Videos of Bay area Japanese N scale

Besides building the Musashi-Koyama modules and collecting Japanese N scale trains, I also belong to an Ntrak group called Peninsula Ntrak and do quite a bit of American prototype modeling.  I almost always bring one of my Japanese trains to our Ntrak layouts and am often joined by one or more of the other club members who also collect Japanese trains.

We recently were invited to set up a layout for a 15 day exhibit called Trains and Planes at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California.  During this long run Earl and Julia Jackson brought their video camera and took several nice videos of the layout and put them on YouTube.  Here are two that relate directly to Japanese modeling.

Sunrise Corner had been one of the club's original corner modules was about 18 years old with worn scenery when Earl and Julia rebuilt it as a Japanese village.  This is now one of our most popular modules and we use it in every layout. 

Joe Freese models both European trains in HO scale and Japanese trains in N scale.  Here is a short video of his JR 181 Toki limited express passing by the Sunrise Corner module.

Free graphics available

I have started a new page on this blog to share some of the graphics that I have created in the building of the Musashi-Koyama modules.  The graphics will be listed one page at a time and will be in Adobe PDF format.  Each will have a jpg photo and a link to access the PDF file.

The first couple of offerings are on the Free Graphics page now.  These are some printed buildings I made for use in the background.  In the near future, I'll have some signs that I've made and other items will be added from time to time.

Great modeling, just not N Scale

Not too much new to report on the Musashi-Koyama modules as I've been busy again on DCC decoder installations and am also rebuilding one of my Ntrak modules.

One thing that I would like to share a bit of is our visit to the Edo Museum during our trip to Tokyo last November.  Edo is the old name for Tokyo and this museum covers the history of the city through the ages up to the current time.  Of course one of my favorite parts were the many large model displays showing typical life in Tokyo. 

Due to lighting and reflections on most of the model displays, the best shots were of this diorama of a typical street scene that I am thinking is in the 1880 - 1900 period of time.



The dioramas appeared to be close to O scale, or 1/48.  They all had this level of detail with thousands of model figures.  This particular display ran through a night cycle where the overhead lights dimmed and the building and street lights came on.


There were also a few buildings that the roof would lift off during the night part of the cycle and the detailed interiors became visible.

We spent about half a day here and really enjoyed it.  The Edo Museum is easy to get to by train or subway and easy to find.


The building itself is quite unique as seen in this streetview photo.

They have an english language Website with full details.

First attempt at inside store details

There have been some great looking interior building details done on a few of the blogs that I follow and I wanted to try this myself.  While I had done some interior details before on such buildings as a interlocking tower or a gas station, this would be the first time I have attempted this on some sort of retail store.  I am currently working to finish the block of Green Max stores and selected a dry cleaning store to try it out on.

The first step was to create a believable floor so I used Microsoft Visio to make a simple pattern and printed that on white paper and glued to the base.  The tiles scale out to about 16 inches.




Next I needed just enough detail parts to make it look right.  I made a pair of counters from scraps of styrene with one having a cash register and the other having a pole / rail to hang finished cleaning.  This was made of .010 brass rod.

I only had to detail the front half of the building as the back half, the actual dry cleaning plant will be hidden by an interior
wall.



I then went back to the computer and created what I thought would be the appropriate wall features again using Microsoft Visio.  A photo of a dry cleaning trolley system was found then reduced and added to the wall to simulate the room beyond the wall.  As I  don't yet know how to incorporate Japanese characters into a sign I could print, the price list is just gibberish that will be too small for anyone to actually see.  This was then glued to the inside walls of the front of the building.


Interior details won't be seen if they are not lighted. I added 2 bright LED light boards from Atlas engines with the LED bent down from the ceiling.


Here is the finished dry cleaning store with the LED's on.  To make working with the interior easier I did not install the front window & door part until just prior to mounting the building on the base and had selected one that is mostly clear.

The next store to receive this treatment will be a book store in the same block.

Working with removable bases

Many of these smaller buildings I group together into a scene mounted on a removable base.  My favored method for attaching this type of base or individual building to a module is to put 2 or more 4-40 screws through the base and extending long enough to secure under the module with nylon standoffs as shown in the October 2010 post Attaching Buildings.

The biggest advantage making smaller scenes on removable bases is that all of the work can be done comfortably at the work bench.  The problem is what to do with the long screws that stick out of the bottom of the base.

At first I used rolls of tape but I found that not to be very stable.
 
The better solution was to build up a little platform from scraps of wood and then drill holes that match the screws.
Here is this platform in use on the work bench recently while I was working with the Green Max stores.

Notice the black markings on the platform. The holes are marked to show which ones to use for each of the removable bases so the same platform can be used for many removable bases.

New Years Wishes

Thank you to all those who throughout the past year have inspired me with their own work or who have encouraged me with their kind comments.  May 2012 be an enjoyable and fulfilling year for us all.

N scale residents of Tokyo enter a Soba ( Buckwheat Noodle ) restaurant in Musashi-Koyama to have a traditional new years meal of long noodles to symbolize long life.  The shop owner enthusiastically greets them at the door as they often do in Japan.

Happy New Year everyone !

Seeing around the corners

A common sight in Japan are these traffic mirrors.  They allow drivers to see what is around a blind corner.  You see these at intersections or sharp curves where the streets are very narrow, or where a driveway enters the street.

Most of them are round but sometimes they are square.  They vary in size with the round ones appearing to range between 2 and 3 feet in diameter.  They come in doubles or singles, and are almost always mounted on orange posts.

I knew this was something I wanted to have on the modules but could not find any models of them so set out to make my own.

Here's  what I came up mostly from my scrap box parts and a couple hours work.

I used a hole punch to get a disk of .020 styrene, then added a strip of .010 x .040 styrene around about 1/3 of the top edge of the disk.  For the convex shape I used bubbled up flash piece from back of cast resin a vehicle tire.  The pole is .020 brass wire bent at a right angle at the top with the shorter part glued into a hole in the back of the mirror.

This assembly then got painted Floquil reefer orange. To get the mirror effect I used a product called Bare Metal Foil shown in this photo.  I used the hole punch again to get a matching disk and then installed this over the convex shape of the mirror.





I know I'm going to want more of these mirrors for this and other projects.  The mirror assembly is good candidate for resin castings so the next one is going to be the master for a mold.