Yūrakuchō

[Kamome442]

3D Printed Viaduct for the Tokaido Main Line

 

The two track running alongside the Shinkansen were much simpler to draw up. All the columns are clearly visible and the wider spans line up with the arches on the front four tracks. This viaduct does curve gently to left however there is no height change and it is all on one floor. 

I settled for 3 printed parts, the supports, a fixed track bed and a shorter removable trackbed to attach to the bridges:

 

The completed viaduct:

 

A side by side view of the two viaducts:

 

A view from the back showing the height difference of the Shinkansen tracks (front):

 

A view of the alley between the two lines:

 

An image of the bridge supports of both viaducts and the entrance to Uracori between the two:

 

And finally how my print compares:

 

The next step is to some fine grit sandpaper and filler to reduce the visible print lines, detailing and painting.

 

Joe

[Kamome442]

Thank You Dad

 

I have not been sure how to approach this or whether to say anything at all. My dad certainly wasn't one to want attention or a fuss however he was also the first to celebrate all of my creations. He always wanted to know what I was working on and proudly shared my models with his friends. He followed this thread avidly and always wanted to talk about any updates I made.

He passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2023.

I will leave it by just saying Thank you for introducing me to the hobby, for always being the first to support and encourage all my endeavours.

It won't be the same going forward not hearing his thoughts on Yurakucho as it progresses. 

 

Time for an Update

 

I didn't really do any modelling at the beginning of the year and only started to work on Yurakucho towards the end of April. 

Since then I have been working on cleaning up the viaducts mentioned previously, this has mainly been coating the print in thin styrene sheet to give a smooth finish ready for painting.

It has been a good way to use the left over pieces sitting in my scrap tray.

 

 

After a little sanding and filling the first viaduct is starting to look pretty good:

 

I have also been 3D printing more reinforcements to sit inside the arches:

 

Again I have covered the visible surfaces with styrene. These are then glued in place:

 

Finally any excess styrene is cut back and sanded flush with the entrance:

 

Finally, I have been rebuilding a curved section of Shinkansen viaduct that will raise the tracks up as they pass behind the station. I actually built this years ago using a resin printer, mentioned on page 1 of this thread. I have been a little worried about resin having a tendency to crack or shatter if bumped heavy. It would a nightmare to repair a cracked trackbed so I decided to reprint it using PLA on my FDM printer. 

 

I had to build it in 26 clip together segments, staring with base segments that will be attached to the baseboard:

 

This was followed by overlapping middle floor segments:

 

Finally an upper level with the trackbed:

 

Each segment is unique, with a 0.9 degree incline on the trackbed:

 

Each print took between 15 minutes to 3 hours and after two days printing the finished section is looking rather impressive:

 

Most of the spaces under the track will be filled in with bars and restaurants but there will be a walk through gap in the middle.

 

How it looks with the arches in place:

 

Till next time.

Joe

 

[Kamome442]

I forgot to mention I have also been playing around with 80 micron filter mesh to make chain link fences. Here is a test piece I made up:

 

[cteno4]

4 hours ago, Kamome442 said:

Thank You Dad

 

I have not been sure how to approach this or whether to say anything at all. My dad certainly wasn't one to want attention or a fuss however he was also the first to celebrate all of my creations. He always wanted to know what I was working on and proudly shared my models with his friends. He followed this thread avidly and always wanted to talk about any updates I made.

He passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2023.

I will leave it by just saying Thank you for introducing me to the hobby, for always being the first to support and encourage all my endeavours.

It won't be the same going forward not hearing his thoughts on Yurakucho as it progresses.

Joe,

 

So sorry to hear about your dad, know how hard that is I lost my dad almost a decade back now, My dad was the same but mainly with woodworking. He was a life long woodworker hobbist and put tools in my hands as soon as I could grab them and swing em! His encouragement was never ending and the same always wanting to know the current projects. He was so proud when I was a teenager and he felt I was surpassing him in my woodworking abilities, this was such a praise to me as he was damn good at it and always getting better at it, especially after he retired and had a lot more time to spend on it. Him teaching me woodworking not only gave me a skill to make money on in jr high and high school, it landed me the job at the Monterey bay aquarium in high school. It helped all thru grad school as well as I was the one who was not scared to fiddle with anything to get it working or rig up something to make an experiment work. Made me a lot of friends and free beers!

