Amenomiya (KDK) 雨の宮 (小平電鉄会社)

[Beaver]

Given the positive response to what I've posted so far about my keiben things I decided to start a thread on my layout project. Amenomiya station on the freelance-fictional 762mm gauge line serving the Kohei valleys.

 

The name was inspired by reading about the light railway king, Amenomiya Keijiro, an entrepreneur who specialised in businesses catering to the needs of light railways, tramways, industrial and local lines, such as the steam locomotive and passenger car manufacturer Amemiya Iron Works

 

Note that the scale chosen is 1/87, not 1/80, for the following reasons:

 

1. 1/87 seems to be more widely used by keiben modellers and manufacturers than 1/80 is. Most 'garage kits' etc produced for the 762mm gauge modeller are in this scale.

2. It allows the use of cheaper (when accounting for postage and customs fees) European HO products where appropriate.

3. Buildings etc being slightly smaller makes it a bit easier to fit things in!

 

Someone remarked about the point on a bridge. This was necessary to fit a long enough loop in as the baseboard was re-used from a previous layout therefore the position of the river was already fixed. Not to mention excess and oversize holes in the backscene board. Not a wise idea, but the project started during lockdown when it was not possible to buy materials to make anything new.

 

 

Passing or runaround loop and one goods siding, all laid in Peco H0e flexi with little bits of Unitrack at the end to join to potential further boards or just track on a table. Roadbed was a patchwork of foamcore and balsa scraps. Point control by pushrods made of bicycle spokes and piano wire which can be operated from either side.

 

First attempts at scenery were much too flat. I wanted a more mountainous setting.

 

 

Meh.

 

After several revisions, settled on this general shape.

 

 

Which then developed thusly.

 

 

And then to this. The lighting was unfortunately an afterthought.

 

 

 

That is the most recent overall view. Since then I made two major revisions. The first was to completely re-arrange the town (right hand) end of the layout because it looked dull and unappealing and didn't fit well, the second to reduce it to a terminus station with a cassette fiddle yard board added at the left end.

 

 

I still kept the second platform. It is a through station reduced to a terminus (due to lack of space) representing a through station reduced to a terminus (due to the closure of the copper mine at the original end of the line a little further up the valley).

 

As the most recent picture shows, it is still very much under construction.

 

 

But close-ups on selected areas give an illusion of wholeness.

 

 

 

As do certain restricted angles.

 

 

It would be silly to recount in detail everything that has already been done, but I am happy to answer any 'wozzat' or 'howzat dun' questions about aspects of the layout.

[katoftw]

Is Japanese narrow guage 764 or 610mm?

 

Is you model track 12mm width?

 

I've been dabbling recently in OO9, HOe and HOj.

Edited January 7, 2023 by katoftw

[Beaver]

762mm gauge for public transport and most industrials, 610mm for some industrial or industrial focused lines. The Light Railway Laws of 1910 offered generous subsidies for narrow gauge common carriers, but on condition that the gauge was not less than 762mm and the owning company's primary business was transportation and not, say, mining.

 

Model track gauge is 9mm. H0e.

Edited January 7, 2023 by Space Beaver

[Beaver]

I do feel a bit guilty about reposting images already shared on another forum. It's like submitting the same article to multiple magazines - not really right. So from now on I will make sure to give each forum exclusive pictures. Like these from today when I was experimenting with new camera angles.

 

 

The left end is by far the more complete looking. I find I can make satisfying green scenes and make satisfying buildings but working the buildings into a coherent town setting is still taking some learning. Looking here from the rice fields of the valley floor over the caged river towards the tea farm on the wooded slopes above. Nearly all the elements of the scene are here but they still need to be bedded in and the neutral spaces in between seen to.

 

Storehouse - Sankei card kit, the 1:87 version. This is one of the few buildings that they produce much the same for each scale.

Rice field - Tomytec sheet. I had some attempts at making my own but they have not gone well so far so I just bought a premade. The N scale sized plants are all right for seedlings in HO so it must be fairly early in the year.

