H0e forest railways with H0 branch line

[Martijn Meerts]

Can't say I've had many problems with derailments since I've been using Peco track. The only issues have been where the loco itself is causing it, or I've messed up laying the track. Other than that it's really smooth.

 

[cteno4]

When I was younger I was much more into the full 16 car shinkansens. The club layout gave us room to run them and have a 2m station for them and even a full yard for them. But as time went on I’ve come to appreciate shorter trains and the benefits of not having to create a layout that can handle long trains. Something nice getting things down to a more compressed essence for modeling.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

42 minutes ago, Martijn Meerts said:

Can't say I've had many problems with derailments since I've been using Peco track. The only issues have been where the loco itself is causing it, or I've messed up laying the track. Other than that it's really smooth.

 

 

Glad to hear that as I'm planning to use Peco track for most of this layout. All I have so far is a few pieces of concrete tie flextrack. I love how it looks.

[gavino200]

26 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

When I was younger I was much more into the full 16 car shinkansens. The club layout gave us room to run them and have a 2m station for them and even a full yard for them. But as time went on I’ve come to appreciate shorter trains and the benefits of not having to create a layout that can handle long trains. Something nice getting things down to a more compressed essence for modeling.

 

jeff

 

I shortened the Shinkansen I'm running to 6 cars, and my new Yamanote to 7 cars, and watched them running for a while. I made a couple of observations.

 

1. What Squid says is very true. At this length, the eye can take the whole train in at a glance. At the longer length you only "see" part of the train at one time. It's sort of a three stage perception. Front, middle, End. As a result the train looks more plain. You spend a decent bit of time taking in the plain-looking middle part of the train by itself. When you see the whole train a once you see both cabs with their orange paint at once. The whole train looks significantly more pleasing aesthetically.

 

2. When you see/percieve the whole train at once, it gives the illusion of being further away. You have to be quite far away from a train to see it all at once. This seems to give an illusion of a more expansive space - Looking at a large thing from far away.

 

3. When the train fits in the station with lots of room at both ends, it gives the illusion that the station itself is very large. It looks much better than when the train just barely fits.

 

4. The length of the track itself is a much larger multiple of the train length, I think this also contributes to making the layout feel larger - more real

 

5. I can't comment on derailment yet, but the shorter train is definitely easier to assemble on the rails.

 

6. I always assumed that a longer train would look better and more real. But it seems that, at least for me, and how I perceive, the opposite is true.

 

I think I'll stick with this shorter train length, and stop buying the add-on sets.

Edited December 9, 2021 by gavino200

[Martijn Meerts]

I guess I'm a bit weird in that regard. In n-scale I really like long trains, which is why when I buy a new one, I always get the full set with all the addons. It's also why I really wanted a large yard and large main station to handle long trains. And while I'm more interested in JNR stuff these days, they still have some rather long trains.

 

For H0 however, I'm much more intrigued by mostly shorter trains. I think it's because they tend to have more detail, and there's more to look at for each loco, freight car and coach. This is especially true for the brass kits I think, because they often have more detail than RTR plastic models. Also, because you build them yourself, you really want to be able to appreciate them more when running on the layout.

 

In the end though, seeing any good looking train running on a good looking layout is great, no matter how long or short it is.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

So, after clearing part of the attic I came across a couple of old wooden CD racks that I'd started using as base for a photo plank. I have 2 of them, and neither has really progressed very far. For the H0j one I tried using the Woodland scenics foam roadbed, but it turns out hand spiking track on foam doesn't work well at all. Most of the foam was removed again, but the surface needs a little work. I'll then glue on a strip of soft plywood which takes the miniature spikes much easier. For the H0e plank, I still need to build a turnout. I should be able to get that done fairly quickly now that I can actually reach my workbench again.