 

cheers to dads!

 

jeff

[Kamome442]

Thank you jeff, That was good to read.

 

53 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

cheers to dads!

 

I will second that!

[cteno4]

4 hours ago, Kamome442 said:

I forgot to mention I have also been playing around with 80 micron filter mesh to make chain link fences. Here is a test piece I made up:

joe, that’s 80 mesh, correct? That would leave about 25mm scale holes and yours look to be 25-40mm holes scale.

 

jeff

[Kamome442]

You could be right @cteno4 it could be a trick of the camera, maybe I should measure each hole just to be sure

[Kamome442]

I just ordered some 30 and 60 micron mesh. I am just interested now how they will look.

[cteno4]

Joe, 

 

what is the micron measurement in the meshes you are getting? Distance between wires or hole sizes? The “mesh” measurement is wires/openings per inch. Most screening material I see in MESH measurements. So 80 mesh is 80 openings per inch so at scale that is just under 5 cm opening spacing, which is about standard diamond chain link fencing here in the us.

 

jeff

 

 

[Kamome442]

jeff,

I imagine it is the hole size, I actually have a few different sizes already 50/80/100/120. It is a nylon mesh for water filters and cost around 90p per meter, I will say it is a pain to cut as it does fray easily.

The 80 is pretty much spot on for chainlink. To work it out I had a reference photo of the fence between the tracks. I worked out the height and drew two lines on a sheet of paper. Then I counted the links from top to bottom on the picture after that I placed each size mesh on the paper and counted how many holes were between the two lines. The 80 was 1/2 a hole over, so I don't think I could get a much better match if I tried.

I will probably use the 100 for the netting under the bridge with an open spacing just under 4 cm life size. That is probably double the size it should be for the type of construction netting used there but finer meshes start to look a lot more opaque. 

The 30 and 60 will have oversized holes for fencing, the 60 might at a much look okay for some variety the 30 will be way too big for my liking. It should come in handy for some trellis that is in one of the shop windows and a few other little projects on the side.

[cteno4]

I’m guessing those numbers are MESH measurements as if it were micron for holes or distance between holes  it would be way tiny at 80 microns, like 12mm hole size at scale.

 

fraying is the problem. I’ve tried a number of filter materials for chain link. Best stuff is a mesh ribbon that I found that has fused cross pieces so it does not unravel with cutting on a diagonal to get the diamond pattern.

 

jeff

[N-Osoi]

In this video Luke Towan makes an HO fence out of Nylon tulle, perhaps there's a finer tulle that would make for a nice N fence?

 

 

[Junech]

The thing I used in H0 so far was a fine fly net you normally put in front of your windows. Maybe there are smaller sizes of that too and it could fit N.

[Kamome442]

HI @N-Osoi welcome and thank you for sharing the video, Luke Towan's work is always impressive.

I do have some Tulle, it's good stuff and it comes in some very fine sizes. I picked it up from a wedding dress maker.

I am planning to use some to represent this style fence used along the catwalks:

source: google streetview

 

It is more like a chicken wire with hexagonal holes than diamond. Hopefully it will look quite good with the styles of fence running parallel in front of and between the tracks.

If you like I can make a similar sample as above with the tulle so you can see compare the two fabrics.

 

Hi @Junech firstly, lovely the diorama some really nice attention to detail. I was looking at window meshes a while back, then I found the filter meshes and went down that path instead. Maybe I should have another look.

Joe

Edited June 15 by Kamome442

[Junech]

Thank you for the praise.  What just came to my mind was those see-through curtains, cause we used them in our club before switching to the fly nets.

 

I hope you can find something! I will need something like this too at some point.

[Kamome442]

Rebuilding the Pavements

 

I finally got around to rebuilding the pavements under the bridges this week. It just made up from several layers of styrene with styrene strip cut to size to from the curb stones. 

