Segmental Layout - Ichiba

[Martijn Meerts]

That's a lot of interior detail, looking good!

 

[Junech]

A Fremo meetup and many club projects are taking up a lot of time, but I finally found a little time to spend on my N-scale projects.

 

First, the main building got its "glass" for the windows and 2 signs for the stores. On the inside, the inlays for the different floors are now glued in as well. Next will be thinking about the inside of the rooms. Especially the shops since you can look inside through the big windows. I'm still undecided about what will be on the top floors...

 

 

Some work on the diorama itself was done, too. I put down the road surface and painted it with the base color. A bit more weathering and markings until the streets are done. The bumper and the fence around it are set-up as well. And so are the sleepers that are put into the ground as a kind of fence between the street and the railway.

 

I also started to paint the platform, but a lot more work on that one.
 

[Junech]

The catenary Kamome is in planning (https://jnsforum.com/community/topic/19155-neon-noir-designs/?do=findComment&comment=265072), which gave me the idea of having it on the layout. But I wasn't sure how it would look with the tight curves I have.

 

So I printed the file he shared and calculated how far apart they would roughly need to be. I followed the NEM 201 norm for N scale and a narrow pantograph for the calculations. That left me with a maximum of 1.5 mm outside the track center to avoid losing contact with the wire. For curves, there was a formula for the lengths of the individual straight sections: 4*sqrt(radius*1.5mm). That gave me 72mm for the outside curve. To have an even amount of sections, I reduced it to roughly 65mm.

 

All together, it looks like this:

 

 

It looks quite tight, but Enoshima Electric Railway has some really close masts, too. So it shouldn't be a problem. I will need to think about my railroad crossing, though. Not much space left for the road between the masts. So either need to relocate the road or get a special mast.

I knew that there were masts I was looking for in German catenary installations, but I needed to search for one on Japanese railway lines. Luckily, I found one at Ogaki station:

 

With two of those I could put them on the outside where there is more space and still put the road in the planned position.

 

Another thing I need to look into is how they handle the masts in train stations. Will need to look into that.

 

[Junech]

Another small update to the diorama:

 

I started painting the second building while weathering the platform, which is finished now. I will now need to add details like the station name, safety posters, and so on. I thought about putting a big advert or something on the high wall at the back, but I didn't have a good idea. It could use the space of the four panels on the right side, I think.

 

 

For the platform, I also need to model the chairs for people to sit on while waiting, and together with the station sign, some safety posters, and people waiting, it should fill the emptiness quite nicely. And all that needs to be done before adding the roof (which still needs its lighting).

 

 

Another project I'm working on is the inside of the big building. Here a picture a little closer to the building:

 

As said earlier, the right shop is a bookstore, so I added three hints of bookshelves to the wall at the back of the store. The grey area will get a picture of a bookstore to give it more depth. The upper levels will be apartments. In the original building (which currently has 3 open apartments), you have a small room for your washing machine. So I added an interior wall, a sliding door, and something that will look like a washing machine through the windows, and a shelf on top of it. The big white area will get another picture showing the room. Some apartments will have curtains blocking the view inside, too. Already modeled a little thing that will hopefully look like clothes drying on a rack when painted. Let's see how that goes. I hope I can find a figure that looks like hanging up some laundry...

 

 

The building still needs lighting as well but I will do the interior first to see which rooms would look best with the lighting.

 

Maybe you guys have some ideas for the big poster/ad on the back of the platform.

[cteno4]

Making me realize on my mini onetrak i should be doing some of this and just cut small buildings into two pieces and then i can use the back and front on two different modules and get a tad more space if needed on smaller modules.

 

Then would be fun to detail the interior of the cutaway building for when it is seen from the other side. Some Tomytec buildings are headed to the bandsaw!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Junech]

Yes, those relief buildings give more space on smaller modules, but I do them on bigger ones too. In our club, I currently work on three relief buildings as well. All three were made from one kit with some 3D printed parts.

 

I like doing the interior of buildings when the windows are big enough to guess what is inside. Will need to look into bento stores now and see what can be done for the inside of the second store. The third store is still undecided and something were I could block the view through the windows would be nice since there is no space left after adding the windows and a sheet of paper for the interior.

 

[cteno4]

Ive seen a bunch of relief modeling on layouts when up against a wall, but only a few split open buildings like this on layouts. It’s interesting, but just a bit odd. But odd is not always bad as it can get folks to look close to scenes and thus then the rest of the layout. Easy to just cover over to begin with and then experiment with the detailing later. I do love doing interior stuff, but with n scale you rarely get to see any of it thru windows unless you put it right at your eyeball or are using a camera. 

 

With mini onetrak there is more freedom to choose the module size and aspect ration and move the track to fit your scene, but i can still see where it might not work out and an inch needed so splitting some buildings like this might be fun. Also point of mini onetrak is also focusing on little details more so just would be another kind of thing to draw folks closer.

 

thanks,

 

Jeff