Sooo chibi and Kawaii 😍

[9er-metal]

Hi everyone, I just recently discovered this amazing world of Japanese 9 gauge. I am totally fascinated with Japanese rail and I'm so impressed with Tomix/Tomytec quality and value. I mean I saved over $180 off MSRP on my first order from Osaka and it arrived in like 3 days so I was very surprised by the super fast service too. They sure do their best over there! Thank you to all the enthusiast in this forum for speaking English because I'm an American so ya know.......I barely speak American. Lol.  Ok so always if anyone's interested.....I choose to get started with the JR E235o Yamanote line basic set and I had to have the overhead double track oval set along with the DU101 power unit plus the interior lights and TN close couplers. And the overhead railway station ticket gate and some people looking at their phone. Oh and Tomix latest catalog. Sooo it was a little over $300 USD but man I feel like I got the most impressive basic starter set ever in the history of starter sets! Everything is so freaking smol but highly detailed and surprisingly not fragile. That M13 motor unit is very quiet and smooth so it's a really good realistic representation imo. I have a 2400 mm x 760 mm foldable table to start but can always add a 2nd one creating an corner L shape in my temporary apartment. The semi-permanent layout concept is perfect for my lifestyle. The 1/150 is perfect for my space requirements. So now maybe I can imagined a very interesting home on the yamanote line. And a popular entertainment district called Kitsune-sama City where the "One" will come to pay homage to Sakura Gakuin and ASH on April 1st of every year during the megitsune festival #not a cult. Sorry for the confusing theme as I was referring to a unique J-metal fandom. After all my plan is create a very interesting metalverse with 9mm. I think I may order the Tomix lighted Island station and the Kato tram and road plates set next or maybe the tomytec motorized bus system set. There's just so many beautifully made accessories to choose from that I can't believe Japan's 1/150 scale hobby is so commercialized. I read somewhere that there possibly could be 10 million scale model enthusiasts in Japan so that may explain it. I'm honestly not interested in scratch building anything so I'm super happy Japan is already making practically everything I could want and it's pre painted and easily to assemble with very little glue required. Take my money already is the only thing left for me to say damn it because I'm going deep down this fox hole!!! 🦊😍 Can anyone relate to my new fate? Lol. My name is Tim btw and it's nice to meet all of you. What a wonderful hobby you have! 

[SL-san]

Welcome to the endless wormhole of Japanese N gauge, Tim.  It's not just those millions of Japanese modellers but quite a few of us around the world...even Australia!

 

Graeme

[cteno4]

Welcome Tim! Glad you found us and Japanese N scale! You have proverbially fallen down the rabbit hole with what you enjoy with train modeling. There is a variety of stuff that is just astounding. In addition there is Kato, greenmax and microace that have even more trains and structures, all interoperable (except for geometry differences between finetrack and unitrak) and of equivalent quality and value (greenmax and microace tend to be a bit higher priced as smaller companies and do more niche trains mostly). Lots of Japanese do temporary setups like you are doing so a lot of the stuff (like Tomytec structures and scenery bits) are set up for it. Tomix finetrack and Kato Unitrak are super robust track systems for temp setups so you can just keep playing with track plans as things grow. You can use Kato adapter tracks to connect the two together, but they have different track geometries so don’t play well together that way.

 

dig around the forum there is a ton of stuff here to learn from and get ideas. Yell if you have questions and start a topic in the layout forums of your new setup, even if simple it’s fun to watch it evolve and informative for others coming along later to see how you got going and evolved.

 

Might take a look at this article, great ideas of how to do changeable/movable layouts with a lot of scenery in them.

 

http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/tempoary.html

 

for the first 6 years of our club here in dc we did total set up on the fly layouts with drop bin buildings and scenery bits.

 

also a big modular Japanese rr group in Melbourne.

 

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[9er-metal]

Hello sir and thank you for the welcoming me into y'all's world. Yes I've realized to my delight, us westerners like modeling Japan's many famous rail lines. I mean when you have trains arriving or departing every 3 minutes during peak commuter times leaves me the impression of a lot of action on display. I figure once I'm satisfied with the yamanote loop, I want to add the standard gauge Shinkansen line traveling between Osaka and Tokyo. That ought to keep me busy with a seemingly impossible time schedule to keep. Lol. I don't know how JR does it with their impressive safety record to be honest. I'm a big rail fan of steam BTW so of course I think those SL excursion sets are sooo beautiful. Once I'm able to do my best to provide efficient service to the local population, perhaps I will add a special SL line for vacations and relaxation. I think you guys English accent is the best and usually your take on things seems pretty reasonable to me. Unfortunately I'm stuck in insanity mode or the "still" wild West at the moment as you probably heard. Lol. Stay safe mate in awesome Sydney! I swear I'm gonna be another expat after retirement. How's the rent down under? 