 

I'm also going to order some TT flex track sometime soon-ish, so I can start experimenting with the minimum radius needed for the 9600 and C55. I've not been able to find any info on that, other than seeing IMON's own smallest radius curves. It is however a rather essential bit of information for designing any sort of layout. It will also be a quite large factor in determining whether I want to do both an N-scale and H0 scale layout, or need all the space for the H0 scale layout.

 

I'll also need to order a lot more sleepers and pieces of rail. I thought having a few thousand of them would get me quite a ways, but you go through them really rather fast even when just experimenting with them 🙂

 

(Also, I have my eye on a couple of passenger coaches, as well as possibly a cheap filament 3D printer for easier / faster / less messy prototyping of parts before making the final parts on the resin 3D printer. And a laser cutter would likely be very helpful considering I need to make most things from scratch .... )

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Picked up a Flashforge Adventurer 3 filament 3D printer this week. It's a lot less messy and a lot easier to get a print started, so it's great for prototyping and doing a quick print of some detail bits to see if they fit before then printing them on the resin printer.

 

To start with, I've been working on printing some bits for IMON's plastic Tora 6000 and Wamu 50000 kits. Essentially these are made for 16.5mm gauge and the only adjustments look to me to be a metal bracket to hold a special set of 12mm axles. However, all the underfloor detail and axle boxes and the like are still just positioned for 16.5mm, which to me looks wrong. I'm basically replacing the metal bracket with a 3D printed one that holds regular 12mm axles, at which point I can move all the detail bits further in.

 

What's interesting though, is that even World Kougei does this with their kits. The upper picture show what to me looks like it should be for 1/87 12mm. The bottom picture looks like they just grabbed a 1/80 16.5mm kit, downscaled it to 1/87, and used longer axles.

 

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Some work on a custom bracket to hold IMON's more standard 12mm axles. This is the 5th iteration and is now almost usable. I need to make the whole thing longer by about 0.1mm since it has a bit too much play at the moment, and then shorten the 2 little beams that strengthen the whole bracket. The little pilot holes on the inside will be drilled out, and then have a little brass cup installed, which makes the wheels spin much more freely, and won't start digging into the plastic.

 

 

These things print quite well on the filament printer, so I might actually not even try printing them on the resin printer. None of this will be visible once the car is fully built anyway, unless you physically take the car off the track and flip it around 🙂

 

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Very slowly I've been getting a bit more motivation to work on some train stuff recently. For the most part it's still just experimenting with the 3D printed parts for the Wamu and Tora. I think I have a bracket now that will do the trick. I've also sanded down some detail on the bottom of a Tora that should be there in the first place, and which had to be removed either way to adjust the car for "true" 12mm gauge.

 

I've been testing this bracket with the wheels of my Wafu for now, so if everything works out, I'll need to order a whole lot of wheel sets. I currently have a total of 4 Wamu and 3 Tora (or 4 Tora and 3 Wamu, can't remember), and I'll need replacement wheels for all of them. That means I'll need to check with RG-Rokko to see if they can get me those wheel sets. While I'm at it I'll likely also see if he can get me a Kiwa90 kit. It obviously doesn't really fit with my steam locomotives only idea, but it's a cute little train, and era wise it would actually fit in rather well.

 

Also took the C55 kit out of storage, and tried to figure out what I had done, and what I was working on before I took a break. I had just finished most of the frame and started looking at the boiler. But I'll probably build the tender first, I need something a easier than the boiler and all the details to get back into it again. Of course, that's after I spend some hours trying to decipher the "manual" 😄

 

In the meantime, I'm still slowly cleaning up the attic (again, it's like a never ending / recurring task) during the few hours of spare time I have in the week. I also have an old layout built by a friend, which I bought for my father some years ago. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before. We had it in the garage for a while so my father could run some trains after he was unable to get up to the attic. I've kept it even after it was no longer used, and eventually cut it into various sections so I could move it up to the attic and set it up there. However, it uses very tight Minitrix curves and the small turnouts, so anything other than short freight cars doesn't look good, and most Japanese trains won't run on it at all. So I've decided to disassemble it completely rather than keep it around and take up space.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Well, the old layout is now at my brother's place. He did show some interest in it a long time ago, but it sort of got forgotten. I mentioned it again over the weekend, and he came and picked it up. 

