The Introduction Thread...

[disturbman]

@inocencia4welcome to the forum.

Edited October 14, 2022 by disturbman

[PatriotClass]

Hello there!

I am new here and I would like to introduce myself. 

I am 55 years old, live in Germany near Munich and I am in the hobby since my childhood. Actually I am building my 00 scale British LMS layout, so my actual user name is Patriot Class, a LMS steam loco of the 1930's. But my next layout will be a contemporary japanese n scale layout with a long straight to show a Shinkansen at speed and lots of beautyful landscape. So I am collecting train sets and doing some prepartion works like inside lighting and populating the coaches with passengers, building some structures and figuring out ways, to have automated operation on my next n scale layout wthout going DCC.

I try to find ways to solve modeling projects the cheap way and so I am curious looking for clever ideas in comunities.

 

Looking forward to meet you here!

Chris

[JR East]

Welcome aboooooaaaarrrrrdddd

[Wolf]

Welcome Chris from Berlin!

[cteno4]

@PatriotClass

Welcome Chris, glad you found us! I think you will find a lot of great folks here and conversations on modeling that will be useful and we look forward to your input and ideas.

 

keep us posted on your layout. When you are ready start a layout landing and layout construction topics on it.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[miyakoji]

Hi Chris, welcome to the forum!

[disturbman]

Hi Chris, wilkommen an Bord.

 

Hopefully you will find here the community you are looking for 🙂

[SteveM]

Greetings from CSRA!

 

I’m retired military (1970-1990) and recently moved to the CSRA (Central Savannah River Area). I recently restarted my interest in N scale model railroading and dove headfirst into Kato. My original N scale venture started in 1975 was Atlas steam locomotives, rolling stock and track. I still have my original Atlas items but I’m strictly a Kato DCC engineer now. I spent 4 years in Japan during the 70s and feel in love riding the train between Iwakuni and Hiroshima and traveling to Tokyo and Sasabo on the Bullet Train. I’m excited to have found this forum today and I look forward to exploring all its offerings!

 

All aboard,

Steve

[JR East]

Welcome Steve

 

You'll find here a nice community. Meanwhile, do no hesitate to share the picture you shot in the 70' in Japan, there were plenty of really nice trains. 

 

JM.

[cteno4]

Welcome Steve, glad you have found our happy little place!

 

great you have restated your model railroading, it’s a hobby may folks keep coming back to. Start taking a look at all the different Japanese model trains and the huge variety of train scenes you can do with japan and it gets even more enticing! Many of the newer Kato Japanese trains are coming with drop in decoder slots, only issues is if it’s a emu or DMU set then you need light decoders for the directional lights in the end cars as well as a motor car decoder. Options are also appearing to drop in new light boards on some locos to deal with lighting and motor rewiring for dcc. Older trains need to be hand installed unfortunately as dcc has not cracked the Japanese market my much yet. Kato is the only Japanese manufacturer to start adding dcc slots for easy installation.

 

check out the forums, we have one for mainly DCC. Also as jr east noted always fun to see folks trip and train trips from japan, especially from back in the 70s.

 

enjoy! 
 

jeff

[miyakoji]

Hi Steve, welcome to the forum!

[Giugiaro]

Hi there Steve! Glad to have you onboard!

[Sean]

Welcome, Steve!  The Hiroshima/Iwakuni area is really great.  

[DenshaTen]

Hi all!

I'm a long time fan of Japanese culture that has recently gained an interest in trains after my last holiday there where I came home with a Kato E233 starter set in my suitcase 🙂

 

I've been browsing this forum for a few weeks now and thought I would make a post to introduce myself. I'm slowly working on detailing some structures to place around the track when I take it out as I only have space for a temporary layout currently. 

 

Hopefully in time I'll have something worth posting 🙂

[Wolf]

Welcome aboard!

[JR 500系]

2 hours ago, DenshaTen said:

Hi all!

I'm a long time fan of Japanese culture that has recently gained an interest in trains after my last holiday there where I came home with a Kato E233 starter set in my suitcase 🙂

 

I've been browsing this forum for a few weeks now and thought I would make a post to introduce myself. I'm slowly working on detailing some structures to place around the track when I take it out as I only have space for a temporary layout currently. 

