And so it begins...

[railsquid]

No idea. It's one of those from this site, which doesn't give any details. It does look vaguely like western Japan for some reason, hmm the profile page says the creator is from Kagawa-ken (Shikoku) and the photos there look kind of familiar.

 

I do plan to toddle up to the Chichibu area and attempt to take some photos of my own one day, but that will have to wait a while.

Edited August 20, 2015 by railsquid

[railsquid]

And a teensy bit more progress. This ballasting business is kind of fun... and disguises the Tomix origins of the track quite nicely,

[railsquid]

And kind of getting there...

 

 

[cteno4]

Looks like you are having fun!

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

It's a most satisfyingly creative process, amazing how much detail a few inches can contain. Next job: lop a few mm off the walkway, which is designed with ungarnished Finetrack in mind.

[railsquid]

The local wildlife has waddled over to see what all the fuss is about.

[cteno4]

Cool, where is the penguino from? Perfect for one of those plastic sidewalk store advertisements!

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

The penguin is from Poppondetta.

 

Right, a bit more work on this section then it's on to the remaining 85% of the shelf part of the layout.

[JR 500系]

That's looking really nice squid san! I like the row of small houses in the rear!

 

I have to admire you being able to work on your layout even with a new born. I ought to be ashamed of myself being so lazy not touching the layout especially without a baby JR500 around...

[railsquid]

Thanks! It's only taken me a year to get this far... Actually most of that time was "planning", most of this has happened in the last 2 or 3 months. Also it's useful to have a small relatively self-contained section to start with, as I'm pretty new to this and the main section would be a bit daunting (especially as I haven't really planned it yet).

 

Luckily Baby Squid now sleeps very soundly and regularly so I can squeeze in an hour or two most evenings, and some weekends even. On the plan for tonight - add 3mm foam board between the tracks in the central segment (station area) to hide the Tomix faux-ballast shoulders, and prepare for ballasting (tedious, but worthwhile for the added realism).

 

The houses are actually temporary placeholders, I have other plans for that bit.

[Eurostar25]

Excellent work, good to see it coming together. It's amazing what you learn along the way too, as you find there are many ways of doing things! I found this on my small module; it's very rewarding in the end!

[cteno4]

Soon baby squid should be able to spread ballast for you with his Sanrio Shinkansen spoon! I'm sure baby drool works as good as dilute glue to secure ballast as well, just hold him over the tracks and I'm sure he will oblige! ;-P

 

Jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Baby drool? You mean ink right? :)

[railsquid]

The baby drool is reserved for polishing the lounge/dining room floor; we just attach a suitable cloth to his stomach.

 

I did hold him on my lap the other night while shunting locos back and forth, and he was following them intently while emitting coos of fascination and abstaining from trying to lunge towards them, which I take as a good sign. I must get the roundy-roundy part operational again soon, it has kept him occupied for tens of minutes at a time in the past.

[Kabutoni]

I did hold him on my lap the other night while shunting locos back and forth, and he was following them intently while emitting coos of fascination and abstaining from trying to lunge towards them, which I take as a good sign.

 

You will be amazed at how fast it will turn into grabbing attempts. Then the actual grabbing and testing of how quick it can turn into something else. I had to secure all my things and one or two magazines suffered some collateral while looking for pictures of steam trains (my son couldn't care less for Shinkansen). It takes time to learn for those little critters, but they will -eventually- treat the trains with the respect they deserve.

[cteno4]

The baby drool is reserved for polishing the lounge/dining room floor; we just attach a suitable cloth to his stomach.

Lol kind of like a track cleaning car!

 

I don't know I see adults behave as badly as babies at shows at times being grabby!

 

I think he just needs one token car to suck on!

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

There's a Brio-style wooden railway waiting for him to develop better sitting and hand/eye coordination skills ;)

You will be amazed at how fast it will turn into grabbing attempts. Then the actual grabbing and testing of how quick it can turn into something else. I had to secure all my things and one or two magazines suffered some collateral while looking for pictures of steam trains (my son couldn't care less for Shinkansen). It takes time to learn for those little critters, but they will -eventually- treat the trains with the respect they deserve.

He has already learnt how to grab, very quickly if he wants, and I'm not going to leave him along in a playpen full of model trains ;). We'll see how it goes. If he's a naughty boy I'll bring out the EF66 with spring worm drive which makes him cry ;) Edited August 27, 2015 by railsquid

[Martijn Meerts]

A spring worm drive makes even a grown man cry ...

[railsquid]

Progress is glacial, but at least ongoing. Apologies for the non-Japanese locos.

[railsquid]

Rest area in a patch of unused ground almost complete.

 

[kvp]

Progress is slow, but at least the quality is high!

[railsquid]

Here's some context (still work-in-progress) for the previous picture:

[railsquid]

A bit of ekimae emerges:

 

 

Lots of detail still needed, but works better than I expected.

[JR 500系]

I like the rural feel to it... It really feels like a local station! And the retaining wall also looks good like this, seeing it so tall it can be a station deep in the hills.. 

[railsquid]

I like the rural feel to it... It really feels like a local station! And the retaining wall also looks good like this, seeing it so tall it can be a station deep in the hills.. 

 

That's the intent :). I want to lower the retaining wall a bit there, as there's quite a lot of it and it looks a bit monotonous, but more important things to do at the moment, like the next segment, which will be slightly more urban.