 

To get back into things a bit again I started building a right-hand #6 H0e turnout for a diorama / photo plank I started a long time ago. It's been a while since the previous turnout, so I had to go through the instruction videos again. I did that a bit too late though and messed up the frog a bit. Not too much of an issue considering it's just a diorama, but something I need to keep in mind for the next one. I haven't completely finished the turnout yet since I want to add hinged points rather than solid points. I do prefer the look of solid points, but hinged points is actually prototypical. The problem with hinged points is that I need some Micro Engineering rail joiners, which seem to be pretty much impossible to get here.

 

I'll need to order them from Fast Tracks probably, in which case I also want to order some other bits and pieces I'm "missing", such as a #4 H0e turnout fixture, a bunch more rail and sleepers, and a rail bending tool. However, I first need to wait for the Kiwa90 / Wamu50000 / Tora6000 order to come in before I spend another large amount of cash.

 

Motivation is still not really back, but at least I can work on it a little bit now and then, so I guess that's something at least.

[Martijn Meerts]

I worked a little bit on 1 of the 2 diorama's / photo planks I started a long time ago. To get back in to things I built a right hand #6 turnout. I had more or less forgotten exactly how to build them using the Fast Tracks fixtures, so I did make a bit of a mistake with the frogs on this one. No much of an issue for this diorama of course, since it's all static anyway.

 

Overview of the diorama. The sleepers are glued down, the track is not spiked yet. The straight track is sort of a 'main line', so the sleepers are relatively close together. The diverging track has some more spacing. I'll probably make the diverging track a dead end. The spacing on the bridge is a lot closer, since this bridge is also meant to be a footbridge for people working on the railroad.

 

 

Close up of the bridge section. All the sleepers still need some weathering and I'll probably break some of the ones on the bridge completely.

 

 

The other end of the diorama. The diverging route looks a bit weird, but it's a forest railway, so everything is possible 🙂 

 

The turnout itself isn't done yet, it's currently going straight and diverging at the same time. I still need to make the hinged points on it. I also want to experiment a little bit with the throw bar. Fast Tracks uses a pcboard sleeper to act as the throw bar, but that obviously looks rather rough and not very prototypical. 

 

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Got a little more work done ..

 

Some of the sleepers dyes using the Dye-na-Flow fabric dues. I've used dark brown, burnt umber, black and white, and just went all Bob Ross and mixed the various colours to get to what seems a decent colour. All sleepers are painted separately, so they'll all have slightly different colours. They look a bit dark, bit this is a good look for fairly new sleepers. I also added some ballast just to check the final-ish look. It all looks really new, but after painting the rail a rust colour, and then adding some weathering, it should all come together nicely.

 

Also, on the actual layout I'll have multiple types of track. The idea is to have sort of a 'main line' idea which goes around to delivery and pick up passengers and goods. From there, at certain points on the line, there will be branches that lead up to forests / mines / quarries / whatever, where cars are being filled and prepared for pickup. This 'main line' will look like the picture, the branches will get bigger sleeper spacing and look much more abused. 

 

 

Made the bridge look somewhat older and abused by breaking off some bit and cracking some of the sleepers. Also dyed it the same way as the sleepers in the first image. I went and made 1 sleeper partially black to sort of simulate maybe something like burnt wood. These sleepers are quite dark again, and they look even darker in the picture than they really are. The bridge will also get some planking on top, which of course will also be partially broken.

 

 

A quick mockup of the Kiso Baldwin on top of the bridge.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

A while ago I ordered the VMS "sand and ballast freeze" glue. I wanted to try it for glueing down ballast, since it seemed to have a few advantages over the old diluted white glue method.

