Salam Sejahtera from Kuala Lumpur

[quarxilon]

Hello everyone, I am a member of several Malaysian railway enthusiast societies and railway modelling clubs, and probably the youngest in the latter. My name's Brandon.

My history with model rail is quite complicated. I first got a 500 series Plarail set as a toddler, which led me to splurge on Plarail products during my first visit to Tokyo. It wasn't until my mid-teens that I evolved from Plarail to H0, facilitated by two local hobby stores. While I had enough stuff to participate in modular layout exhibitions every now and then, European H0 scale products are so incredibly overpriced and fragile that I quickly stopped investing further in it. Whoever told me that H0 scale has lower costs and more variety than N scale was defrauding me because the opposite is always true when you ship across the planet. Eventually I was gifted a Kato N700A starter set when I entered college, and decided that Japanese N scale is the way forward despite all my peers questioning the illogicality of "upgrading" to a smaller scale. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Japanese N scale is now dominant among Malaysian modellers thanks to e-commerce.

I just received my first Hobby Search purchase today, and am currently planning my new permanent N scale layout; a basic elevated double-track local/Shinkansen oval surrounded by buildings and trams within. My Japanese N collection currently consists of four trains (all Kato) but I'm currently focused on obtaining some Diotown high rises to satisfy my fascination with architecture as well as trains. At this point I am deeply regretting my choice of Kato Unitrack because I can think of no other track plan that can fit in my 2m x 1m bedroom baseboard, whereas with Tomix FineTrack I could've had a multi-level monstrosity of folded loops and railyards. I was also searching for a model rail Discord community for skill-sharing but failed, so I decided to join JNS Forum recently. Don't get me wrong, I've been lurking this forum for a decade already; but was hesitant to register due to my history of getting banned from two railfan forums for childish behaviour long ago. Maybe third time's the charm?

Anyway, nice to finally get to talk with y'all!

[cteno4]

Welcome Brandon!

 

glad you’re going down he Japanese train rabbit hole! Lots of content and folks here on the forum for skill building and questions. We have a discord as well. We are pretty relaxed here and like to have fun as you’ve seen, we just stay away from politics, adult content and such, guidelines pretty much cover the simple dos and donts. 
 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Sr.Horn]

Welcome Brandon! Selamat!

 

 

[Sheffie]

Welcome!

[Tom C]

Hello Brandon,

 

Welcome to the forum. 

 

I like the sound of your 'high rise' buildings and will be interested to see what you do with them. 

 

Keep us posted with lots of photos 🙂

 

Tom