Amenomiya (KDK) 雨の宮 (小平電鉄会社)

[Beaver]

Speaking of painting, here is that little low relief building again.

 

 

It is the tea company offices, across the yard from the warehouses. I am making up a yard gate to occupy the gap in between.

[Beaver]

Toi-re wa doko? Toi-re wa koko................

 

 

For once I added most of the detail before putting the walls together. I'm not sure that that was a good idea.

 

Window frames are a big problem on scratchbuilt buildings. Here I cheated and created false windows by building the frames directly onto the wall. Since they are very small windows and their positions would not allow a view through the building I think the illusion will work. I note that Iori Koobou and others now offer window frame sets for scratchbuilders. I think that is the way to go with anything more windowed than this.

 

I also modelled the doors closed even though they would probably be open all the time (or not even there), again to try and avoid making it clear that this is a simple box with no interior. On the layout it's supposed to be a brief lull of bright sunshine and stillness on a generally nasty soaking and blustery day. That explains so many closed windows and doors.

 

 

Walls together.

 

 

Based and braced. This is probably excessive bracing but after so many warped plasticard models I'm taking no chances with this one going out of shape.

 

 

Roof carcass is very simple.

 

After attaching the roof carcass I realised that there were two very important features missing. A thick protruding base around the bottom, and a wooden privacy screen in front of the doors.

 

 

Rectified, and the roof tiles put on, but not yet the ridge tiles. I know the screen is tilting; it is not glued in place as that would get in the way of painting the front wall and the back of the screen.

 

 

Another small building acted as a placeholder to show where the toilet would go.

[Beaver]

Sorry about the poor quality of some of the recent pictures. A lot of it seems to be down to the lighting. Layout lights only in a dark room seems to work best so it's a question of making the effort to do that every time.

 

 

Toilets tried in place. It still needs a platform socket cut for it.

[cteno4]

Where is the que of desperate folks waiting for the toilets to open!? Maybe kobaru makes some figures like this…

 

jeff

[Beaver]

I was not at all satisfied with the tea plantation so I removed and replaced it completely. At the same time I took out the entire forest and put it back in with more trees, more sensibly placed and arranged trees, and proper ground/forest floor covering. I then made a start on the river bed by gluing the big stones securely in place so small stones and mud can then be placed around them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Beaver]

I have got to the stage of being able to start adding detailing parts! Opened up the hoard of Echo Model whitemetal detail packs and started putting some together.

 

 

Finally a decent torii. The wargaming ones I tried were all terrible.

 

 

Fiddle faddle widdle waddle - using superglue to assemble several tiny parts into a point lever is not easy. For context, the base is about a centimetre long.

[Beaver]

Finished the Baiodo shop kit, with a replacement awning (the new Baiodo laser cut set), Tsugawa business signs (their kits come with two alternative signs) and other signs from Sankei and Tomytec. The business sign supplied with the kit was for a clock shop of all things, much too specialised for a little town in the mountains.

 

 

Recent pretty picture of the river bridge area. Planking over the track for access is correct for the Showa period, it's only since new Heisei safety regulations came into force that side walkways with railings have been used on the narrow gauge.

 

 

Unsurfaced streets using Magic Mud, scattered dry over glue applied by paintbrush.

 

 

 

[Beaver]

One must have feature for the localden setting is these simple shelters for storing ladders by the lineside. I have no idea what they are called.

 

 

The whole structure is held together by a solid strip of wood hidden under the roof. The verticals, and cross pieces to hand the ladders from, are cocktail stock. Roofing felt is wet and dry paper. It is not as fragile as you might think. The permanent way hut is a mix of more Tsugawa offcuts (making that now five buildings using parts from the two original kits) and plasticard offcuts.

 

Now with ladders!

 

 

Echo Model whitemetal ladders were a pain to paint. Then Baiodo announces a set of laser cut pre-coloured card ladders......

 

Small detail addition was fun. This is the first time I have got an indoor layout to the point of adding the small details.

 

 

I made a bit of a mess of the crossing signs. It is the first time I ever used waterslide transfers. Quite why Echo Model uses them when all the other Japanese manufacturers seem to use rub-down is unclear. Crossings over footpaths and minor country roads did not need to have lights, barriers or bells in this period, just markers. Often  on narrow gauge the path/road surface material was just piled over the sleepers up to the outer faces of the rails with planking only in between the rails.

 

 

Another period feature is that the carrying of dogs, bicycles etc on trains is unofficially permitted, at least if you are a local. Especially well behaved dogs who know how to make adorable doggy faces at the station staff.

 

Figures are a problem with Japanese 1/87. There is a limited range of sets jointly produced by Kato and Prieser. Mostly existing Prieser European designs shrunk a bit and given a different skin tone to change their ethnicity, but the railway figure sets are dedicated mouldings. The Kato Figuanimal animals are also conveniently 1/87.

