The Emperor's Train

Another friend from Peninsula Ntrak who collects Japanese trains is Richard Porter.

Here is Richard running his Kato model of the Japanese Emperor's special train on the AsiaNrail layout.

 

The train is shown here passing Paul's model of the Byodoin Temple Phoenix Hall.

He built this from a Fujimi kit.  The real one is in Kyoto and there is also a full sized replica in Hawaii.


Perhaps the Temple looks familiar even if you've never been there.  That's because the replica on Oahu's north shore is a favorite filming location and has been featured in the TV shows Hawaii Five-0, Magnum, PI, and Lost, and in the movie Pearl Harbor.


In this last view of the train the E58 locomotive is disappearing behind the banana trees on one of the more tropical areas of the AsiaNrail layout.

First Exhibition

July 8th, 9th, and 10th the Musashi-Koyama modules were part of the AsiaNrail layout at the 2011 NMRA National Train Show in Sacramento, California.  Over the 3 days the show was attended by more than 20,000 people.

Besides my 2 modules, all of the other modules were done by Paul Ingraham.  We were assisted with the setup of the layout and at various times the operation of it by Tom VanHorn, Phillip Cook, Richard Porter, and Mike Sheridan.

The layout consisted of several of Paul's junction and curved modules forming a irregular circle and 4 peninsulas going off from this covering an overall area of 20 x 20 feet. 



The 4 peninsulas represented Tokyo (my modules), Taiwan, South Korea, and a undecorated staging yard.


Here is a view of one of Paul's trains leaving Musashi-Koyama station.  Hopefully before the next showing of these modules I will get the grade crossings installed !

Independent from the main line operation we had a point to point passenger operation between the Tokyo and South Korea peninsulas using a wide variety of trains.  Here is a Super Ozora 283 train at the Musashi-Koyama platform.

We were joined by Phillip Cook of the Japan Rail Modelers of Washington DC.  He brought with him a nice selection of short passenger trains to run. Here he is operating the yard on the South Korea module which served as the other end of the point to point operation.

Everything worked well on the Musashi-Koyama modules and the trains ran smoothly.  A point did come loose on one of the Micro Engineering turnouts but I was quickly able to repair it.  I do consider this first outing for these modules to have been a great success and will be continuing to build the scenery for them and look forward to future exhibitions.

Ready to go !

The months of preparation leading up to the National Train Show have passed and it's time to actually display the Musashi-Koyama modules and run some trains !

Here is the module set assembled in my garage just prior to loading it for the trip to Sacramento.

There is still so much that I still want to do with buildings and details, and work on the modules will continue after this show prehaps at a somewhat slower pace.


If you are going to the show, look for the AsiaN Rail layout in area 813 which is right in the middle. 

Hours:  12:00pm to 6:00pm Friday, July 8th
            10:00am to 6:00pm Saturday, July 9th
            10:00am to 5:00pm Sunday, July 10th

Location:  2011 NMRA National Train Show
                Sacramento Convention Center
                1400 J Street
                Sacramento, California

Movable track bumpers

June came and went with only one post to this blog.  Part of the month Nona and I drove to the Dallas, Texas area to pick up a travel trailer that we had purchased.

Over this 4th of July weekend I have been making final preparations to take these modules for their first exhibition in Sacramento as part of the AsiaNrail layout. On Friday, I took the modules over the Paul Ingrahams place as he had most of the rest of the layout set up in his garage and we wanted to work out any bugs with getting the Musashi-Koyama modules into the layout ahead of time.  I am happy to say that any problems were small and have already been solved.

The modules can be used in a number of different ways and for this layout this is going to be an end of line terminal station.  The last thing one wants to the have a train overshoot the end of the line and fall several hundred scale feet to the floor !  So I needed to come up with some track bumpers.

What I came up with was to shape scrapes of 1/2 inch plywood and painting them a concrete color.  Then I drilled a pair of 1/8 inch holes and inserted 1/8 inch styrene tubes with Walthers Goo to secure secure them.
From the same pattern used to drill the holes in the bumpers, Holes are drilled on the center line of the roadbeds at each end of the module.  When this end of the module connects to another part of the AsiaNrail layout, the holes will be covered by connecting tracks.