 

I used some slide fit brass tube for the street lights to drop into. The housings will carry the wires through the base board.

 

Checking the fit with one of my early attempts at a street light.

 

The light has a longer 0.8mm tube that extends to the base of the housing keep the light stable. The wider part of the base lots into the housing by around 1mm.

 

Now I need to attach tubes to carry the wires off scene then I can glue it all in place.

Joe

[maihama eki]

Deepest condolences on the loss of your father.

 

I too have fond memories of working with my dad in his basement shop on any number of projects - especially Cub Scout projects like Pinewood Derby cars. I still have one of the cars we built.

 

Happy to see you back working on Yurakucho. When I'm in Tokyo and am in the area of that station, I think about your project.

[Kamome442]

Thank you @maihama eki I really appreciate your words and memories.

I am happy to be back on Yurakucho too!

[Kamome442]

Finished Street Light

 

I finally got around to painting up the first batch of three streetlights yesterday.

 

The last job was to add the little fishbowl lenses. Pleased with how these turned out, I managed to get the pole down to 0.4mm at the narrowest point.

 

A quick test make sure they fit into the housings I made and an excuse to place some fancy fences. Sadly the actual fences used around Yurakucho are a little less decorative.

 

On to the next street light design!

Joe

[Kamome442]

Swiss Cheesing the Layout Again.

 

It was time to add a few more speed holes into baseboard this week this time to carry wiring for the rebuilt pavements.

The first step was to add the tubing that will guide the wires off scene. These will pop back up behind the arches.

 

Then it was time go crazy with a drill. Three holes are needed one each side of the road, 2 for street lights and one for traffic lights.

In accordance with Murphy's Law, one of the holes was directly above an internal brace which required cutting a trench to partially saw off part of the brace.

 

Finally it was just a case of gluing the pavements back in place. I used a slow curing glue to make sure I had time jiggle all the tubes through the holes and align everything correctly. Both sections in place:

[Kamome442]

New Store in Town

 

Just a quick one, I was checking Streetview images to work what colours to paint the pavements and noticed there is now a 7-Eleven in one of the arches.

Source: Google Streetview

 

It was previously being used as a storage unit, here is the design work I had done for it:

 

Now I could just leave it as is and not have to redraw it all. That said it is a 7-Eleven now! Back to drawing board then 🙂

 

Update

 

Well that was stupidly easy, I managed to find a nice clear image of the front after a quick image search.

It is pretty much just boarded up with fake brick panels.

My personal feeling is that it looks a little tacky when they do this especially when it next to actual bricks but oh well.

 

I am going test printing the brick pattern on paper to clad store front.

Hopefully it will create a nice contrast of perfectly aligned mock bricks next to the uneven lumpy bricks I made.

Edited July 14 by Kamome442

[MeTheSwede]

Sometimes you compliment a modeller by saying his brick work looks real and sometimes by saying it looks fake. 🙂

[Kamome442]

A Little Work on a Little Shop

 

I have fine tuned the dimensions of the 7-Eleven, it took a little while to work out that the doors are slightly off centre.

 

I still need to rearrange the bricks as there is a lot of repetition from cutting a pasting the same two rows of bricks. I did do a test print to check the colours work with the existing brick work.

 

I am planning to print the final version on waterslide transfer paper. I have drawn up the frame for the arch. I added a hole at the top for wires to be able to light the sign.

 

I will get the window and door frames etched. I will also etch a frame for the sign to represent the 3 separate illuminated sections.

[Kamome442]

Well That Wasn't Fun!

 

I managed to get this right on the 5th attempt. 

Walk:

 

Don't walk:

 

It was a fiddly little bugger, here is what it looks like inside:

 

All I need to do now is paint the case 😀 Oh and make 3 more 😒

 

 

Edited July 26 by Kamome442

[cteno4]

Nice Joe!

 

what’s the frame made of? 3d print painted black or metal based. Seems like an etch might work with the inset frame etched out and figures all the way thru. Then backing piece same half etched frames for led space. Or frame layer and then backing piece and sandwich then all up. You are right it looks like it’s really fiddly bit to do! Kudos!

 

jeff