13th Annual Japan Festvial Box Hill Melbourne, Australia - AJMRG

[linkey]

Hi All,

 

Sit down and hope you have a cup of coffee/tea with you while you read this.

 

Japan Festival 2012 (13th Annual Japan Festival) will be held at Box Hill Town Hall and Box Hil TAFE on the 20th May. Which Australian Japanese Model Railway Group will be there with their J-Module units and trains only (sorry no T-TRAK, as the member with majority of T-TRAK is in Japan)

 

But there is a long story to this and here is why you need your coffee...

 

On the 7th Feb, the Australian Japanese Model Railway Group got their invite to attend to the 13th Aunnal Japanese Festival via e-mail, but we have to fill out a form and send it back before the 9th March which that was easy for us to do and we thought okay we should be notified to let us know if we are accepted as this event is packed with lots of stalls and Japanese Events.

 

A member of the Australian Japanese model Railway group gets a phone call asking us for the form which we have already faxed of to the organising committee, but not just that we got another e-mail with the request for the filled out forms. So Brian had sent the forms again to the correct fax number and no reply. mmmm we wonder what is happening here?

 

20th March comes through and still no response from the Japanese Club of Victoria about our acceptance to Japan Festival 2012, e-mails are sent out the the club members questioning should we attend this event or make other arrangements and forget going to Japan Festival 2012. 24 e-mails going towards poor Brian in regards to this matter with a stalemate on voting 4-all but with 2 of the against going to Japan Festival would change to for if we are accepted.

 

As Brian is about to send an e-mail with the result of the voting, Brian gets a phone call (as he had managed to find another person to get in contact regarding to Japan Festival who was able to contact the organisers) and gets notified that we have been accepted. In which an e-mail was waiting in the AJMRG e-mail from Hiroshi Honda with his e-mail to me also accepting us to be there and here was his e-mail:

 

Hi Sarah,

 

Thank you very much for your enquiry 0n 28th March.

 

First, my apologies for taking time to reply. As I am pretty new to the job of Secretary and was not aware of all the conventions it took me some time to grasp the situation, and because of that I was not able to quickly reply to you.

I had to find your mail in my spam box in the first place.

 

Following Keiko's reply I checked with Kyoko and found out the following that:

1. AJMRG's application has been registered; and

2. she didn't send a confirmation to you because she has not done that with applications for free booths for a few years. The reason is that quite a few free booth users do not reply to our call and just turn up on the day of the Festival so she stopped sending confirmation back to the people and organisations who send in applications. Everyone apparently has been happy with this "arrangement".

 

So, I am now able to assure you that the usual space is reserved for you. We must have your display.

 

We look forward to seeing your members and display at the Festival.

 

Best regards,

 

Hiroshi

 

My response was a relief thank you to Hiroshi for letting us know, but also I was laughing at myself that all the stress in finding out if we have been accepted and finding out that they must have our display there :)

 

Jeff and Matthew is it possible if I can get that Omocha Express pamphlet sent to my e-mail address sarahbd@ajmrg.org.au so I can get copies made so we can hand them out at Japan Festival to help promote this wonderful idea from JRM and Iwate Model Rail group.

 

If anyone in Melbourne that would like to attend to Japan Festival 2012 - Box Hill event starts at 10am and ends at 5pm nearest train station is Box Hill train station and only a 5 min walk from there to Box Hil Town Hall.

[cteno4]

Sarah,

 

I'll get you a PDF for us sheet tues. Matthew has not gotten to making a A4 yet but maybe in the next day or so.

 

Sorry for all the headaches they put you thru! Luckily the organizers here in dc are pretty good on keeping in touch. We just got all our passes and vehicle passes yesterday.

 

Good luck with the festival!

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[The_Ghan]

linkey,

 

Is this a cheap copy of Jeff's April Fools joke?  If so, you're a couple of days late ...................... 

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[linkey]

linkey,

 

Is this a cheap copy of Jeff's April Fools joke?  If so, you're a couple of days late ...................... 

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

This is no joke guys, this has really happened within the past few days. As now the AJMRG are working out what our next meeting is going to be a working beee day or a admin meeting cause of the delay from the organisers of Japan Festival. I would never copy off Jeff's April Fools joke.

