Yamahama - A newbie constructs a somewhat ambitious n-scale layout

[cteno4]

So this conversation got me to spend and an hour and a half in the wood shop trying to straighten it up and get things organized. Miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep, but I got some stuff done!

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

 

Japan Post with their characteristic red delivery vans and motorcycles has finally become a common sight in Yamahama, after having spent a long time in a post package of their own. 😅

 

 

 

 

 

The electrician Takahashi was looking forward to playing with his new model train that was due to be delivered today, as suddenly his boss called him on his free day telling him he had to cover for a sick coworker and go to Yamahama Station for important routine electrical work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Takahashi wonders how come those electrical boxes are that rusty and dusty considering they were supposedly installed quite recently.

 

 

 

[Sean]

Fantastic layout and thread, I’ve just spent the past hour reading it start to finish.  Love seeing those red Meitetsu and JR trains on a Chubu region layout!

[JR 500系]

Wonderful layout! I love the narration and stories that goes into each and every citizen of Yamahama!

[MeTheSwede]

Thank you both for your kind and inspiring words!

 

A couple of days with lots of inspiration and few other obligations, and there are suddenly new developments in Yamahama. A station building is being erected at Yamahama Minami Station and nature has started growing things on a blue foam hill side next to the station. Expect an update on this within the next few days.

[bill937ca]

From experience I can tell you the building of a layout is more embracing than the operating of a layout. Always something just accomplished when you build a layout. When the building stops often the layout goes to sleep.

Edited January 1, 2023 by bill937ca

[MeTheSwede]

14 hours ago, bill937ca said:

From experience I can tell you the building of a layout is more embracing than the operating of a layout. Always something just accomplished when you build a layout. When the building stops often the layout goes to sleep.

 

Lucky me then, that finishing the layout is not going to happen within the next few of years. 😆

[MeTheSwede]

Here we go...

Welcome to Yamahama Minami Station!

 

 

 

Yamahama Minami is the first stop along the coastal line, which serve commuters from the communities along the coast. Despite it's diminutive size it's an important transport hub where many people change between trains and buses. That's also the reason why the local trains from the Nagoya direction that has Yamahama as their final destiation, don't make Yamahama Central their terminus, but continues to Yamahama Minami.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This woman isn't commuting though. It's Saturday today and she's waiting for the bus which will take her to go visit her grandson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saki isn't fond of either buses nor trains. They're noisy, cost money and are full of people you don't know. Riding your bicycle at high speed with a fresh wind blowing onto your face, that's her ideal way to travel!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A trackside view of the little station building.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting any half decent photos from this side was hard, due to a solid wall marking the end of the world on this side of the layout. These two photos I eventually managed to take "blind" as it wasn't possible to look at the screen when taking pictuers from this angle.  😅

 

 

 

 

 

 

From this angle that station platform suddenly looks very long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For some reason the photographer was in a hurry and couldn't stay until a train arrived. But atleast that gives us something to look forward to another day.

 

 

 

[MeTheSwede]

 

Some people paint backscenes...

 

 

 

I don't know how to do that so I'm growing mine instead. 😄

 

 

 

 

 

Nakamura is out looking for his son, who ran away after an argument about homework.

 

 

 

 

 

Can you find him, despite my crappy camera work?

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Love Japanese scenes as so easy to have the steep rock and veg come up like that and makes such a better backdrop. Painted or photo backdrops are so so hard to do well and of not done well they just keep yanking the eye off of your layout with then bell going off in your minds eye something is not right! In the early days of Ttrak folks were trying to follow the guidelines well by doing backdrops on all the modules and many were so bad it was like driving by a car wreck, you didn’t want to look but you just could not help staring a it to the exclusion of everything else around!

 

jeff

[Sean]

I love the fact that each of the human figures on your layout has a backstory! Hope Nakamura san finds his son in those bushes before he falls down 😀

[MeTheSwede]

21 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Love Japanese scenes as so easy to have the steep rock and veg come up like that and makes such a better backdrop. Painted or photo backdrops are so so hard to do well and of not done well they just keep yanking the eye off of your layout with then bell going off in your minds eye something is not right! In the early days of Ttrak folks were trying to follow the guidelines well by doing backdrops on all the modules and many were so bad it was like driving by a car wreck, you didn’t want to look but you just could not help staring a it to the exclusion of everything else around!

 

jeff

 

Backdrops are indeed hard and I can't remember having seen a proper tutorial/presentation about how to compose one, apart from the pure technical stuff. Occasionally you see a brilliant backdrop, mostly not so brilliant ones. Often a problem seems to be to create something that works when viewed from more than one vantage point. I'd like to have some kind of backdrop at the back of my layout that allows the city to continue into the distant, but I doubt that will happen. Featureless blue sky atleast has the advantage that it works seen from most angles. 😅

 

[MeTheSwede]

18 hours ago, Sean said:

I love the fact that each of the human figures on your layout has a backstory! Hope Nakamura san finds his son in those bushes before he falls down 😀

 

I think young Nakamura-kun is used to running away when the going gets tough at home, so he should be safe. 😄

[cteno4]

There was a big sky blue backboard movement for here with Ttrak. Logic was it at least was something there to block the view to the other side. But it creates a very odd end of world effect on the eye. Few scenes drop off vertically in the distance past the end of the module with only blue sky there so it ends up nagging at the minds eye more than if nothing is there and the minds eye can just focus on the module scene.

