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The Introduction Thread...


Darren Jeffries

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59 minutes ago, disturbman said:

@cteno4Jeff, tss tss, I thought we were not supposed to talk about Amazon.


yeah I don’t like them, they are the last resort for me when oos everywhere else! The stuff I get at a stupid price I figure they are loosing money on as those are all amazon itself. Those are usually like half price and trains I would not have bought if not so stupid cheap! At least that’s my rationalization...

 

jeff

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@cteno4 the service is pretty good never had any problems and i can see on those website i can see many products below that price point so my wallet is going to suffer that's for sure🤣

@miyakoji thank you very much!!!

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3 minutes ago, katem said:

Really love your portable scenery parts, I've never thought about something like that before.


it’s really a great way to try new scenery techniques out. If it flubbs up just toss the little bit and try again! Great fun for temp setups. Put down a green or brow sheet as a base, also colored construction paper can make roads or concrete areas or printed Road pieces on card stock you can plop down.

 

even buildings you can get a lot of free pdf papercraft buildings and just tape them up to get something in there to start thinking about buildings and space filling and scenes before you go out an purchase buildings. If you are on a budget papercraft buildings can be inexpensive and work pretty well if you put some care into them. I can get you access to some free PDFs I’ve collected if you want, just pm me.

 

jeff

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Peter Osborne

Hi All

After a break from model railways for a few years I’ve decided to have a mid like dabble at Japanese  N scale, I have done this before from about 1997 to 2008 then gave it a break and sold my trains, I’ve bought a few items I model JR West and JR Central from 2000 to present day all the normal Osaka area units as well as some Central trains like Shinano 383.

Im located in what is today a very snowy and icy West Yorkshire I don’t think there are many Japanese modellers in the UK as the purchasing points mostly sharps and JR have both closed down , I mostly source via Hobby Search and Yahoo Japan via a 3rd party.

My layout when I start it will be in a 3 x3.5 meter room running around the edge or 3 walls with a helix to under storage not sure yet , same as control I do like DCC but useless at electrics so my decoder installs will be outsourced, I see some Kato have plug and play but are there any difficulties with Tomix, Green Max etc?

I will start a small blog about the layouts construction as we go along and publish a stock list.

thanks

Pete

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Welcome Pete! Glad you got back to the hobby and found us. It’s nice as model trains seems to be a hobby many have been able to put aside for period(s) in their lives and come back and enjoy it again lives. There are a number of Japanese mod

elers in the uk on the forum, so you’re not alone.

 

looking forward to what you will do.

 

cheers

 

jeff

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1 hour ago, Peter Osborne said:

Hi All

After a break from model railways for a few years I’ve decided to have a mid like dabble at Japanese  N scale, 

 

Welcome back!

 

1 hour ago, Peter Osborne said:

I don’t think there are many Japanese modellers in the UK

 

There are several UK based japanese modelers on this forum, but of course feel free to ask any question you have here on the forum. P.S. I have bought from TrainTrax UK before the Brexit and was very satisfied.

 

1 hour ago, Peter Osborne said:

I mostly source via Hobby Search and Yahoo Japan via a 3rd party.

 

Take a look in the suppliers section of the forum for some more sources. Hobbysearch is great but sometimes you can find the train you want in other stores (sometimes cheaper too or with better service).

 

1 hour ago, Peter Osborne said:

I see some Kato have plug and play but are there any difficulties with Tomix, Green Max etc?

 

KATO has some DCC plug and play trains but mostly on models that are also popular abroad (shinkansen or european models mostly). All the others, as well as TOMIX, Green Max, Micro Ace and other japanese N scale brands, require you to solder the decoder in. Do note that there are "analogue" alternatives to DCC such as Dinamo, Alan, TNOS.

 

1 hour ago, Peter Osborne said:

I will start a small blog about the layouts construction as we go along and publish a stock list.

 

Do share! Always fun to see what others construct.

 

Enjoy your time here!

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Peter Osborne

Thanks all for the welcome and the advice I forgot to add I took a break to raise a family , my 4 year old boy has a vast collection of Plarail all Japanese of course so perhaps I never really took a break from Japanese trains , 

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173BCEFB-093C-4F1C-BCD2-EEAA63CB2E3C.jpeg

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Hello,

 

My name is Tibor. I´m from Austria and live in Vienna. I´m registered here since many years, but never introduced myself properly.

The passion for Japan model trains started 2012 after my first visit to Japan. I wanted a souvenir and bought a Tomix N700 Shinkansen set. Soon I visited Japan again and again. The fifth and last time was 2016.

The train got company by tracks to run on them. I was looking up Tomix and found out about the rich model train market. I also found a forum that seemed to be specialized in Japanese model trains:  https://www.ig-nippon.org/  They welcomed me very warm and shortly after I visited gatherings in Germany.