 

In fact I am asking for quality good photos of JR (E/W/K/C/H) Train staff (conductors/guards) would be the handy one cause we want to dress up for the part at Japan Festival. Knowing we will not be exact perfect like the JR (E/W/K/C/H) Train staff but it is all for a good reason.

 

The idea is that we have someone (namely me cause of past Japan Festivals) would dress up in the Train Staff Uniform and welcome people into our display, while we are doing that we can also hand out a flyer of the Omocha Express and the AJMRG flyer to the attendees.

 

The fun part is going to make the uniform within a month as we want it ready before the 20th May. So any assistance would be very helpful.

[keitaro]

i want to take my little layout to the nsw one they have as My wife knows some of the organisers.

 

but my layout sux to much and will poorly represent japanese railway modelling. 

 

however if anyone in nsw has a layout they would like to take to one i can see if i can find a contact

 

maybe if i build a better one i will take in the future.

[linkey]

Some bad news for us (Australian Japanese Model Railway Groups members) that we can't promote the Oomocha Express due to the festival organisers are promoting the Japanese Earthquake Relief at the festival and believes it will be a conflict (two different organisations), but still hoping to run my Laptop with the Oomcha Express details so people may have a look at it and we wil have pen and paper so we can write down the details (as it is not actually handing out flyers we can do this).

 

Otherwise we are all systems go for this event with a big range of trains running from Steam Passenger and Frieght trains to Electric Suburban/Limited Expresses to Shinkansens  (9600 Goods train, E231-0 Sobu Line train, 923 Dr. Yellow, 700 Hikari Rail Star and many more) running from 10am to 5pm with a change over every 30mins.

 

And if we had the T-TRAK layout we would of been able to run even more trains.... lol

Additional note we will be having a Module (non-completed) there jsut to show people the new home barrier for the shinkansen and have the E231-500 Yamanote (the new 11 car 4 door train) as a static display on the module.

 

So photos will be posted about a week after event (depending how much sleep the photographer gets)

 

Sarah 

[The_Ghan]

linkey,

 

I think you should just let the organisers deal with the earthquake relief thing.  It's their show, afterall.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

Sarah,

 

Sorry to hear this, but i would go along with the organizers as they are the ones in charge. This is a very common issue with events like this. We could not promote omocha express last year at the cherry blossom festival here in DC for the same reasons. it makes sense that they want a cohesive front on issues like this and the organizers probably dont want to the liability of some participant pushing something that may not be kosher as well.

 

As much as we would love the exposure its not worth getting you guys in bad with the organizers for the future. We have actually had the most luck with talking with smaller online groups and friends than with larger events and such. its odd, now what i would have expected, but fund raising is an odd beastie.

 

have fun with the show! thanks for the effort.

 

jeff

[linkey]

We're not going to push our relations with the JFC (Japan Festival Committee) as we have got these strong ties with them and after what had happened in the past few months it was like we were confirmed without us being notified about it. We always strive to keep our connects close as there might be something on the off-side that they would really like us to be involved with. (Sister City festivals, Cultural Festivals, etc)

[linkey]

Full report about the Japan Festival will be done soon, just been busy with other items come in hand. Oh, sorry folks we were running very busy and didn't take many photos at the event due to only having 5 people at the stall and crowd attendance was higher than expected in the afternoon.

 

Sarah

[linkey]

Hi Guys,

 

Just a photo for you to look at from the Melbourne Japan Festival on May 20th 2012, we were quiet for the first hour and then it just got busier so sadly we didn't get the chance to take a lot of photos but I thought I share this one:

 

Details is that the module is a 900mm x 300mm KATO standard Straight module that we use for our layout unit blocks, the Overhead Transit Station with the Yamanote line train next to the (923 Series) Dr. Yellow with the E2 Hayate (Tohoku) on the other side of the platform, as you can see by the photo we have a local platform and a Shinkansen platform with the barriers (not glued and not painted).

 

This is a mock up for the attendees to get to see up close to a display module and in the future with another two modules to be with this one will be added to get a full complete station platform with passengers and detailing done.

 

If you are on facebook the Australian Japanese Model Railway Group have created a facebook page and it is very limited at the moment as we will be updating soon after the 11th June which we will be at our next Exhibition at Waverley Model Train Show (Glen Waverley, Melbourne, Vic Australia)

[cteno4]

hey sarah,

 

thanks, glad it was fun. sounds like it was busy with just a few of you manning the layout.