 

I’ve only seen backdrops work in a tiny number of layouts. These usually were narrower layouts that were situated much close to the eye in height so that the viewing angle off into the distance was more straight forward. The more you look down at a scene at an angle the more the backdrops fall apart. I have some artist friends I’ve talked to about what could be done and they all say it’s not easy for them and would require careful foreground scenery to blend well with the backdrop scene. One friend did a lot of art diorama boxes when younger and he would do his backdrops with viewing windows that fixed the viewing angle/direction very carefully to get great effects, but you had to limit the viewing angle/direction or they fell apart.

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

Time for a backscene photo (or back-backdrop photo).

 

Lift up some of the greenery and a hole for inserting a finger is found, made for easy lifting of the mountain side.

 

 

 

 

Lift up the mountain and under it is found a shadow station (or two actually).

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two tracks connect to the hidden part of the "mainline loop". Some distance right of the locomotive is a Tomix uncoupling system. There I can uncouple the locomotive unseen from the wagons when it's under the mountain, then switch the locomotive onto the inner track and make a run around to couple the wagons from the other side. That means I can have the train arrive locomotive first to Yamahama Central from either end of the layout, simulating northbound or southbound traffic.

 

The continuation of the mountain side is just made of cardboard and paper so far though...

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure why I took this photo of the construction process. Was it maybe to show what a well ordered and organised dining table/work bench looks like? 😂

 

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Nice. I’ve always preferred lift out scenery sections like this, easier to work on on the bench right in front of you and less crap all over the layout and potentially sucked into trains. Plus allows easy access to dead areas if needed later.

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

The intersection between Sakuradori and the harbour road sees a lot of heavy traffic, so it was good to see some new traffic barrier fences being set up today.

 

The traffic barriers are from Kato and it took a hot water bath and a firm hand before they agreed to bend themselves like this.

 

 

 

 

Oh no! What's a dog doing in the middle of the intersection? Someone please SAVE THE DOG!

 

 

 

 

 

It's alright! Mi-chan saved the dog!

(And the driver of the brown car stopped and took this picture.)

 

 

[MeTheSwede]

On 1/6/2023 at 1:23 AM, cteno4 said:

Nice. I’ve always preferred lift out scenery sections like this, easier to work on on the bench right in front of you and less crap all over the layout and potentially sucked into trains. Plus allows easy access to dead areas if needed later.

 

jeff

 

 

It would be such a pain to try to do everything bent over the layout. For instance today I found I needed to cut a hole in the ground (as pointed to by the knife) to insert a railway crossing thingy. I'm not even sure how I'd attempt to do it if the ground was stuck in the middle of a layout. Now I could easily make cuts and punch the bit down through the cut. And any objects that were potentially in the way could easily be moved to the side, as there isn't anything that is permanently glued down here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I took photos away from the layout too. I got easy access to camera angles that would have been very difficult or impossible to get otherwise and could control the light better as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually for you out there who don't have a permanent layout because there isn't space for it, or you think you don't have the time, money, skill, patience or whatever, I'd say consider getting some 5mm foamboard or something equivalent, create some small piece of scenery that can be stored in a box and taken out whenever you set up some temporary layout on the floor or kitchen table. Watching trains passing in front of, or behind of, a little piece of scenery is so much more satisfying than just see it going around on the kitchen table.

 

 

Finally a bonus photo of the dog rescue:

 

 

 

 

[cteno4]

This is a great example of scenery bits and small blocks of buildings wirh some surrounding scenery can make fantastic temporary layouts.

 

http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/tempoary.html

 

jeff

[railsquid]

Did somebody say "removable scenery"? 😄

 

bus-stop-area-2021-12-30_01 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

bus-stop-area-2021-12-30_02 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[MeTheSwede]

The Takahachikawa thread has been a huge source of inspiration!

[DenshaTen]

This thread has been great! I've really enjoyed reading through the whole thing start to finish

[MeTheSwede]

I really love the layout building section of this forum. It's basically what sealed me getting drawn into this hobby. I hope we'll get to see a thread from you here to.

 

I should point out that build quality or layout complexity is pretty much insignificant for my enjoyment of threads. It's being able to "follow along on the ride" and watch the development of a layout that brings me excitement.

[Martijn Meerts]

Yeah, most layout building threads are really interesting, there's always something to learn regarding techniques or materials used.

 

I've been wanting to do small scenery sections as well for the new layout, but I often get annoyed when I can clearly see where the sections were inserted. Seeing how other people do small lift out sections definitely helps 🙂

 

[MeTheSwede]

The ground at Suugi Industries and the cement distributor finally got upgraded from grey paper to proper ground. I thought I did a fair bit of weathering, but a conspiracy hatched by the lighting in the layout room and my phone camera managed to hide most of it.

 

 

 

 

Suugi Industries has erected some German industrial fencing from Faller.

 

 

 

 

 

Meitetsu Transportation delivering something. I'm not quite sure what they're actually doing at Suugi Industries, but there's a lot of deliveries and pick ups all the time. Behind the trucks you can see what happens if a Tomitec utility pool is mated with a Greenmax streetlight.

 

 

 

 

 

Setting up a cover over that outside seating area was really popular among the workers.

 

 

 

 

It's pretty barren at the back. Kikuchi-san is seen smoking a pretend cigarette. It's the only brand that he's allowed to smoke during working hours.

 

 

 

 

 

Another view at the front. Those big trucks really require a lot of space to maneuver, so a quite large open paved space is needed here.