The Introduction Thread...

[Chuo]

Welcome and nice to meet you, Shinkansen54! 

[Sheffie]

10 hours ago, Shinkansen54 said:

Would that be Sheffie originally from Sheffield or am I reading too much into that 🙂

 

Correct. I only lived there for 13 years so I was still “not from round ‘ere” but I liked it. 

[Shinkansen54]

On 7/8/2019 at 9:41 PM, Chuo said:

Welcome and nice to meet you, Shinkansen54! 

You too Chuo.

KC? Im just down the road in Topeka.

[Shinkansen54]

On 7/9/2019 at 7:47 AM, Sheffie said:

 

Correct. I only lived there for 13 years so I was still “not from round ‘ere” but I liked it. 

I was 40 years in Norwich, Norfolk. 

 

[miyakoji]

Hi Shinkansen54 welcome to the forum!

[Sascha]

Welcome to the forum Shinkansen54!

[JR 500系]

WElcome to the forums Shinkansen54! Have fun here and feel free to browse around and ask questions if in doubt... Cheers!

[Chuo]

On 7/10/2019 at 2:25 PM, Shinkansen54 said:

You too Chuo.

KC? Im just down the road in Topeka.

 

Yeah, I'm out in Olathe. Good to see some more Japanese rail enthusiast locally. I haven't started a more permanent layout yet myself but would be great to see your progress as you do.

[Sheffie]

Olathe? Huh. My company's HQ is there. Small world!

 

Edited July 14, 2019 by Sheffie

[Chuo]

9 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

Olathe? Huh. My company's HQ is there. Small world!

  

 

Garmin?? That's probably the most well known Olathe company though I'm sure we have many. It is a small world though. Just the other day I had a guy on ebay point out Olathe and asked if I knew a guy who lived here. 😂Unfortunately, it's a big place. Could use more model railers. 

[Sheffie]

12 minutes ago, Chuo said:

 

Garmin?

 

Yes, I work in their Cary NC office 🙂

 

[Chuo]

13 hours ago, Sheffie said:

 

Yes, I work in their Cary NC office 🙂

  

 

Very cool! Nice company working on some neat tech.

[Onizukachan]

Greetings! 

This first part will not be Japanese related so skip if you want:

 

 

****begin non Japanese modeling background****

 

First, I modify Disney toy monorails and building accessories with lighting , sound and interiors for one... lots of fun, we use them for the Christmas Tree and they aren’t really scale, sort of S sort of HO, sort of fantasy-recognizable.

I will say I’m super proud of my Contemporary Resort with interior featuring carpet, murals, restaurant and lighting while my SpaceShipEarth has color changing lighting and plays actual WDW Xmas background music loops) 

 

That led me to back into Nscale less than a year ago, I presently model the SP Coast line in June of 1953, so I can run beautiful trains like Kato’s Coast Daylight. It currently has painted interiors & with Katos 11-214 lighting in all the cars plus some custom lighting touches, like the prototypical color changer lighting in the bar/tavern car and proper automars in the observation car, plus correct lighting for 4449)

on the fast freight side I have close coupled and functional diaphragm equipped ABA set of F3s in black widow (also with correct lighting) pulling a 26+ black Overnight boxcars and c-40-3 caboose, and an ac12 pulling a big block of PFE reefers also. 

 

Since we don’t have room for a permanent layout, my wife and I are doing modified TTRAK modules instead right now. We are currently working on our couple’s/family modules which are a 16” deep double and quad combined to be a fictional early 50s California town of San Medina (her fathers last name). She’s the city planner while I make the track and electrics work and do the things she can’t. 

 San Medina is an upwardly aspiring town and they’ve invested in a PCC equipped trolley line (mostly so our 2 year old daughter can drive a train with her own battery powered DC throttle I built and not keep taking my Coast Daylight off the DCC mainline! ) to run from downtown to the park and hopefully later to points beyond like aircraft industries. So now I have a slew of tomix track and a tomytec chassis under a spare PCC trolley shell with a 0.75 fiber optic pole and a caternary spark simulator module stuffed inside it. Because why not? If you are going to build or modify it, do the best you can! 

BTW- If you are interested in either you can google “SP & ‘53, Daylight & Overnight” to find my YouTube and also my main thread on a US-based trainforum. 

 

****end non Japanese modeling history****

 

 

And that brings me to how I got here. 

My brother in law and his family were stationed for a while in Japan, I’ve been watching anime frequently since the 80s like  GTO, macross, Evangelion, Full Metal Panic, and yes... Im a few episodes into Shinkalion... and yes, we call our living room the Japan room because all the art and such are Japanese.

Plus,  I also kept running across JNS on just about every search where I was looking for Japanese parts: the 11-214 Kato lighting I wanted to use, tomytec chassis, tomix track, Buildings to modify, etc. as Japan seems to have a preference for Nscale and actually has variety of products for that I can use in my US modeling! 

The only modern trains I have ever liked are Shinkansen, like the E5, H5, E6, 500 series and the 0 also. Modern US engines look like poo, the cars are graffiti covered, and generally in seedy parts of towns. Not my interest at all. 

I realized I am always watching YouTube videos featuring Shinkansen as there only so many hours of video about the Coast Daylight or the original Walt Disney World Monorails you can watch before you’ve seen all the footage that exists!

What always kept me away from modeling them was the long shipping times from Japan, DCC conversion difficulty, and the language barrier. Thanks to amazon.co.jp, JNS, and Bing Translate none of those are issues anymore, it seems so many thanks.

I think.  

 

i am now seriously tempted to buy a Tomix e500 EVA, and do some Japanese modules in addition to the SoCal ones. And then maybe I can sneak a Kato Doctor Yellow in there too? A slippery slope indeed. 