 

Hopefully in time I'll have something worth posting 🙂

 

Welcome DenshaTen and glad you found us! The starter set is a great way to start! 

 

Looking forward to some of your detailing on the structures for the layout! We all could use some nice ideas! Cheers!

[cteno4]

Welcome DenshaTen, glad you found us and the joy of Japanese trains!

 

great way to start, Unitrak is very robust for quick setups if you dont have the space for longer term setups. Night think of makin some little scenery bits/islands you can throw down next to and around buildings as well. Also roads can be printed onto card stock to get other features in there. Even full road bits with sidewalks, people and cars attached to plop around. Here is a great article at taking this temporary setup approach with inspiration from wargaming. http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/tempoary.html
 

also might want to look at Ttrak concept of small modules you can store on a bookshelf and just pop together to make a very quick layout. Let’s you do super detailed small scenes. Also play with others in your area at shows or meetups.

 

enjoy the forum!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[DenshaTen]

Once I get a bit better I'll definitely look into making a T Trak module which would also make a nice way to display any future trains I might get.

 

To start with I was planning on printing out some roads on A3 paper as I'm setting up on a glass table at the moment which doesn't look very realistic

 

[miyakoji]

Hi @DenshaTenwelcome to the forum!

Edited December 10, 2022 by miyakoji

[Beaver]

Long time no see!

 

Not going to go into depressing details, let's just say I had to move back to the UK in 2019 because a significant shift in my family's circumstances meant they couldn't afford to support me to anything like the previous extent, and you can't afford to live in Tokyo on just 28 hours work a week at baito wages.

 

Since the move I have been working on freelance keiben models in H0e.

 

Somewhere in the lumpy middle bit of Honshu, there was a railway. Not a very long railway, not a very important railway, but it was the Kohei Electric Railway, and it was all there was..........

 

 

Mostly kitbashed and scratchbuilt, inspired principally by the Tochio Line with influences from Kosaka, Kurihara and of course Mie.

 

Doesn't seem to be that much interest in the narrower gauge on this forum, but we'll see how things go. I know at least one member here is also a member of NGRM Online, where I have done most of my posting up to now.

 

[Cat]

I always like following Narrow Gauge projects!

[marknewton]

Always good to see your work, Dafydd. There's at least two of us here who also belong to NGRM, myself and Nick Burman.

 

Cheers,
 

Mark.

Edited January 7, 2023 by marknewton

[MeTheSwede]

On 12/8/2022 at 12:31 AM, DenshaTen said:

Once I get a bit better I'll definitely look into making a T Trak module which would also make a nice way to display any future trains I might get.

 

To start with I was planning on printing out some roads on A3 paper as I'm setting up on a glass table at the moment which doesn't look very realistic

 

 

I'd say printed roads are pretty high end modelling. I still have of plenty of places with plain grey paper for roads on my layout. 😅 

 

Besides speed of construction, it comes with the advantage that it's possible to just plunk down houses and other scenics items and whatever space in between them is left becomes roads and parking areas. And it's super flexible, just move some houses and a new street is born.

[AzusaE353]

Hi all,

Just joined as the forum looks very interesting. I am in Australia, long-time modeller and retired rail engineer last involved in bogie design.(ie trucks for our US buddies)

Had a great rail trip to Japan in 2017 and am building a small JR based layout to fit a retirement residence. Hope to get it set up with computer control eventually but am only as far as the woodwork at present. I look forward to some interesting discussions.

 

Arigato folks!

[cteno4]

Welcome AzusaE353, glad you found us! Great to have a rail engineer onboard here. There are several others that work on various bit of rail around the world on the forum here. Looking forward to see your layout as it progresses. Please feel free to start a topic on it in the layout forum. Always great to learn from what others are doing.

 

enjoy any yell of you have questions.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

ps funny you mention the bogies/trucks as I’ve often wondered where each term came from. I’ve always used both interchangeably here in the us and don’t recall specifically folks in the us not knowing bogie.