Styrene strip was painted black, and then attached to the flat side of the bumpers.  Then some safety striping was cut from a sticker set and applied to the styrene.  These can now be moved to wherever they are needed depending on the use of the modules in a layout.

Modeling the overhead wires

Nearly all rail lines in the Tokyo area are electric.  The overhead wire support structures are in evidence in any photo of trains in Tokyo so I felt that this would be an important item to have on these modules.  This photo shows an extreme example of this.


Here is another look at my reference photo that was in last falls Streets and Buildings post.  A clear view of one of the overhead wire support structures is shown.




What I found to be the closest match to this were the Tomix 3000 series.  I used 1 set of the 3004 ( set of six 2 track ) and 2 sets of the 3005 ( set of three 3 track ) to get full set of 8 overhead wire support structures which are spaced at every 80 - 100 scale feet on the modules with spares of each of the three widths that I ended up with.










Middle insulators were removed on the 3 track versions.




On two of them a section in the center was removed and the two sides spliced to match track spacing.  These overhead wire structure models are made of the same type of plastic that many locomotive handrails are made of.  It is very difficult to glue together.  I found that I got the best results by placing a .010 thickness of styrene between the two halves.  I also laminated a .020 thickness of styrene on the top to add strength.


The kits come with horizontal cross members that attach to vertical poles.  There are notches on the cross members that hook into slots that go around the uprights.  I wanted some reinforcement to this so I added a bead of Walthers Goo.


Each set of Tomix overhead wire structures comes with a spue of mounts that were designed to work with the Tomix track.  I used these to make my own mounts.  The styrene tubing extends down into holes that I drilled into the modules and up to a height of 2 -3 scale feet.  When completed and placed on the modules, the bases will be painted the finished assemblies a concrete color.


The mounting bases were glued into drilled holes on both sides of the tracks.  Height adjustments were made so that the structures would be fairly level as shown in the photo.



Here is a view of the structures after painting along with a 651 Series Super Hitachi train.   The overhead wire support structures plug into the mounts but can be easily removed if needed for track maintenance.

Tempoary Ghost Buildings

With only 5 weeks before the first exhibit of the Musashi-Koyama modules it's time to focus on making them presentable for that show in their not yet finished state.  Most of the scenes towards the front of the modules are completed and its the large number of structures in the back half that still need so much work. Its those areas where temporary finishes will have to do for now.

This area at the left end of the module set had a styrene box that hid two switch machines.  Eventually I want to build a nice complex of buildings here but for now I created some paper buildings using Microsoft Visio and pasted them onto the box.



I don't want to have any white styrene showing. This is the entrance to the Palm Arcade as it is now.  All parts that were not already painted got a coat of Floquil CN gray.




Kato and Tomix built up buildings will be temporarily set in the spots where there are no permanent buildings and of course the addition of vehicles and people will help.

Finishing the Aoshima Apartments

Here is the Aoshima Apartment Building at an almost completed state and mounted on the left module.  Looks a little lonely right now but more buildings are coming.

Oops !, looks like I have lost one of the brown colored rail pieces on the lower right.  Hope it turns up or I'll have to make one. 


The base that comes with this kit seems way too thick.  I was able to compensate for this by cutting out part of the 1/8 inch cork that I have on top of the module then setting the building in as shown in this photo.

This is a view down a typically narrow street that parallels the railroad track with a wall between  the tracks and the street.

With all of it's balconies and exposed stairwells, this building is great for creating those moment frozen in time mini-scenes.  It's a part of model building that I enjoy and I've created a few of those.

In this photo a woman is seen carrying a bag of groceries up the stairs.  There is no elevator at the Aoshima Apartments and  maybe shes thinking the next apartment she rents will have to have one.




Here's someone exiting the building talking on a cell phone.  The item seen hanging over the rail of the 2nd floor on the left hand side is a futon.  Several of these come with this kit.      

In each entry there is a set of mail boxes that I am looking for just the right figure to place in front of.

This is really a great kit and it's been fun to build.  While I built this one very much straight out of the box I've got plans for another building using two of these kits that will be very much a kit bash.