 

I tried it on a tiny bit of ballast around some sleepers and I have to say I'm quite happy with the results (it's not fully dried here yet):

 

 

The advantages I'm seeing, is mainly that there is very little discolouring of the ballast. On the picture, part of the ballast is glued, and part is not. I't not easy to see the difference. Another advantage is that it dries up completely transparent (makes sense, the glue itself is transparent), and completely flat. There's no sheen or any sort of film over the ballast, it more or less looks like it's not been glued down at all.

 

This stuff is also ready to go from the bottle, there's no need for pre-wetting with IPA or 'wet water' or anything. Just drip it on straight from the bottle.

 

Of course, the major disadvantage is the price. It's quite a bit more expensive than diluted white glue. I'll use it on this diorama at least to glue down the ballast, and then see if I want to continue using this, or go back to white glue.

 

 

[cteno4]

I’ll place its a bet it’s diluted matte acrylic medium.

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Quite possible yes. Much of the VMS stuff isn't really new, but they do seem to improve on things a bit. Their CA glue is quite a lot better than other CA glues I tried, and of course their metal prep works a lot better than other things I tried.

 

But yeah, pretty sure you can mix your own at a much lower cost. I don't know yet how much ballast I can glue with a single bottle of the sand and ballast freeze, but it seems to be pretty effective at least.

[Martijn Meerts]

While preparing the H0e diorama for some Sculptamold and some rock castings, I figured I'd continue a bit with the C55 kit. I had completed the basic frame of both the loco and the tender to the point where it could run, but after that I was a little bit hesitant to start working on the bodies. The loco body has a ton of detail and I really need to think about in which order to add those details first. The tender body has a rather terrible set of instructions, so it's very much a trial and error, and dry-fitting pieces before soldering anything in place.

 

 

This is a quick mockup of the main body of the tender. Only very few bits are soldered in place, and if they are, they're soldered in a way I can easily de-solder them if needed. For most of the parts I'm fairly certain where they go, so just a matter of testing now.

 

In front of the tender, a little box with lots of small detail bits (these aren't all of them) that have to go on the tender somewhere 🙂

 

Also, I've managed to get a hold of an IMON C11 kit through an auction. It was a bit more expensive than I hoped, but these kits don't show up that often, and I had already started considering getting a pre-built C11. The IMON C11 is something I was already looking at before I got into H0j in the first place, so even though it's not my first H0j kit, it is sort of the one that started it all.

 

That said, I'm now also 95% certain I'll be selling some of my N-scale trains, partially to fund the H0j project, and partially so they actually get some running time. A lot of them have only been out of their box once to take a picture of them. And, if I do continue with the N-scale project, I'm also certain now that I'll go for mostly steam and general JNR trains, and none (or very few) modern trains.

 

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Got some more work done on the C55 kit ...

 

Added a bunch of detail to the front of the tender. Most of this was a soft type of metal. Not exactly white metal, since the melting point was way higher, but not quite brass either. Anyway, it's not easy to solder this stuff, mainly because the parts are so small, it's hard to keep them in place. It's probably better to glue these kind of parts in place. Still a few things left on this side, and I need to fix a broken lever.

 

 

Rear of the tender, only just started adding detail, so still quite a bit to go.

 

 

Quick mockup of the tender with the WaFu 22000 to see how things look. Not too bad really 🙂

 

 

For the rear of the tender I seem to be missing another part. In the manual the part is clearly visible on the pictures, but there's no part number attached to it. I had this same issue with a different part, also for the tender. That part is on the way now after RG-Rokko got me a replacement. Before I ask them about this part I'll probably want to check if I'm missing more things, I don't want to keep asking him for parts.

 

I also just realised that these parts may be specific to the C55-57, so they may actually be in a different bag, but I would expect that to be mentioned somewhere if that were the case. Either way, I'll check the bags, and it it's missing, I'll make a note of it, and then send another email off to RG-Rokko once I know if I'm missing more parts or not. It's a bit annoying, but at least it seems IMON is quite helpful with getting replacement parts.