River walls - Tsugawa piling stone from the 1/80 plastic paper range.

Trees - Noch, SAM, Treemendus, Woodland Scenics, JTT, unidentified old stock. I find using only trees from a few ranges/manufacturers does not give a varied enough appearance to look natural. The trees above the tea farm are flats made of lichen and scatter on a sheet of hardboard.

Tunnel mouth - Scratchbuild from plasticard and plastruct following pictures of the Ogoya Railway's tunnel but greatly increased in size to accommodate electrification and a larger loading gauge.

Tea bushes - Rectangles of sponge scourer rolled and glued tight into a squashed roly poly shape and coated in very fine scatter. I have not finalised their positions yet so they are just tacked on to stop them rolling down the hill.

 

 

The business end of the station. I had some trouble convincing British modellers that cutting the steps straight into the platform face was realistic!

 

The blotches are part of an experiment to simulate puddles as I want it to look as if it has been raining recently. This gives a reason for the windows and doors on most of the buildings to be modelled tight shut as the kits were designed that way even though some ought to be open. They were closed to keep the pouring rain out.

 

The station building is a Sankei 1/87 'station building four' kit reduced in length by a third, halving the office space and moving the lean-to from the platform side to the end. It would not have fitted otherwise and also would have looked too big in proportion to the rest of the station. I replaced the printed tile roof with actual tiles - Echo Model plastic. The Sankei kits are mostly very good but those flat printed rooves really let them down - HO is just too big to get away with not having any relief.

 

 

A view impossible to see with one's own eyes; the approach through the town's main street with two compact and adjacent points of entry to the station. The goods platform building is another Sankei, it came with the storehouse as another agricultural building but looked ideal for this job. Catenary masts are all made from the recent Tomytec Diocolle 80 single line mast, spliced together into two track gantries or cut down to single poles as needed for the location. There are only two unmodified ones, at opposite ends of the layout.

[cteno4]

Beaver,

 

no worries at all on cross posting with other forums on our end! We just love to see your work and the more pictures the better as they are alway great fodder for others’ imaginations and inspiration!

 

nice work!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Sean]

Looks great, the rice and tea fields are quite nice.

[Beaver]

I continue building buildings. Sankei kit with Echo Model roof and Tomytec enamel signs down the sides.

 

 

 

Photo/art gallery might seem an odd choice for a small town. I justify it as catering to the increasing tourist trade and the consequent demand for souvenirs and gifts.

 

Now only one building remains unstarted, all alone in a drawer that was once full of things bought for the layout, that are now a part of it. Oddly satisfying to behold.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Beaver

[cteno4]

Nice job beaver! The 3D roof tiles look nice. That is one issue with the lasercut sankei, especially at HO scale. I’ve often wondered if anyone might start a garage business of upgrade 3D printed bits for sankei kits like gutters, downspouts, wall bits, light fixtures, etc.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Beaver]

Another billboard style shop, this one a Baiodo kit labelled as a horologists but being finished as a sake-ya (also sells tobacco and non-alcoholic beverages). This is a first batch kit that requires painting, which significantly complicates matters. The parts don't fit properly after being painted! Not to mention that you need to touch up all the edges after assembly.

 

 

It has been one faff after another. No surpirise that Baiodo changed over to pre-coloured card very quickly.

 

Across the street is a small family owned restaurant in less eloborate machiya style. A Sankei kit which has not yet deviated from the instructions.

 

 

The leftover card after the parts have been cut from the sheets is great for representing wood and stone in scratchbuilt creations. The goods platform uses Sankei card as edging slabs, and the colour matches the painted plasticard platform face perfectly.

 

 

This is surprising given how one of the basic rules of modelling stone is to decide on a consistent 'local stone' paint colour or mix and use it on all the stone on the layout, except for special buildings that might use stone brought in from elsewhere for prestige or special purposes.

