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

[Brennan91]

21 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

It's a common term. The Japanese term is 軽音楽部 (keiongakubu) or sometimes 軽音部 (keionbu) and simply denotes a school band playing some kind of pop music (as opposed to classical music). I haven't read Shiori Experience, but I've seen the anime adaptation of K-On! , the name of which should be explained by my previous sentence.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I haven’t watched K-On but have a friend who has.

[MeTheSwede]

For a long time I've been planing for a tram line on the street in front of Yamahama Station. I haven't got room to make it a loop or even to make the line double track. Thus it would by necessity end up more of a static thing, than something to actually drive trams on.

 

The street will feature curves on inclines which has been causing me headaches about the difficulties I will encounter when it comes to fitting curving track pieces into a street which has inclines of changing angles.

 

For some reason the thought had never crossed my mind that I could do away with track pieces. Yesterday it finally did, and I pulled out a package of 0.5mm wire I bought at Sakatsu Gallery and started making an experimental street. It turned out well, so I placed some buildings next to it and a couple of trees I made last week, to make a temporary little diorama.

 

 

 

 

 

I will likely not tackle the street in front of the station for a long time. But when it happens, now I feel confident I'll be able to pull it off. This solution is a lot more flexible for handling curves and inclines.

Edited May 21, 2023 by disturbman
unnecessary line jumps

[disturbman]

I have a hard time visualizing your technique. Could you expand on it? You embedded metallic wires inside some cork ?

[MeTheSwede]

I was always planning to have some underground idols perform at the stage next to the main station. It's such a Japanese thing. I just didn't get around to making any, partly because of not finding good figures to convert. Another thread inspired me into making a Babymetal cover band.

 

 

 

 

 

Staff is waiting at the merchandise sales table. Apparently I need a bit more practice at making tables with straight legs.

 

 

 

This is how underground idols finance their activities...

 

 

...fans waiting in line to pay for having a picture taken together with the idols.

 

 

Here are the original outfits I used as a reference:

 

 

 

Finally some "how to". This is how I started:

 

 

A bag of figures I bought when building my z-scale layout. It turns out they are 1:200 and apparently represent tall westerners as the skirt wearing women that looked suitable to turn into idols are about 145-150cm in N-scale, thus not far in height from real Babymetal.

 

 

 

I wanted to add some more hair to the figures and for that I used Green Stuff from The Army Painter. It's a product that feels a bit like modelling clay, where you mix yellow and blue to get some green stuff that you can form with your fingers or with tools and will then harden. I've owned a package for a decade, but hardly used it. Very useful stuff actually, I should use it more often.

 

Before adding the silver and the finishing touches:

 

 

 

Painting is much easier than it looks. Some decent hobby paint and a very small brush is needed.

 

 

 

Is this how the big agences mass produce their idols? 🤔
 

 

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by MeTheSwede

[cteno4]

Excellent scene swede! Going to have to rip that off for a mini onetrak scene.

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

After I recieved news that I will have to move within a year or two due to heavy renovation work being scheduled for the building I live in, it has been difficult to find inspiration for Yamahama. Hence my focus lately on micro layouts and temporary set ups. However now I've got a bit of progress to share from some of the more rural parts of the layout.

 

 

 

 

Looks like the sunny weather will soon be replaced by heavy rain.

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Oh man bummer Swede! That seems to be the big Murphy’s rule of layouts, build a big layout and you end up having to move when it starts looking good. Is the layout movable? 
 

love the house at the end of the row taking up a bit of agriculture.

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

All the scenery can be lifted away and put into (a lot) of boxes. As for what might not be movable is the foamcore base with all the ballasted track attached. My guess is it would probably be possible to get it out of the appartment, especially if I cut away a section with no track attached. I might need to reinforce it to prevent unplanned disintergration during transport. But it's all a moot point, unless I happen to have a simularily sized space in my new home for it to fit, which sounds like a long shot. Therefore I don't see myself constructing any terrain and scenery that couldn't relatively easily be adapted to fit in another place on a new layout (or temporary set up).

 

The end of the peninsula has quite a bit of agricultured fields, so putting a farmhouse (maybe a part time farmer?) at the end of the road was always in my plans.

[cteno4]

Yep had a nice feel there at the end of the road, gave exactly that feeling of single or part time farmer.

 

yeah always the eternal issue with layouts. 20 years ago I had a large layout planned for the basement but I had this nagging feeling that if I started on it we would need to move! But then our club coalesced about then so that became the big layout fix for me.

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

I took some more photos I want to share.

 

 

A 313 series heading for Nagoya.

 

 

 

Here's a closer look at the row of private homes. Behind the greenery there is staging.

 

 

 

 

A Kiha 85 series. A just learned it was retired from this line last year.  😞

 

 

 

 

And to finish off, here's a closeup of the local wildlife.

 

[JR East]

Great !

 

My favorites : 313 series & Kiha 85 !

 

JM.

[MeTheSwede]

A local train inbound from the Nagoya direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems I accidently spilled invisibility paint on the catenary poles on this section. 😄