My Tokuyama station layout

[Pauljag900]

Yep. Dust is an absolute curse! Deffo going to put one on mine next summer.

[NXCALE]

Nice work Eurostar25, your modules are looking good.

 

I do not have a spare room yet for a layout so I am still considering using part of my garage for it in the near future.

However, dust, insects and humidity comes to my mind as concerns.

 

Anyway, a magazine shows how some modelers protect their layouts.

 

Plastic cover

 

 

Newspapers

 

 

Plastic cover with a plastic frame

 

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Cheers,

 

Nxcale

[Eurostar25]

First attempts at night photography. Really happy with the street lights, can't wait to fit many more! They're mighty fiddley but worth it. Big thanks to Paul for his technical help along the way.

I don't think there's enough light but then again this is Tokuyama at night not Shinjuku so it might do for now.

 

[Pauljag900]

Ah,I forgot to mention how fiddly they are,but you re bang on mate,well worth it!

The whole layout takes on a completely new dimension at night,looks superb mate,good effort.

There ll be no stopping you now! Ha ha

[JR 500系]

Great job! It looks nice in the dark!

 

Cant help but notice there's a Toei bus that lost its way to Tokuyama

[Eurostar25]

Great job! It looks nice in the dark!

Cant help but notice there's a Toei bus that lost its way to Tokuyama

Haha I thought you might have noticed!

[Eurostar25]

Let there be more lights! Wired up the second half of the station and got LEDs into the family mart, power substation and the rental clerk's office. Really loving the lighting now, it was something I never planned on doing so I had glued most of the buildings and even the platforms down, so if there's one thing I could pass on to someone starting out, only glue down what you need to and use a PVA type glue that isn't too strong in case they need to be popped off in the future.

There's a few more lamp posts coming in the post, but I might look at the corner module next and mix it up with some yellow LEDs for the buildings. Thankfully the river scene doesn't need any!

 

 

[Pauljag900]

Let there be more lights! Wired up the second half of the station and got LEDs into the family mart, power substation and the rental clerk's office. Really loving the lighting now, it was something I never planned on doing so I had glued most of the buildings and even the platforms down, so if there's one thing I could pass on to someone starting out, only glue down what you need to and use a PVA type glue that isn't too strong in case they need to be popped off in the future.

There's a few more lamp posts coming in the post, but I might look at the corner module next and mix it up with some yellow LEDs for the buildings. Thankfully the river scene doesn't need any!

image.jpg

 

 

image.jpg

Wow! Looks awesome mate,got a feeling you should have ordered more than ten tho? Edited December 4, 2016 by Pauljag900

[cteno4]

Eurostar,

 

Looks great! Ha you've been bit by the lightening bug! It's really fun when you start seeing the cool effects you can dos with lighting! Really a different world.

 

Using the variable resistors helps as you can dim things down to what looks right. LEDs at the usual near full burn like little Suns and in trak life lights comes from a huge range of wattage soirces. Light also does not scale well as its intensity drops by the inverse square, and your depth of field is what makes lighting a model look just right from the position you are normally viewing from. Stand back further and the lighting won't look the same. It is.tricky. when I was young I did a lot of architectural and exhibit scale modeling and what the lighting folks would come in and do at the end for the shoot was absolutely magical. Even simple brown and gray chipboard models they could make come alive thru the camera lens!

 

Also light color can have big effects. Play with putting some pieces of colored papers in your structures behind the LEDs and you will see some interesting effects of the reflected light colors coming out of the Windows. Varying this helps make the scene look normal where you get different lights cast from different Windows. Varying the intensity in different Windows also makes things look very real! Even the color you paint the inside of structures will have a big effect on how the lighting looks coming out of the structure. Most interiors are white walls in real life, but folks usually paint model interiors black to seal them or use reflective foil. Both don't look the same as a primarily white interior with a few bits of color. You can use tee shirt paint (very thick acrylic craft paint) in white that works well to seal up light leaks and give you the usual white walls in one pass. Or after the black coat come back with a rough white coat.

 

I still have the programming to do here on the ardunio nano to have it thurnahh on and off up to 8 LEDs at random. This is another fun thing with lighting to play with!

 

One last thing with the gluing buildings down, I've moved to using magnets. You can get small rare neodymium (rare earth) magnets that you can then either solder or glue (using conductive glue) the led and power wires and glue a set of magnets with leads to the structure base, then pop on a matching set to them and a dot of glue to the bottoms of the second magnets and plop down where wanted. Then just drill a hole next to the layout magnet and snake the power wire thru and connect it up to your lighting bus. Then the structure can be pulled off the layout and power connections done all in one! This way you can come back and fiddle with the lighting easily (i.e. Adding or moving lights, adding walls, adding some color, adjusting brightness with internal variable resistors,etc) later by just plucking the building off! Even let's you share the building between modules/layouts. If you want to move them just scrape off the module magnets and reglue where desired. Even gives you a tad of wiggle room if needed.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[Eurostar25]

Thanks very much for the comments Jeff, I'll definitely look at playing with colour next, would like a traffic light set although it's a shame my intersections are all at the front of the modules so the signal would be facing the other way.

[JR 500系]

Great job! I really love what you did to that Toyoko Inn hotel, with its separately lighted lights and all! Really very realistic for a hotel!

[cteno4]

Great job! I really love what you did to that Toyoko Inn hotel, with its separately lighted lights and all! Really very realistic for a hotel!

Yes this is really nice! Very realistic to not have every window lit! Did you tape off some of the Windows or put in some light baffles and multiple LEDs?