 

Surfacing is painted sandpaper. Simply painting the flat surface without a covering gives too flat a result in HO, with the exception of concrete or still water.

[Beaver]

+

 

Finally got around to building retaining walls in the town area. Kenchi stone is from the Tsugawa plastic paper range. Using washes for colouring did not work quite so well as with the piling stone walls along the river because the smoother surface with smaller gaps between stones retains diluted paint much less. To be honest though models tend to exaggerate the prominence of individual stones, planks, pavers etc because we view models at long scale distances with perceptions built on viewing the real thing from very close up. 

 

 

Higher level view of same area. Now all the buildings are all there it's time to start fitting the ground surfacing around them.

 

 

The field and windbreak area long has been and still is the most complete area.

 

 

And the only one that is really ready for close-ups.

[Beaver]

Trying to improve my layout photography skills. Many of my snapshots make things look dreadful. A camera never sees what your eyes see.

 

 

Better, but the tripod is not level!

 

 

Using the layout lights only in a dark room helps get the colour of light correct and obscures everything outside the model in a naturalistic way.

[cteno4]

Lighting models is a real art form. Whe I was young and building a lot of 3/4” scale exhibit models we hired a “product” lighting designer a couple of times to do some model photography. They were amazing to watch with some small spots, bounce back lighting and even a couple of times a kookalorus contraptions they taped bits of tissue to to add little subtle dark and light patches you always see in 1:1 lit scene that tend to get washed out on scale models.
 

I was also very shocked as at times i would look at the scene and thing ugh that doesn’t look so good, but then I’d look through the camera and WOW! I learned the lesson that when shooting keep looking thru the lens while lighting as it’s very different than the eyeball! It was amazing as the lighting designer could tell what would look good Thru the lens with her eye and make a quick check and one little adjustment and bam it was spot on.

 

it was really amazing to have been able to watch them for a few hours, was like 40 years ago and I still remember just being amazed the whole time.
 

jeff

[Beaver]

I have completed another card building; Sankei small restaurant kit. In the end the only divergence from the instructions was the roof. This was another kit with flat printed paper sheets to represent tiles. Because of the complexity of the shapes making up the roof I was not confident that I could cut thick and tough Echo Model plastic roof tile sheet accurately enough and so chose a sheet metal roof. There is a type which I find particularly appealing, and which seems to be unique to Japan, which uses small rectangular pieces of sheet laid down like giant, overscale slates.

 

 

The roof is cheap craft paper sheet. Some pieces had to be individually applied but in the main I used the traditional British technique for modelling slates; to cut the paper into strips, make transverse cuts halfway through the strips at regular intervals, then lay the strips onto the roof half overlapping each other, starting from the bottom.

 

 

The building in context.

[Beaver]

Most buildings on the layout are either card kits or scratchbuilt plastic. But there is one made from plastic kits.

 

Plastic building kits do not seem to be popular in Japan despite the wealth of ready made plastic buildings available. For HO I could only find this Tsugawa kit.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10549622

 

(I wonder if Kato could be persuaded to release HO versions of their simple plastic kits of old wooden railway structures such as the 23-226 yard buildings set....)

 

It was extremely cheap so I bought two to bash about. The options with the kit as designed looked very boring so I used one kit and part of a second to make something with a more complex shape to make up for the lack of detail. I also added more detail and changed the roof.

 

This is how it stands now.

 

 

 

There is still more to do around the roof area, such as adding bargeboards and gutters, and getting the rooves to fit better. The fit issues were caused by cutting two planks off the top of each storey to shrink it from 1/80 to 1/87.

[cteno4]

Nice upgrade and kitbash @Beaver. Tgw kits tend to be a bit rough in n scale, you did a nice job with the details to sharpen it up. Always amazed at how a few details and contrasts can take a drab, dull structure and make it pop.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Cat]

Whee, kitbashing is always fun and satisfying!

[Beaver]

Leftovers of the kit, offcuts of plasticard and yet more strip combined to produce what the Brits call a 'low relief building' and the Yanks call a 'flat structure' and the Japanese seem to not have a name for because they rarely model only part of a building.