 

 

There is also a lady in a pink kimono in Prieser's series of high quality single figures.

 

Vehicles; 1/80 models of cars and larger vehicles look too big, but after reading about the adventures of the Volkswagen Beetles imported by Yanase in the postwar reconstruction era I realised I could add a 1/87 early khaki bug from a German supplier.

 

 

Motorbikes and bicycles are small enough that I think 1/80 can be used. Echo Model do a very comprehensive range of Honda Super Cubs.

 

 

Cocky Fox here is a memorial to 'The Wolf', a bold brash being who lived in the grounds of my secondary school and would confidently stride about in broad daylight in the midst of the students as it nothing could touch him. Nobody tried to, it was said whoever did so would become terribly cursed.

 

 

The colours of the toilets do not quite match the station building but are close enough. Many Sakatsu Gallery flowerpots and planters have been used, planted with a mixture of flowery static grass tufts, etched brass miniature palms and traditional ground foam flowers.

[cteno4]

1 hour ago, Beaver said:

Cocky Fox here is a memorial to 'The Wolf', a bold brash being who lived in the grounds of my secondary school and would confidently stride about in broad daylight in the midst of the students as it nothing could touch him. Nobody tried to, it was said whoever did so would become terribly cursed.

Maybe rabid and if so yes maybe cursed if you tried to touch him. We had a local human rabies case here in our area not too long ago from a rabid fox attacking a walker on a paved walking path! Just jumped out of the bushes and went after her.
 

jeff

[Beaver]

Some more pictures taken when the layout was set up for operation at the local narrow gauge club meeting. Being able to access viewing angles not available when the layout is on it's usual location on shelf brackets was very valuable but the hall lighting swamped the layout lighting with it's own unpleasant colours. Bits of scatter came loose in transit and got lodged in awkward places, creating sometimes implausible 'weeds'.

 

 

I had had great trouble assembling the Tsugawa dummy semaphore kits I had acquired for signals and could not obtain any examples either of the correct pattern of signal levers (semaphores would be controlled from a small lever frame on the platform) or of sprung switch stands (sprung points were used to automatically pass trains on the left so that the station staff would not need to routinely operate the points, therefore points were not connected to lever frames and were operated by the shunters during goods shunting moves, which were normally the only time anyone would need to take the points off the springs).

 

Therefore I resorted to moving the time period forward by a few years so as to be able to represent a cheap installation of CTC, colour light signals and point motors, of the kind seen on the Tochio Line and the Mie Koutsu narrow gauge. Simple 'button' type two aspect signal heads stuck straight to the gantries with little use of dedicated signal structures, relay cabinets stuck in odd corners, a motor by each point on the running line. The signal heads are dummies made from plasticard following photographs of the Mie Koutsu design but without dimensions. They were done very quickly to have the layout ready for the meet so are not terribly good.

 

A colour light signal that does not actually work is much less noticeable than a semaphore signal that does not actually work (the Tsugawa kits are dummies and I have not seen any kit for working Japanese semaphores).

 

Ironically, very soon after Baiodo announced a kit for a typical platform mounted signal lever frame, with shelter................

 

 

Motors are Peco N and probably wrong in detail terms, but most people just see a grey box by the tiebar and move on. Gricing Fox wonders what the heck is making all those buzzing, clunking noises.........

 

 

Kiloposts, gradient markers, fouling point markers and so on are Echo Model whitemetal castings. They are JNR pattern and so perhaps a bit fancy for a local line. Simpler shapes reduce cost while these have a lot of complex angles to them. The simple weighted lever is still used for the goods siding as only the running lines are under CTC.

 

 

I spent a while trying to alter some farmer figures for this area, but the unattended cart is more atmospheric perhaps.

 

 

I am particularly pleased with how the station approach is turning out, a pity it cannot normally be seen.

 

 

With the greater flexibility of colour light signalling, the loop is now bidirectional instead of a strict pass-on-the-left. Sometimes trains now pass on the right! This reduces use of platform two and with it, the hazardous and easily blocked crossing. I know that this type of single line operation is more associated with the JNR than the private railways, but it makes operation much more interesting.

 

 

With space to connect fiddle yards at both ends and room to move around the layout, it was possible to operate fully, including shunting. Goods and mixed trains frequently stopped to collect wagons and vans from the siding (mostly loaded with tea from the tea company behind the station) or drop them off (mostly loaded with supplies for the shops and eateries in the town).

 

 

Running was very consistent and good with little stalling or the like. Kato's new power units such as the 11-109 have finally made it possible to have realistic, reliable, scale speed running and shunting with small locomotives in H0e, 009 and the like.