it pretty easy to wire up elevated tracks, just need some piping to cover up the wire:

 

A shot showing the revamped trackwork in the industrial area, pardon the mess, it's still not sorted out properly yet. Much less crowded though with just the two industries though, feels more natural. Also I like the uncluttered look of the track along the back, it's not as 'busy' as it was before:

 

Now a trip to the past, the first iteration of the layout, the tabletop:

 

At this point I was amazed by power routing switches and the idea of being able to have more than one train on the track:

.

Oh the horror, KoKi 200s carrying 12 ft JNR containers!

 

And then of course I got the up and over set and this is when I discovered to prevent your brand new E7 from smacking into the curved viaduct pieces you had to use those shorter straights they gave you:

 

[nah00]

On 1/29/2020 at 2:48 PM, cteno4 said:

Nah,

 

donut is great fun! Being in the center with the trains running around you! It’s nice, it’s got personality, it’s looks like you are enjoying yourself with it! Love the high tension towers, they really are nice vertical visual pieces. We have 3 on JRM 3.0, but your red and white are much nicer than the Tomytec silver so I’m going to paint ours when we start to get 3.0 going again.

 

You got a great playground to play on! Kudos!

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

Despite the fact that they're spread apart their size does make them an effective scenic divider and the red and white draws the eye more so you don't see the looping train. Also they're a lot easier to put together than the Kato/Heljan kits which are a nightmare to assemble. 

[cteno4]

Yep, I’m very in favor of scenic dividers that are not large walls, keyboards, backdrops, etc. amazing what can be done with something as simple as towers like this. I find Ttrak Skyboards have this problem of becoming this large and cacophonous strip that takes the eye away from the modules and ends up fighting with the scenes overall. I’ve noticed that even with a lot of very different modules all mashed up together, if each scene does just a little to contain their scene with some elements that are part of their scene the minds eye forgives a lot of the rapid scene changes.

 

jeff

[nah00]

Same, I've never been a fan of the 'board down the middle of the layout' type divider, especially when it's in the middle of a hill. To me it's easier to trick the eye by making the hill slightly steeper than in real life than having reality end at the corner of a board. I noticed the same thing with Ttrak, generally the modules that don't have a background and are self contained or 2 or 3 in a row aren't too distracting when placed together. 

[valkyriepm]

On 2/24/2020 at 10:37 PM, nah00 said:

A shot showing the revamped trackwork in the industrial area, pardon the mess, it's still not sorted out properly yet. Much less crowded though with just the two industries though, feels more natural. Also I like the uncluttered look of the track along the back, it's not as 'busy' as it was before:

 

Great development! Since I see you added the Walthers LPG facility and I´ve been studying the same kind of facilities for my future layout, here´s a link to a nice area for LPG storage and distribution in case you plan to further add buildings or structures: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0618009,136.8748537,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKHX53t6BYiz3ZVvm83GFLg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 

Keep up the good work!

 

Martin

[nah00]

40 minutes ago, valkyriepm said:

 

Great development! Since I see you added the Walthers LPG facility and I´ve been studying the same kind of facilities for my future layout, here´s a link to a nice area for LPG storage and distribution in case you plan to further add buildings or structures: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0618009,136.8748537,3a,60y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKHX53t6BYiz3ZVvm83GFLg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 

Keep up the good work!

 

Martin

 

Thank you very much, this is exactly the type of picture I was looking for as I wanted to start work on some of the loading docks/storage sheds but didn't have many reference photos (I have a shot from one in Hokkaido but it's hard to see much). Glad to see that they're pretty simple buildings, should be able to make them out of parts of Greenmax passenger platforms and styrene from my pile of odds and ends. 

 

I doubt many of these (if any of them) are still rail-served in Japan but we'll just call it a creative anachronism. 