 

 

Happy New Year.

[cteno4]

Nice use of the scraps! We usually call them backdrop buildings.

 

jeff

[Beaver]

More leftovers and offcuts contribute to the making of a lineside storage hut. I would like to have one of those covered storage racks for those long wooden ladders that are a distinctively Japanese lineside feature even today, but it would probably be very fiddly and fragile to make.

 

[MeTheSwede]

On 1/1/2024 at 12:58 AM, Beaver said:

Leftovers of the kit, offcuts of plasticard and yet more strip combined to produce what the Brits call a 'low relief building' and the Yanks call a 'flat structure' and the Japanese seem to not have a name for because they rarely model only part of a building.

 

 

I guess that with so many examples of a 2cm thick n-scale buildings being of prototypical size for a Tokyo layout they don't need any special name. 😄

 

[Beaver]

3 hours ago, MeTheSwede said:

 

I guess that with so many examples of a 2cm thick n-scale buildings being of prototypical size for a Tokyo layout they don't need any special name

 

Too rarely seen in model form; you can't buy one in a box and I haven't seen any kits for the funny shaped buildings. A logical starting point to make and modify your own buildings. Not having any irregular buildings in a modern urban scene looks strange.

[Beaver]

Making fences using leftover 'wood colour' card from Sankei kits.

 

[cteno4]

Nice, did you just sore with a blade to make the boards look?

 

jeff

[Beaver]

Yes. It is easy if you use a ruler to mark out before scoring.

 

Use the knife blade to make little cuts as markings since these are much more accurate than pencil marks. Pencil lines are much fatter than blades and so mark a general area rather than a specific point.

 

Score both sides if possible to prevent bending.

Edited January 29 by Beaver

[Beaver]

For a long time I did not know what to put in the triangular space behind the goods platform. More trees would not work as when the boards are bolted together for storage and transport the mountain on the left board comes down into this space so everything above platform height to in the leftmost 6-8 inches needs to be removable. Removable buildings would work but I did not want to cut up an expensive kit to make low relief buildings in the space and scratchbuilding low relief houses would be difficult due to all the windows. I realised that warehouses would be simple and robust to make and would have very few windows which could be covered by closed shutters.

 

 

I chose the 'carcass and skin' construction method and started by making up very (as it turned out, excessively) robust carcass boxes out of laminated thick plasticard.

 

 

 

A thin skin of decorative finishes uses a variety of textured thin plasticard sheet. Slaters O scale brick and tile sheet repurposed nicely as HO scale stone blockwork and lapped sheet metal, or so I thought. Actually the use of tile sheet for metal was not that wise as even 20 thou sheet looks much too thin. I would have been better off using 5 thou in the same way as I used paper on the small restaurant with the blue roof. The vertical boarding is Slaters planked sheet. By modelling the window shutters as closed there was no need to actually cut any holes for windows; the shutters are just laid onto a blank wall.

 

 

One building was finished with Echo Model roof tile sheet and a sliver of Slaters corrugated iron for the side extension.

 

 

The other gained vent slits in the walls using lots of strips of Plastruct in a shallow depression. Both buildings are a composition of features from my own pictures of real historic warehouses seen across Kanto, especially preserved examples in places like Boushi no Mura and the Edo Tokyo Open Air Museum. Modelling a fictional place in a fictional area allows any eccentricities in the design to be explained away as being part of the local architectural style distinct to the Kohei Valleys.

 

 

I chose spray primer (plain grey all over for both buildings) with the top painting all done by brush. Blocking in all large coloured areas, to be followed by small bits and then detail painting. This is where they are at the moment. White paint does not cover the grey primer very well (left building must have more coats) but seems to resemble how the real thing looks as it weathers and ages. There is a warehouse at the Edo Tokyo Open Air Museum on which the white paint has completely turned pale grey all over such that you would think it had been intentionally painted grey in the first place!