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Once again, got a little more done the past days.

 

Since I'm missing another part for the tender, which I really should solder on before potentially gluing on the really small bits, I decided to try and continue on the loco itself.

 

The loco has a TON of parts, many of them are not very visible on the building instructions, so the general progress goes much like:

• Spend an hour trying to find what goes where on the building instructions
• Spend half an hour trying to find the correct part
• Spend another half an hour to test fit various parts
• Go back to trying to read the instructions
• Test fit for another hour
• Spend about 5 minutes soldering 2 parts and pray it's correct

 

So, progress is quite slow, and I'm constantly rather terrified something goes wrong. It's possible to de-solder parts of course, but it's not always easy.

 

Anyway, I did a quick mockup of the boiler and cab. The boiler has a few details bits added. The cab isn't soldered on yet (nor does it have a floor), and the roof is also just quickly place on top just to get an idea. Seeing it like this definitely makes it look like a locomotive, and does help with the motivation. (Which promptly drops again after seeing the hundreds of parts still left to add ;))

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Work continues on the C55...

 

 

I have started adding a lot of the detail parts on and around the boiler. Most of the parts on the picture are already soldered on, the exceptions being the smoke stack and the cab's roof. Most time is actually spent trying to figure out which parts goes where, and then figuring out its position. The instructions do have some detail shots, but unfortunately they're somewhat blurry.

 

I've started soldering on the cab to the boiler as well. It wasn't a very good fit, and again the instructions were rather lacking with exactly how to build the cab. I think I've got it correct, but even so there's quite a bit of a gap between the cab and the top of the boiler. I'll have to see if I can somehow fill it with solder, or otherwise use some putty. 

 

I did also find another missing part, although there's still a chance it was mislabeled, and I'll find it in the next bag of parts. I did mention it to RG-Rokko, but I won't ask them to check with IMON until I'm closer to finishing the build. I don't want to ask them for replacement parts every time I'm missing one. Makes more sense to get them all in one go should more parts turn out to be missing.

 

All in all, I'm actually quite happy with the progress, and the thing is starting to really look like a locomotive now.

 

[gavino200]

This looks amazing, Martijn! I think I may have asked you this before, but if so I don't remember the answer. What's the strategy for painting and detailing. Are you going to have to partially disassemble again in order to paint the parts?

[Martijn Meerts]

It's all soldered, so there will be little to no disassembly 🙂

 

I'll paint the frame and shell separately using an airbrush, and hand paint the cab interior. Most of the detail parts on the train will just be JNR black, with some white striping here and there, and some copper for some of the wiring/plumbing on the boiler.

 

I do have to remove the wheels and running gear of course, which is why I've not added all the drive rods yet.

 

But, painting is still a ways off, I still have hundreds of bits left to add 😀

 

[Martijn Meerts]

More progress... 

 

 

Started adding more detail bits, just slowly working through the pile of parts that need to be added. Progress is still quite good, even though it doesn't really look / feel like it due to each part taking quite a bit of time to add. I still need to fix a couple of things, like the walkway along the side, which is a bit messy. I've also not really started on the cab yet at all. All in all, it's coming together quite nicely, and is already quite heavy, and that's without the additional weights added 🙂

 

I do at times feel like I'm progressing too slow, and want to work on something a little less difficult, but on the other hand, if I do that, it might take too long to get back to the C55. Although, the Kiwa 90 is rather tempting to start working on 😄

 

[Martijn Meerts]

No new pictures (yet), but adding details is still ongoing.. At some point the details added don't make much of an impact, so posting a picture every time 2 or 3 things get added doesn't really much a lot of sense 😄

 

I've concentrated mostly on the right side of the loco for now, most detail parts are installed now, and also started working on the smoke deflector. That turned out to be rather challenging because there's no tabs or anything to indicate where the smoke deflector should be soldered to its bracket. After I soldered it on, it looked wrong initially, but comparing it to the pictures on the instruction it was actually pretty close to perfect.