Edited February 27, 2020 by nah00

[nah00]

Been a while since I did some work on my layout, combination of things over the last few months. Anyway, I was on vacation this week and with no where to go decided it was time for something I was dreading:

 

I greatly suggest just getting the big can of Krylon for something like this. The tiny Tamiya cans are nice but you'll spend a fortune doing a project like this. I knew painted catenary with painted insulators made a difference but didn't expect it to be so big:

 

I didn't paint insulators on the rest yet, figure if I do 8-10 each time I'm running trains I'll be done inside of a month. Also decided the foam blob in the corner needed to look like something:

 

I used Scenic Express' 'Alpine Blend' for the hill. I'm trying to model fall but felt like it was orange, yellow and red overkill: there's still quite a bit of green until the first killing frost. The bits of base coat that show through (especially along the bottom of the hill) is a completely unintentional effect and looks better than I thought it would, steep hills tend to have bare spots. And at the same time the railroad crossing in front of it finally got the road and concrete painted:

 

Need to do a little street sweeping but overall happy with how it turned out, now I have a slightly more picturesque spot to take photos from:

 

At some point I plan to paint the track/ballast a little appropriate of a color but now I'm happy with the way things look. Also painted insulators on the three poles in the corner, surprised how much of a difference it made. More advice here, instead of using 'good' paint for something like insulators just grab a 99 cent bottle from the craft store. Thinned with a little water it's perfectly adequate and one bottle goes a long way.

 

More updates soon, hope to start finishing the LNG dealership.

Edited August 2, 2020 by nah00

[nah00]

Well painting 8-10 pieces of catenary every time I ran trains turned into 'why don't I just finish this this week?' Definitely is a little hard on the eyes to paint them all but visually makes a big difference.

 

Trying to be artsy but I think I need a better camera:

 

One thing I did notice while painting though is that an attempt to get 'perfect' results on painting the insulators is pretty inefficient. This is where the three foot rule really comes into play: you're not going to be able to see that you got a little bit of paint past the insulator and certainly the average person looking at it won't notice. Also painting these is rough on a paintbrush so use a thin one but not one of your better ones.

Edited August 7, 2020 by nah00

[Nick_Burman]

On 2/25/2020 at 2:37 AM, nah00 said:

A shot showing the revamped trackwork in the industrial area, pardon the mess, it's still not sorted out properly yet. Much less crowded though with just the two industries though, feels more natural. Also I like the uncluttered look of the track along the back, it's not as 'busy' as it was before:

 

 

 

Nitpick... I would relocate the LPG dealer to its own track. Base from what I've seen I doubt that the Japanese would allow a locomotive to run through a LPG unloading track to access another industry - too high a risk in their assessment. Ans it would make switching easier.

 

Cheers NB

[nah00]

On 8/8/2020 at 5:15 AM, Nick_Burman said:

 

Nitpick... I would relocate the LPG dealer to its own track. Base from what I've seen I doubt that the Japanese would allow a locomotive to run through a LPG unloading track to access another industry - too high a risk in their assessment. Ans it would make switching easier.

 

Cheers NB

 

It *kind of* is on it's own, the freight shed there has no access from that side and the Wamus or just sitting there because, erm, I have no place else to put them. I always had the LPG dealer as an industry that only get 2 tank cars at a time and never really put a terrible amount of thought into operations for it. I may straighten out the track but does eat some space but at the same time makes it slightly more visually interesting. 

[nah00]

So I decided to do some catenary work around my station. I had a few pieces of wide 2-track catenary I had cut parts off to fit on a passing platform I don't have anymore so they became volunteers. I ended up cutting a little more off of the legs than in this picture but left the extra on until later. The 2 pieces of sheet styrene will be the new 'base' for the piece.

'

 

Next step was to drill holes in the styrene. I started the hole with a 1/16" bit and switched to 7/16" bit for the final hole. It's easy enough to do the smaller hole with a hand driver but I used a vice and power drill for the next one as it was faster and not so rough on the plastic. You'll need to do some tidying up with a knife or file around the holes, there will be a bit of excess plastic.

 

Next step is easy but important. Fit the posts in their bases and trim off any bits of the post from step 1 that still poke through above the base. Better to do that now then cut too much off at the beginning. Then glue the base to the pole and find something else to do for the next 30-45 minutes. You'll see why in the next step.

 

So next step was the part that took me longest to figure out: how to get the bases to match the pitch on the roof of the station platforms. Turns out it was easier than I thought. After your 30-45 minutes away your glue should be setting but not completely dry. Take the catenary and lightly press it on the roof, the glue should have enough 'play' to bend but be tacky enough to hold the angle.