 

Thanks for providing the great resource, I’ve enjoyed lurking these last few months. 

 

[Yavianice]

Welcome @Onizukachan! That's some very impressive reconstruction of the monorail station in disney world. There are also some models to build the japanese monorails (stationary). Looking forward to more pictures of your (future) layout!

[cteno4]

Welcome Onizukachan,

 

glad you found us! Your disney stuff looks fantastic! Start a topic on it I’m sure you will have some eyeballs here. We have had a lot of chats on how to try to make the static Japanese n scale monorails move here! They chap who was making Disney monorail power units published some of the specs and cad folks to make an rc unit for them.

 

also love to see what you are doing with your Ttrak mods, it’s a really flexible format that is I think a big part of the future of the hobby with smaller home with younger folks and older folks downsizing.

 

i think you will find a lot of interesting Japanese trains with your other interests! Careful as it can become addictive!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[miyakoji]

Hi Onizuka, welcome to the forum!

[Chuo]

Welcome, Onizukachan. Awesome detail in your models. I'd be interested in more photos as well!

[Onizukachan]

Thanks everyone! I did post a couple of videos in a new thread in the worldwide thread and I’m happy to expand it further with anything anyone would like to see more detail of. 

 

I’ll add a video on the Contemporary showing its evolution from hollow plastic toy to 

Something more. 

 

 

Right now im really chuffed with how nicely the PCC turned out... Glad I took the risk and tried something new and innovative with that catenary module. 

Once we get the track and city design finalized I’m going to put up trolley “wire” on the poles using a product called EZ-Line.

 

 

[JR 500系]

Welcome Onizuka! Glad you joined us! 

 

That is an impressive monorail station there! Very nicely done! Thanks for sharing!

 

Good luck with that Tomix EVA 500 series~ It's pretty hard (and expensive) now to get hold of a set... 

 

Have fun here! 

 

*p.s. somehow your nick name reminded me of the show Great Teacher Onizuka haha ~  🙂

[Onizukachan]

6 hours ago, JR 500系 said:

Welcome Onizuka! Glad you joined us! 

 

That is an impressive monorail station there! Very nicely done! Thanks for sharing!

 

Good luck with that Tomix EVA 500 series~ It's pretty hard (and expensive) now to get hold of a set... 

 

Have fun here! 

 

*p.s. somehow your nick name reminded me of the show Great Teacher Onizuka haha ~  🙂

My sons said I looked just like GTO, thus the name. 

 

I bought the 500 EVA yesterday online. Should be here in a couple of weeks. 

And then I will get the joy of not running it until I can convert to DCC, lol .

[Shinkansen54]

Hi Onizukachan,

 

Mononrail looks amazing, I only just got into the trains, if I try to understand a monorail my head may explode.

I do look forward to seeing more though.

Arigato!!

 

 

[RogerMc]

Onizukachan thanks for sharing the photos and welcome to the forum!

[James-SNMB]

Hello! I've been lurking for a little while and thought I'd better make it official and jump on board the forum.

 

I just want to say that I really, really like all of the layouts I've seen posted. They all look so fun! I come to the hobby by way of the north american side of things, and here most people seem to dream of the large layout with long sweeping curves and religiously adhering to a prototype. I have to (and actually think I will prefer) to keep the layout small, which takes more compromise and imagination. Needless to say, that seems to be more in line with what the folks around here are doing, 

 

I returned to the hobby a couple of years ago after previously modelling miscellaneous north american HO scale stuff as a teenager. School, finances, and career got in the way, but I always knew I'd return... I never finished that HO layout, and decided to start over in N scale. I prefer how compact It started with a Kato TGV duplex, Eurostar, and I've just added the ICE 4. I also have a Canadian Pacific ES44AC pulling some intermodal cars, with a whole whack of Canadian grain hoppers on pre-order.

 

What prototype am I modelling with that mix? Uh.... Well... It's imaginative. My small layout (a 6.5'x3.4' double track oval laid with flex track) will be an urban layout, and I plan to mix north american ,European, and Japanese buildings to make a truly "international" city. I'm most interested in scratchbuilding, kitbashing and detailing my way to a dense city that's fun to watch the trains rip through. It could be pretty neat if I can pull it off, or it'll be an almighty mess. It's going to take a long time to find out, since I have a young family that includes a three year old daughter (who loves to play trains and cars with me). I'm in no hurry. It's going to take a long time to build my skills anyway. I've been very inspired by posters (here and elsewhere) such as Qunitopia and the GreatScaper, and they set a very high bar of excellence.

 

As for Japanese content? Well, I just picked up a Portram at a local shop the other day, and I have a handful of Kato and Tomytec buildings so far. Plus all of my trains (so far) are Kato, and I mostly ordered them from a popular Japanese ebay retailer. Does that count? I could see a Shinkansen finding it's way onto the layout one day, but I'm overwhelmed by choice in that respect. I'm very new to the Japanese prototypes, though I did take a trip to Japan some years back.

 

Really excited to finally break the silence and start participating in this cool forum. I'll be heading over the the Tram subforum shortly to get some info to help plan my new tram loop!

 

 

[cteno4]

Welcome James! Glad you found us and you’re getting back into the model trains. Many of us have come similar paths. Fun being able to be a big kid with your kids.

 

Fun thing with Japanese Rail is its usually right up against things and transitions between scenes and even buildings can be dramatic so a small, tight layout can still be closer to prototype than even a good sized layout trying to do North American stuff! I love how you can have a 10 story apartment building and a rice paddy out the back door and it’s all 8’ from the tracks.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Sheffie]

Welcome, @James-SNMB!

 

 I think you will find a lot of people making interesting compromises to fit the fun into their layouts... and also a range of prototype-bending collections. Rule One is that it belongs on your layout if you want it