Kitbashed Shotengai Progress

[bill937ca]

Jeff and I have been discussing this for some time and it is time to share it with the list.

 

All over Japan you will find shopping streets, some of them covered usually near train or tram lines.  Photographers quite often take photos of trams or trains from inside the shotengai.  There is a shotengai on the tram lines in Nagasaki, another on the Hankai Electric Tramway near the tram depot. There is a shotengai on the street running section of Kiehan Otsu. In Tokyo there is a shotengai on the Tobu at Oyama,  the site of the original Greenmax store and on the Keio at Shimo Takaido where the Tokyu Setagaya ends on its north end.

 

There are several websites with photos of these areas, including syoutengai-net.jp, and tamagazou.machinami.net.

 

I wanted to add a distinctively Japanese feature to the layout. I took two sets of the Tomix 4008 shops and mounted the roof of Tomytec Visual Scene 055 Arcade A. While you could use Greenmax shops, the Tomix shops have a deeper false facade over the store front for mounting the roof on. The Tomytec roof is just the right length to cover three shops. The base is just a piece of styrene spray painted gray.

 

I have added signs included in the Tomix shop packages, a few figures, a vending machine outside the shotengai and a small advertising sign from the Kato Town Accessories 23-421 set.

 

I still need to darken the stores either with black construction paper, vending machines out front or stickers on the store windows. I want to keep the figures of out the tram sight line.  But that was part of the reason I took the photos. To gauge my progress better than I can with a naked eye.

 

I`m still waiting for some materials and summer is here so I`m going to take a break for a little while. But I do plan to add more details

[ToniBabelony]

Apart from the plasticy looks, it looks quite authentic. Making good progress here! :D

[Densha]

I think that weathering can do wonders, Toni. Not that I know exactly how to do it myself, but would love to learn it.

[Martijn Meerts]

Yeah, even a standard black wash will get rid of much of the plastic-ness of kits, and a black wash is something anyone can do :)

[cteno4]

those tomix shops are the worst for the plastic look and no detailed painting and details really. but good little generic structures that sort of look like the shotengai shops. they are great blank slates to do fun things with.

 

love this little project, been on my list to do for a long time and bill's doing it has got me to move it up the list. while its tough to be able to see whats going on inside, i think its one of those scenes thats really fun to do internally as if oriented correctly on the layout you could have a great view in one end to see the little detailed interior scene. perhaps a bit of internal lighting during the day to just make it pop a tiny bit. one of those fun things the visitor's eye might find, they always love treats like that and tend to be things they really remember long after.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[KenS]

Very nice concept, and it looks good.  Do you have a photo from above (the typical viewer's perspective from next to the layout)?

 

BTW, spray painting models with flat paint will do a good job of removing the "plastic" look.  That's hard with pre-built structures, though not impossible, but works well for kits. I usually repaint my models with a couple of coats of flat white as a primer followed by a flat color. If you like the original color but not the shine, you can use dullcote (a transparent flat paint usually added after adding decals). Adding a black wash last is probably a good idea, to fix the too-even "from the factory" look, or weathering in other ways. I'm not doing that at present, but may in the future.

[bill937ca]

This is a photo I took from above yesterday.  It wasn't the best day for light. The rain started early in the morning and continued until after midnight.  39.5mm in total. The color of the roofs of the Tomix 4008 look offish. Both ends should be gray and the middle red.  I think with better light this would have come out.

 

The base is temporary, made from scarp pieces of track bed.. I ordered extra a WS super sheet track bed but it has been delayed in arriving at the LHS due to a problem I wasn't aware of. I like the way this lines up the sidewalk edges on Tomytec buildings and the Kato bank  with the tram track pavement.

 

For the most I am using my Tomytec, Greenmax and some Tomix structures.  I find that the taller Kato buildings overwhelm the streets and since this version of the tram layout is built on cork bulletin board space is at a premium.

 

Many parts of the layout are unfinished at this time.