 

Next wait for the bases to completely dry and then spray the whole piece. I painted the insulators at this point too. To attach to the station roof I used regular PVA glue, this way I can remove them easy and use them again without have to worry about snapping bits off. Also the PVA glue helps because it gives you a while to get them straight, that part is slightly harder than it seems.

Once they're added in they certainly make your station look different. I probably should have used the narrow two-track poles but I didn't have any that were cut so I used the wide ones instead. Overall an easy day project that doesn't require too much effort for a nice result.

[nah00]

So it's be a busy couple weeks, added a service road along the edge of the single track and a crossing. I took a few attempts and some filing to get the crossing to not catch rolling stock but now it doesn't interfere:

 

 

I do plan to put some kind of warning sign for the crossing, even though it's a service road I imagine it would have some kind of sign. Also started tidying the crossing in my container yard:

 

Plan to do a lot more work here, YouTube does wonders for getting ideas as to what a yard looks like and how it works.

 

[nah00]

Got sick of looking at the painted base for the sawmill so decided to add the gravel and foliage to it:

 

Getting the ballast in the space between the track and the foamboard was a bit messy but ended up looking good. An old toothbrush helps to get rid of excess that gets on the track. My big problem was 'how do I make this flat?' Normally not a problem with ground ground cover (it's fine if looks 'lumpy', it's more natural) but here I wanted it flat. Sure enough I had an extra piece of plastic pipe from another project lying around to use as a roller:

 

Added a road to get into it from the crossing:

 

Now I do have a bit of a secret when making gravel roads to make them look 'used'. I take Micro Machine dump truck and run it down the road a few times to get some deeper texture. Then I take the road grader and tilt it so only one set of the wheels are on the ground to smooth it out and flatten it. Trick is to do this without the moldboard (blade) on the grader digging up the road (though this can help in finding and flattening bigger bumps).

 

Almost done, just have to dothe other pad but waiting until I finish weathering the freight building that goes there.

[nah00]

And finally some new roads. Did the base for the LPG dealer:

Has plenty of room for the loading dock I want to add as well for a truck filling station. Also isolated the siding from the mill siding, it can two LPG tank cars. Also decided the container yard needed another point of access so added a back road to it:

 

It's a pretty narrow road but that doesn't seem to be uncommon. I still feel I have to hit the roads with another spray of matte coat as they still are a little shiny. Glad to be seeing less and less tan base coat by the day and more and more scenery, actually looking more like a railroad.

[nah00]

Sometimes you just feel like doing A LOT of scenery...this is about 2 weeks worth of work in total.

 

Finally got to making the ridge between the lines look less like a brown lump of dough:

 

 

Also finished the mainline and industrial/yard siding, now just to get the container yard painted (after I decide on how I want to arrange the crossing on the yard tracks):

The back road out of the container yard is a prime candidate for some streetlights...

 

 

Another gravel road for the substation:

 

I have to say that fall scenery is hard. It's a tough balance between having things look like you spilled a bag of Skittles and the actual different colors of fall (which still includes lots of green until the first few killing frosts). This is the most scenery I've ever done on a layout (heck in HO I was never even able to get my trains to reliably stay on the track...) and you can definitely see how you progress over time. Now I only have about 60 square feet left to do and a whole city worth of sidewalks.

[nah00]

Unrelated but I decided to run my Kato and Tomix EF64s together to see how badly they fought each other and if they would work as a pair. Somehow they ended up being perfectly speed matched, they don't pull on each or yo-yo at all.

[nah00]

So did some thinking about lighting, I wanted to see if these little battery powered LED pucks made a difference before I invest in something more expensive:

 

So here we are without any extra lighting:

 

And here is roughly the same scene

with:

 

There are still some shadows from the viaduct and the fluorescent lights but it's cut way down. These ones don't put out that many lumens, the plug-in ones you can chain together are much brighter. My only question is is can LED lights damage/fade paint over time? I obviously won't be leaving these on all the time but I wonder if there is a cumulative effect, especially on buildings or scenery. I know in the long run the battery powered ones aren't going to be terribly economical but don't know if there's a certain lumen level I should stay under.