Hadena-ko (My way-to-small-layout-integrated-in-my-desk setup)

[SwallowAngel]

The story:

Long before time had a name, a star struck the lands we today call "Japan". As it struck, it left a crater which slowly filled with water as time continued its unending march. But as the crater filled, it created a lake which unusually enough started to emit bright and colourful lights.

And there this oddity of space and nature sat, undisturbed for a long, long time. However, as humans began to spread around the globe they also discovered this lake. Quickly this site became sacred and worshipped by the people of the region, gaining the name "Hadena-ko"*. And so the lake now became witness to humanities stride through the eras. Oddly enough though, no written records of this lake were kept and knowledge only transferred orally. However one attempt was said to be made by Utagawa Hiroshige: During his travels along the Tokaido he got lost, encountering this mysterious site. Awsstruck by this bright and colourful lake, he intended to include it in his alter work "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō", though (due to unknown reasons) he never did.

In recent history Hadena-ko has gained a station sometime in the 19th century, connecting it to the rest of the nations rail network. Due to tricky terrain though, the station was built on a man-made hill, gaining enough elevation to reach the tracks. The unfortunate downside(s) of this extra elevation though are the numerous stairs needed to reach the plattform. These have been an increasingly large source of complaints from passengers (especially older ones). This, combined with decreasing passenger numbers, have caused some concern over a station closure in later years. So what the future holds for both the lake and it's adjacent station are unknown...

 

*This should translate to "Colourful Lake". I might have made a mistake coming up with the name since I don't speak any Japanese...

 

(P.S: I think you can tell I was bored. I had a lot of time coming up with this)

 

The Layout:

The layout in itself is just a double track oval since I wanted a permanent layout and this is about the largest thing I could come up with.

As implied by the title, the layout is integrated into my desk, hidden behind a glass plate and acrylic walls.

As you can see by the pictures, Hadena-ko itself is a window into a PC kitted out with RGB, giving the whole thing its lighting.

 

While it's still not complete, that's enough text for now. Time for pictures:

(Excuse the reflections, it looks much better in person)

 

 

 

 

 

The next steps are redoing the bridges, I kinda messed up with the colours. I intend to redesign the bridges and redo them with my 3D printer.

After that follows ballasting and other detail work

 

[SwallowAngel]

I wasn't able to make much progress in the last couple days, as I got quite busy,, however I was able to create a nice bit of decoration for the layout.

I am currently planning on incorperating a small shrine somewhere and thus wanted a small Torii gate. Using this excellent model from NeuroOrb and scaling it down to 20% gave me nice result. While very small, printing it lying flat gave good results on my FDM printer. And after a bit of painting the gate looked good enough for me to use (sometime in the future...)

 

 

The gate and a couple of items for reference 🙂

 

Edited February 6 by SwallowAngel