 

I've also started working on all the plumbing, wiring, sanding pipes etc, which is another challenge since most of that isn't pre-formed. You just have several brass rods in various diameters which you cut to length and bend in the right shape. For the sand pipes going from the sand dome alongside the boiler, the manual shows some parts that aren't numbered, so those might be missing. I do still have a lot of parts to go from the parts bag I'm currently working on, and I'm not sure what many of the remaining parts are, or where they should go yet.

 

I have at least managed to not put the C55 aside and start working on the Kiwa 90, so I guess I'm getting better at sticking to 1 project at a time (sort of anyway 😉 )

 

In the meantime, I'm looking at picking up a few of these https://www.imon.co.jp/MODELS/goods421.MBR/tomu5000 ...

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Me being me, I've been hopping between a few projects again. The C55 was sort of on hold because it was getting a bit difficult to see the small details with the small desk lamp. By now I've bought a daylight lamp with magnifier, so I should be able to get things done again.

 

In the meantime, I've also been doing a bit of work on the T-Trak side of things. I bought a set of ink cartridges for my ancient inkjet photo printer. I'm planning on trying to print some patterns on card stock to see if I can some textured look on the side of buildings. It's mainly for walls with textures that are impossible to laser cut / cricut / 3d print, or wouldn't make sense to do any other way than just print them.

 

Lastly, I've been working on the IMON plastic H0j Tora 6000 and Wamu 50000 kit. I've started building 1 of each to see how they go together, and how my customisations to the cars work. The kits fit rather well, but they're quite soft plastic and many parts have been slightly warped. They're easy enough to straighten by just building them, but you do need to be a bit careful that you go too fast and glue bits together before other bits have fully set.

 

This is the IMON Tora 6000, IMON Wamu 50000 and World Kougei Wafu 22000. The Tora still needs the frame glued in, but it does show the custom bracket I 3D printed. I did notice the base was slightly too high, so I lowered it by about 1/10th of a millimeter on the outsides and printed a couple of new ones for the Wamu 50000.

 

For the Wamu 50000 I also glued in some small brass cup bearings that hold the wheels in place and make sure they turn smoothly. The Wamu 50000 still needs some underframe details added, and then finish gluing the roof. After that I can glue the body onto the frame.

 

I have to say, the Wamu 50000 doesn't look bad next to the Wafu 22000. Obviously the Wafu 22000 is quite a bit more detailed, but for the price of the Wafu 22000 you can buy something like 20 Wamu 50000s 😄

 

Once everything's painted and lettered, I'm fairly certain the difference in detail won't be all that bad. I'll likely also improve the Wamu 50000 a bit by removing the molded grab bars, and creating some bars from some brass wire. For air hoses I'll first see if I can do something with brass as well, and otherwise see if they're printable on the resin printer.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

I glued most of the bits of the Wamu 50000 in place. It took a few days, but that's mainly because I only worked on it in the evenings after work. However, if you have a weekend to work on them, you could essentially built several of them in a single day. The great thing is, even if they're a bit off, it really doesn't matter considering these cars will likely have been well worn anyway. After having worked with quite a few brass kits, these plastic ones are laughably light though. Every time I pick up the Wamu 50000 I forget it's nowhere near as heavy as the brass Wafu 22000 😄

 

It's still not completely done, the chassis needs a little work as it's still a bit warped. I also likely need to insert some weights somehow. So for now I'll not glue the body onto the chassis yet.

 

 

 

Couldn't resist doing a quick mockup of the partially built C55, partially built Tora 6000, fairly complete looking Wamu 50000 and fairly complete looking Wafu 22000. I have to say, seeing this definitely helps with the motivation. It's starting to look like an actual train.