The number of models, tracks and buildings grew fast. First I only ordered on eBay, later at internet shops like HS or AmiAmi. Of course I used my trips to buy stuff at Akihabara and other places. A very nice experience was to meet Nariichi from ModelTrainPlus in person. I stayed in a room not far from the shop in Nishi-Kawaguchi. Of course I used the Japan Rail Pass to discover the prototypes and traveled from Kagoshima to Sapporo and in between.

 

Some time I ran the models on shelves in different layouts. But I wanted more, so I joined the module builders at IG-NippoN. Module after module was built. As of today I have over 30 modules in IG-NippoN norm. Twice I had the opportunity to participate on exhibitions in Germany. 2020 should have been the next level with attending the biggest model themed exhibition in Austria, the Modellbau Messe with usually about 65.000 visitors. Well, as many other events it was canceled due to Covid-19. What will happen 2021 is very unclear at this point. Let´s hope the best.

 

I have no exact number of my rolling stock, but last time I updated my database there were well over 100 sets. I do not set much limits on what I collect. My imaginary border is the electrification. So, I have no steam locos. I do have a lot of older freight cars, but they all might be as well pulled by an electric loco.

The modules I build should reflect from around the 1980´s to now. Landscape might be easier to build, but I want to focus more on cityscapes.

I also create some parts in 3D and print them. Depending on size and grade of detail I use either FDM or DLP on my Anycubic machines.

 

Our group IG-nippoN might be shrunk over the past years. But never the less we have a strong core with LighthouseShiniji and me.
Besides our ForumFacebook group and Youtube Channel I will try to put more content here in english to keep you up to date.

 

Cheers & stay healthy!

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oHi @Szepessy, nice seeing you here. I always like seeing your modules and would love to join a IG-N meetup. Guess it will take some time for stuff to be back to normal. Also I think you have more than 100 models, at least that's what I guess when I saw your new years wishes on Facebook with your models in the background. It was a sight to behold! Cheers mate and enjoy your time

Edited by Yavianice
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Welcome Tibor!

 

so glad you found IG-NippoN and JNS. It would be great to keep crossing over some of the IG-NippoN stuff to the forum here, we use to have a few members do that when they had events. Look forward to seeing your module, please post some on it.

 

is Kai still around IG-NippoN?

 

cheers

 

jeff

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9 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Welcome Tibor!

 

so glad you found IG-NippoN and JNS. It would be great to keep crossing over some of the IG-NippoN stuff to the forum here, we use to have a few members do that when they had events. Look forward to seeing your module, please post some on it.

 

is Kai still around IG-NippoN?

 

cheers

 

jeff

Hi Jeff,

 

Thanks for the welcome! I will post on progress of modules and exhibitions.

 

Kai hasn´t quit. He just reduced the engagement (well, a lot). But he said he will keep some models and maybe even make some sort of (mini) modules or layout, but nothing fancy. He suggested to host a meeting if things get back to normal. Let´s see...

 

bye, Tibor

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12 hours ago, Yavianice said:

oHi @Szepessy, nice seeing you here. I always like seeing your modules and would love to join a IG-N meetup. Guess it will take some time for stuff to be back to normal. Also I think you have more than 100 models, at least that's what I guess when I saw your new years wishes on Facebook with your models in the background. It was a sight to behold! Cheers mate and enjoy your time

 

Thank you so much 🙂 I hope we can gather soon. Meanwhile I plan an online meeting soon.

 

bye, Tibor

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Hi my name is Bill from Australia. I started in model railways back in the 70's with US N scale. In the 90's I had German N. I had most of my rolling stock stolen so gave up, lost heart for it. In the last couple of years I've bought some JNR steam locos and rolling stock. Also have scratch built some farm houses. Most of the the locos are Kato with a couple of Micro Ace. The Kato engines are so much better that I might sell the Micro Ace ones. I like the scenery of Japan and the railways. JNR runs on 31/2 foot gauge, the same as our local Queensland state railway. I've just started building a layout set on Hokkaido, an L shaped layout.

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welcome Bill, glad you found us!

 

good thing about model railroading is it can always come back up into your life and have different lives of its own each time.

 

keep us posted on your layout progress and love to see picts of your farm houses and how you went at creating them!

 

cheers

 

jeff

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Hello all, 

 

My name's Tom, I live in France but have an British/German background and normally scratch build N scale Canadian Pacific steam locos. But, for a long time I have harboured a dream to build a small Japanese mountain layout. The time has come to realise the dream 🙂 I will start a build tread shortly. I think I will have to learn how to resize my photos first as they are probably too big to upload here ? I already tried to add a 'mug shot' here and failed. That probably saved you all a horror show 😂 

 

Any advice on resizing photos would be most welcome.

 

I would like to express my thanks to the good folk running this site and to the great posts you are all contibuting 10/10 to all of you. 

 

Thank you

 

Tom

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Welcome to the group, Tom. I’m sure there are easier ways but I email pics to myself and before sending it I’m prompted to change the size. Looking forward to seeing your thread. Your mug shot, not so much. 😁

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