[cteno4]

Tim, 

 

my apologies I thought you were currently in Australia! Where abouts are you in the us? I’m up in dc area and we have a small Japanese rr club here.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[9er-metal]

Oh hi Jeff, it's a pleasure to meet you. Sorry for the confusion but I'm actually located in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Oregon's Capital to be specific. I believe there's a Japanese N scale club around Seattle but I don't know about the Portland area. I don't think we're cool enough to have a Japanese model railroad club in Salem but I'm not sure. Lol. Thanks a lot for all the great info as it was very helpful. I was able to figure out a few things on my own so I chose the fine track for the variety and reliable electric points. I chose the Tomix TCS power unit for the realistic acceleration and braking effects. Oh and I just love Tomix constant lighting. But I'm not in fan of DCC and/or sound affects in 1/150 scale because of potential operational reliability challenges and lack of acceptable sound quality imo. I'm hopeful my envisioned chibi style representation of a busy home and popular district on the yamanote loop won't require DCC to operate realistically within reasonable expectations plus I actually enjoy the calming quietness of the EMUs. I must however adapt the platform sound effects unit for it's uniquely recognizable "eki" melodies. So cool I must say! Also that automatic operating unit maybe helpful in keeping everything on schedule once I'm at that point in the layout progression. My next equipment acquisition will probably be the Kato M250 super rail cargo container set. I love that these 4-car basic sets can be purchase new directly from Japan for easily under $100 each and I'm talking new commercialized releases or renewals. I understand not everything is made in Japan but I trust the quality control is present and it won't disappoint. I became a die hard fanboy of Tamiya model kits and supplies in the early 80s but I remember they were so expensive back in the day for a kid with only a paper route and fieldwork (berry picking) during summer break. The wonderful people at Plaza Japan online hobby store in Osaka always have big discounts imo and super fast shipping. I do want to order a  few N scale monthly magazines from hobby search like N. Hopefully they have a lot of pictures because I can only read left to right. Lol. I do have one question at this moment Jeff. I ordered that no ox id A special electrical contact grease for the rails from Midwest hobby as one of my lighted units have started to flicker and that is supposed to resolve it when lightly applied after a mineral spirits cleaning by preventing arcing. I've only ran my train for about an hour total when I noticed the occasional flickering beginning to happen on one unit and a slight stutter when initially starting out very slowly from a complete stop. I understand popondetta sells a universal interior lighting kit that resolves the flicker issue but the cost is double of course. Do you have any experience using this electrical contact grease or a graphite product to extend periodical maintenance on the rails and keeping the flickering down to a minimum? I know applying grease on your rails sounds absurd but I don't plan on running long trains or transversing steep grades. The sudden minor flickering just annoys me and I know it's going to get a lot worse because I've seen it in YT videos! Thank you for your helpful input and warm welcome to the forum. 

[SL-san]

12 hours ago, 9er-metal said:

 I'm a big rail fan of steam BTW so of course I think those SL excursion sets are sooo beautiful.

 I swear I'm gonna be another expat after retirement. How's the rent down under? 

Hi again Tim,

 

My model SL collection has grown to 30 (29 shown on the attached photo) displayed on my approximation of the roundhouse at the Kyoto Railway Museum.  I have travelled on SL Yamaguchi pulled by C57-1 and on the Moka Railway behind C11 325 and of course admired the SL collection at the Kyoto Railway Museum, the Railway Museum at Saitama, Meiji Mura and Ome Railway Park as well as countless static preserved locomotives around Japan...so much to see, so little time!

 

As to the rental situation down under all I can say is that for Sydney it is CRAZY...too many renters and not enough rental stock.  I'm an old bloke who managed to build my own home when things were more affordable and sold it for a good price to buy an apartment, which in retirement suits me just fine!!  I even had a little (emphasis on HAD and LITTLE) spending money for trips to Japan and buying models (quite a few second hand from Yahoo Japan auctions).