 

Jeff

[Eurostar25]

Thanks for the comments. Its actually just 2 big 5mm LEDs at the bottom shining up into the hotel and the windows are just blanked out with black paint. The easiest solution I thought to achieving the same effect as I'm just starting out with this lighting gear. Luckily the windows themselves are opaque so they don't show any interior detail - not that there's any anyway. The only clear windows are on the ground level but I don't view it from there so should be able to get away with it. The platforms needed people and details as they're higher up the viewing angle.

[cteno4]

Great,Maoris very nicely and simple! Your lighting is just enhancing your already wonderful modules!

 

Lighting helps in the day as well as usually lights are on during the day! But again at scale it changes the effect some and usually the light levels that looks good in models at night don't look as good during the day! But it's better than no lights!

 

Jeff

[JR 500系]

Hi Eurostar25, just a suggestion, you might want to get these buses for your Tokuyama station diorama ~

 

防長交通（山口県）

 

From Coming Tomytec bus collection 21

 

 

Bocho Bus from Hiroshima bus centre set B

[Eurostar25]

Thanks JR500, I'll keep an eye out for them, always wanted some location specific buses but never knew what to search for

[JR 500系]

Thanks JR500, I'll keep an eye out for them, always wanted some location specific buses but never knew what to search for

 

No prob mate ~ Sorry for being such a perfectionist on the buses but I just couldn't help it ~~   :P

 

 

You would be looking for 'Bocho' bus, which seems to be the main bus company around Tokuyama station area, as shown in this goggle map pic:

 

https://www.google.com.sg/maps/@34.0521588,131.8034827,3a,75y,200.97h,91.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbATItZ2xVCKfnfZeicayAA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

But unfortunately, there isn't a lot of options when it comes to Bocho bus.... I would keep an eye out on the Bocho bus from collection 21 for you when it releases, as I might be able to get multiple copies of them hopefully. (if it is not the model that is highly sought after...)

[katoftw]

Bocho buses are pretty much it for southern Yamaguchi prefecture.  A couple of JR West buses also.  But Bocho has most routes sewn up.

Edited December 9, 2016 by katoftw

[JR 500系]

Great, I just found a video recording on youtube where an hour was recorded right infront of Tokuyama station to see the amount and type of buses passing through:

 

 

And yap they are mostly (if not all) Bocho buses, in basically 3 liveries, the basic green and white one, like this:

 

 

The Yellow and Blue striped one, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Kintetsu buses:

 

 

Bocho bus

 

 

Kintetsu Bus..

 

and the more rare white, marooned and orange one:

 

 

 

There also seemed to be a cartoon bus just for Tokuyama area, featured in 3:53 of the video...

 

 

 

PS - sorry for turning this into a bus thread!   :P

Edited December 9, 2016 by JR 500系

[Densha]

The Yellow and Blue striped one, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Kintetsu buses:

Well, that's not that strange considering that Kintetsu is the largest shareholder of Bocho. According to Wikipedia, Kintetsu owns 58.9% shares of Bocho Kotsu. ;)

[Eurostar25]

Have been a bit quiet lately on the layout lately, I've only got one more corner module to build then the layout will be completed and I can finally run the trains continuiously.

 

Lately I've been working on a set of NZ passenger cars as they ran in the TranzAlpine consist up until recently when the cars were parked up after nearly 70 years in service (other NZ forum members may be able to help with that time frame).

 

Up until recently the cars had to be scratch built until Shapeways came along and some talented local modellers began making them available. Shapeways however isn't the cheapest even in N scale but in the recent sales offer I thought what better time than now to buy one. So I ended up with a carriage and a van and then thought I better have a go at scratch building the remaining 7 cars and 1 van. My cars have kato bogies and rapido couplers underneath which look close enough to the bogies the cars had when in service.

 

I've slowly been going about making them, mainly from evergreen styrene but am coming up stumped as to what to use for the concertina covers that go between the cars. I'd like something in there to hide the rapido couplers but something that's flexible. I had used black card on my larger 1:64 scale models of the cars but thought there must be something easier in N.

 

The image below is of the blue cars I'm trying to replicate before they got parked up and replaced with brand new silver cars made in NZ.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tranzscenicpics/15277650867/in/album-72157607785834641/

 

Edited December 28, 2016 by Eurostar25

[cteno4]

Excellent!

 

there were some folded paper diaphragms that were done in japan. we had some posts here on it and i remember asking nariichi about them as they looked so cool. figure they could get held together with a small rare earth magnet. or use two magnets and have power sharing between cars!

 

looking forward to your build, very cool!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Eurostar25]

I must start looking harder Jeff! Thanks for the tip off.

These cars are made to 1:120 scale to keep with the N scale track. NZ120 being the popular choice for modls here running on N scale track.

They are a bit bigger than normal cars, like the Cassiopeia carriages. The carriage ends do come close to each other on the curves so card is probably the best bet, the widest curve I have is the kato viaduct curves. I did look at spare parts in the Cassiopeia case for the diaphragm covers but they're quite small in comparison and would contact the carriage ends on the curves so hence my search for something else.

[velotrain]

I just searched "n scale working diaphragm", and american limited models is the most common manufacturer mentioned.

 

I also found this - http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/208156.aspx

 

good luck

[Eurostar25]

Thank you Velotrain I was just reading that exact webpage

Like you say it seems the American limited products seem to be the best bet. I found one webpage talking about using a sponge and attaching a styrene template to the front. I guess its trying to find that alternate material than spending the money on the quality product i just can't think of anything that resembles the flexible material. In N scale it's probably best just to buy the commercial product!

Edited December 28, 2016 by Eurostar25