My new layout

[John P Boogerd]

Last month my 6x8 train table was completed. I promptly laid two loops of track and ran my Kiha class 111/112 and class 38 railcars. Today I started unpacking buildings and other items I have brought to Canada over the last three decades. I’m aiming for a rural motif and I’m trying to decide if the station should be a line station or an end station in one of the corners. I have never built a layout of any kind before. 

[tossedman]

Off to a great start John. You will have lots of room to fill things in as you progress.

[John P Boogerd]

Today I started sorting some buildings for a Japanese village doing a little repair here and there. 

[John P Boogerd]

Today I assembled a plastic kit I bought in Japan ten or fifteen years ago.  It's supposed to be two restaurants, one a single story and one a two story.  The package actually contained two of the two story restaurants and no single story one.  It's the first time I have built a plastic kit in more than 30 years.  I find they look very plain and I wonder if anyone has suggestions to liven them up - perhaps a paint color or some other decoration that I could use.  I do have the roof sign boards shown in the photo on the box and I might put them on when I find a suitable graphic that I like.  I was thinking of painting the doors and window shutters in some darker color or even red if that's appropriate.  Perhaps red would be suitable for the roof on one - would that be proper on a two story building?  I'll mount them on a base with some scenic elements around them.  

[cteno4]

John,

 

these look like a good starting point and gets the tedious stuff like walls, windows and mullions done first for you.

 

yes lots of paint details and weathering will help. Might look at all the Tomytec n scale pictures as they do a lot of simple paint details to pop things well. They need little feature details some again tomytec has some of these done crudely (you can get away with that a lot in n scale) but can give you ideas to do in Ho using just all sorts of crafting stuff like beads, wires, small hunks of styrene etc. also usually these building end up having a lot of wires, conduits and pipes run around the exterior and many times exterior propane tanks and lines. Maybe open one of the doors up. Add some interior curtains or blinds on some of the windows as at ho scale you can actually see some of these details at some distance (in n you have to have your eyeball or camera 3” from the building to notice them). Weathering too can be more detailed and really pop at ho scale.
 

google street view is your friend, if you spend some time wandering around Japanese streets you will find perfect models to work from for detail building ideas. Make sure to so screen grabs of things you find as Google street view links can be fickle at times. Also Google image search can bring many up. Also some of the detailed layouts in the inspirational layout topic can have some excellent models to work from. Following some of the YouTube videos there usually leads to more videos on YouTube to explore for detail ideas. Just takes some hunting to find the models to work from for the detail ideas.

 

jeff

[John P Boogerd]

Great ideas Jeff. Thankyou. 

[Sheffie]

I’d put masking tape around the windows and paint the frames white, for a start.