 

Cheers,

Graeme

[cteno4]

On 9/21/2023 at 6:06 PM, 9er-metal said:

Jeff. I ordered that no ox id A special electrical contact grease for the rails from Midwest hobby as one of my lighted units have started to flicker and that is supposed to resolve it when lightly applied after a mineral spirits cleaning by preventing arcing. I've only ran my train for about an hour total when I noticed the occasional flickering beginning to happen on one unit and a slight stutter when initially starting out very slowly from a complete stop. I understand popondetta sells a universal interior lighting kit that resolves the flicker issue but the cost is double of course. Do you have any experience using this electrical contact grease or a graphite product to extend periodical maintenance on the rails and keeping the flickering down to a minimum? I know applying grease on your rails sounds absurd but I don't plan on running long trains or transversing steep grades. The sudden minor flickering just annoys me and I know it's going to get a lot worse because I've seen it in YT videos!

tim,

 

I’ve seen the no xo grease and have some but I only got it to use in unijoiners to prevent oxidation if any moisture gets into then when doing scenery.

 

im now a convert to the wd40 and crc contact cleaners to clean track. It’s very low dielectric value so prevents arcing and thus dirty track. More here

 

nickel silver does not oxidize a whole lot on its own without a lot of moisture, it’s more about not having nightly polar molecules from cleaners in the pores of the metal that promote the arcing and creating the black metal oxide gunk. Cleaning with a very non polar contact cleaner should help remove a lot of the wheel arcing. Mineral spirits also are not good around plastics and paints like with the Tomix roadbed.

 

graphite is a quite messy product to use on track and isn’t really needed using good contact cleaner.

 

for the light flickering you won’t get rid of all of that even with clean track and wheels. To get rid of you need to add a capacitor to your light board (after the rectifier) to Bridget the very short power outages. You can also buy light boards like the HCTILC boards that come with capacitors installed on the light boards.

 

http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/reviews/HKTILC.html

 

Cheers,

 

jeff

[MeTheSwede]

Welcome to forum Tim!

 

It's been about 3 years now since I took up the model railway hobby. As the Corona Crisis cancelled my vacation in Japan, I imported some Japanese model train stuff instead. Tomix starter sets are really a great place to start. And with all those buildings that come together quickly it's really easy to put up a couple of Japanese city blocks along the railway. Then you can populate it with little metal heads or whatever.

 

In the beginning I just spread large sized grey paper sheets across a table and placed down houses, moved the houses around, and new streets formed by themselves. It's great that one doesn't need any skills to get started. Model making skills are optional and you can pick up things later when/if you feel like it. I didn't know anything when I started.

 

Eventually I did pick up how to apply some paint and do easy scratch builds, because not everything I want exists as a finished product. And today you inspired me to attach some more hair to three figures I had laying around in a bag and apply paint to help them do some cosplaying.

 

I guess Tim should be able to tell where I'm going from this photo...

 

 

This turned out better than I expected.

 

I used 1:200 scale figures, so the members of this Babymetal cover band are quite chibi.

 

 

 

The circle pit looks safer than when the real Babymetal performs.

 

 

 

 

I will post some more pictures in my Yamahama layout thread later.

 

 

 

 

[MeTheSwede]

On 9/21/2023 at 7:58 PM, 9er-metal said:

I want to add the standard gauge Shinkansen line traveling between Osaka and Tokyo.

 

Considering the title of this thread, are you sure it's not this Shinkansen you need? ☺️

 

 

 

[9er-metal]

You Sir made this 🦊 very happy! If you could only see the ridiculous smile on my face 😍. This would go viral with the passionate dedicated fandom I'm sure. Your recreation of the battle tutus made me so proud. Clever use of smaller scale to emphasize the Kawaii aesthetics. And the "safe" circle pit was a nice touch. You've given me some excellent ideas. I never thought of a BM cover band. I knew a large venue like the buddakan was out of the question. The official members don't make public appearances so this is a realistic solution. Bravo and congrats on your creativity. I hope you got to see they tour with sabaton earlier this year. I loved the super fun collaboration with Joakim Brodén and the river dance choreo. The story about his concern when Koba wanted to record his lowest possible voice for his part is funny!  And I'll admit the real Hello Kitty Shinkansen is on my bucket list so it has a future on my layout. In fact I plan to use many anime wrapped items. Unique, different and fun is the theme. I salute you for hitting it out of the park on that one! Cheers and thank you for your hard work and nice pictures.