 

is your facebook public to non facebook members? if so whats the link?

 

on the 900mm length, im curious what do you do for your track lengths for that.

 

glad you had fun!

 

jeff

[linkey]

hey sarah,

 

thanks, glad it was fun. sounds like it was busy with just a few of you manning the layout.

 

is your facebook public to non facebook members? if so whats the link?

 

on the 900mm length, im curious what do you do for your track lengths for that.

 

glad you had fun!

 

jeff

 

Australian Japanese Model Railway Group Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Australian-Japanese-Model-Railway-Group

 

we can fit 3x 248mm and 1x 62mm which gives us the extra space (±50mm) to place in the expander tracks on either end of the module to join the next module, but if you want to have a close enough like the T-TRAK you will have a bit of an overhang which you need to compensate with the othe two modules which would join to the rest of the layout modules.

[cteno4]

Cool I get ya. Have you had any issues with the expander tracks. We used them in the early setup on the fly JRM layout but found them problematic in some situations, so slowly worked them out od the layout plans to remove one variable.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[linkey]

Jeff,

 

We have found a few faults to the expander track:

1. Part of the plastic middle piece of the expnader track somehow raises and derails to train unless we go the opposite direction.

2. Not easy to take off even with a flat head screw driver.

3. We have had one expander track fall apart.

4. Cleaning the expander track isn't easy.

 

Otherwise we are looking at how the T-TRAK is able to do it so well and we might be able to do the same with the KATO Standard modules or even move into TOMIX track on the KATO standard base.

 

Sarah

[cteno4]

Sarah,

 

thanks, interesting. i wonder if some of derails were due to the middle piece rising up, i dont remember seeing that as an issue.

 

our big problem was we used it to take up slack in our complex old jrm set up on the fly layouts. they seemed to be a big variable set up to setup but different each time, but always an issue somehow, somewhat.

 

the main thing we ended up diagnosing was that they hated to be right next to curves and 90 degree crossing and points. im guessing its due to the offset of the rails in the expander section and trucks getting pushed against that from coming out of a curve or point. the 90 degree crossing had something to do with the fact that many flanges are taller than the flangeway in the kato crossing. perhaps the lift of the expander center section caused it to be too much jumping up and down to have both right next to each other.

 

i do remember them snagging the cleaner cloth!

 

folks have used them some on ntrak modules as easier ways to connect modules that use unitrak on on or both modules and report they work well, but in those cases they are usually on long straight aways.

 

on the new jrm sectional layout we use the ttrak style connection using the unitrak connectors with track ends like 1mm off the end of each module. works great. only issue is if you have a track going at an angle it can be a problem. we have one track like this at a 15 degree angle off straight through and its not too bad to get it connected. we were prepared to just trim the unijoiner way down to make it slide in better, but we have not yet had to do this. since we have at least 4 tracks crossing each section joint there is a lot of grip there. we also built in two wooden pins into the end of each module (one in each module alternating) to take the major strain if the layout is bumped. also helps line things up well to join 4-6 tracks at once.

 

one issue with joining up modules like this is with viaduct track thats floating on kato piers with s joiners. even though the piers are glued down the force on the viaduct sections on the piers has broken off some of the piers from the modules. on the modules where the viaduct is screwed down to the module base structure (ie in tunnels or the station) this is not an issue. so far its been ok and we are thinking of either creating very solid piers for the floating viaduct areas or going to totally floating piers in the viaduct area, but it has some odd track crossings at the ground level that might prevent this. anyhow its not been a horrible issue other than watching that the viaduct track joints are flush at the junctions due to the piers not being perfect.

 

the only other issue is to just check all your track joints at the module breaks to make sure they are sitting nice and level. we have found a few want to pop one side higher for some reason (probably a fraction of a mm difference in the module thickness between the two) so putting in a small shim of 020 styrene does the trick usually. we used screws to put the track down do its easy to adjust some by letting off of screws and such. again the viaduct seems to be where we have more issues with this than ground level track right on the module top. also im sure there is a little thermal and moisture (even though the modules are well sealed all over with varnish) expansion and contraction that can cause issues.

 

cheers

 

jeff