Painting the small Green Max station

I found this photo on the Internet of one of these kits that had been completed and liked the colors used for the building and roof.

Here are some of the major parts after being painted.  I did keep close to the same color scheme but reversed the base and trim colors of the building using Floquil antique white for the walls and reefer white for the trim.



Floquil oxide red applied with an airbrush was used for the roof and I decided to give it a little more variety using engine black for the railings.  Not shown in the photo I used Floquil concrete for the base.  The base was already about the right color but I find that everything looks too plastic unless its painted so I paint nearly everything in an unpainted kit.

Realizing that it would be hard to reach many of the details after the building was fully assembled, I hand  painted those at this stage.

Next I'll be working on applying some colorful signage to this station.

Modeling Tokyo taxi cabs

Any model scene of Tokyo should include some taxi cabs, this is especially true when a train station is part of that scene. I have been wishing for some time that TomyTec would release a set of modern taxis.

Recently I got my wish when I found these 4 taxi sets by TomyTec and Kato on ebay.  The TomyTec set included 2 Toyota Crowns and 2 Toyota Prius models.   The Kato set had 4 sedans but I'm not sure of the make or model.

Here's a comparsion of the 3 different models.  The TomyTec taxis have all the same great detail of their other recent vehicles.

Both TomyTec and Kato taxis even had green license plates like the taxis do in Tokyo.  The TomyTec taxis all came with the same rooftop lantern but the Kato set came with a variety of lanterns as separate parts.

So now I have the beginnings of a Tokyo taxi fleet. During the subway construction period I model there was no proper taxi stand at Musashi-Koyama station.  A short distance from the station the taxis would line up along the street.

Building a small Green Max station

Cold, wet weather has been keeping me from spending much time out in the garage where the work was on the foam insulation board scenery was taking place on the Hot Springs Junction Module.  As I also need a few structures for this module, I decided that it would be enjoyable to spend some indoor time building a nice Green Max structure kit.

Green Max #27 is very similar to many small train stations  that serve outlaying areas or secondary rail lines.

I picked up this kit at TamTam in Tokyo during my November 2011 trip.

The instructions for the Green Max kits are on the back of the box and are in Japanese.

The illustrations are good and use numbers that match the numbers on the spues.




Unlike the Green Max houses and Green Max stores where I made some modifications, I plan to build this one just as instructed.

The Green Max kits that I have assembled have always had very clean parts and never any flash that needed to be trimmed.

At the last train show I attended I finally purchased a proper spue cutter so my cuts on this one hopefully also wont need much trimming.

I used the base to align the station walls while gluing the walls together but will leave the base unglued as I plan to paint it separately   On these Green Max kits there is normally a lot of detail that needs to be hand painted after the structure is given a base color which is usually done with an air brush.



The way this building is laid out, I decided to leave two outer walls of the building loose so I could get to the details on the inner walls.

To be continued

New years wishes - 2013

In Japan, it is traditional that during the time just prior to the new year, the house is given a good cleaning so that everything will be clean to start the new year. They call this Oosogi which means "Year end cleaning".

That appears to be happening in some of the households at this apartment building in Tokyo near Musashi-Koyama station. Several futons hanging from the balconies while inside, the apartments are being cleaned from top to bottom.


Another year has passed and I've very much enjoyed pursuing a variety of N scale modeling efforts, and of following those of my fellow N scalers via their blogs, web sites, and videos.  While I got many things accomplished in the past year, it's never as much as I had wanted to but maybe in this new year I will.

Happy New Year everyone

Terrain from insulation board - Part 3

Adhesive

To attach the layers of foam insulation board to the wood parts of the module and to each other I use the Liquid Nails product.

It does not take a whole lot of this adhesive to get the job done.  This photo shows how much I use to stick one layer on top of another. Notice that I also try to get some on the profile boards where they meet the edges of the foam board.  I used 1 tube of Liquid Nails for this project.

When the section of foam board is wide and flat enough, I will place something on it to keep some weight on it while it sets.  I normally allow it to set for 24 hours before continuing to the next step.  Since these three layers shown in this photo were all the same size and right on top of each other, they were all done at the same time.

The top layers are generally not going to be so flat on the top so to hold those in place while the adhesive  sets, I will pin it to the lower layer with some large nails as shown here.

Terrain from insulation board - Part 2

Cutting methods

With the tools I showed in the last post, these are the techniques I am using to cut the foam insulation board into the shapes and sizes I need.

As the saying goes, measure twice and cut once.

After everything is measured and the lines are marked I just follow the lines with the blade of the utility knife, no need to go all the way through the board.

With the 1 inch thick foam insulation board the utility knife easily cuts half way through which is one of the reasons I buy that thickness.  Then it's easy to snap along the cut.

This is a similar technique that is used to cut drywall (sheet rock), foam core board, and of course styrene sheet.

To cut a corner section out of a large board, I first cut with the hacksaw blade along the shorter line.

Then using the utility knife I scribe along the longer line and then snap it by bending.

Any curved cuts can be done with the hacksaw blade.  Being a narrow blade it's not hard to curve it a it is moved along.

I like to cut and lay out several layers before gluing anything in place.  With a more complicated layout sometimes it can be helpful to label the pieces with a marker pen for placement and orientation.

Terrain from insulation board - Part 1

With the track sub roadbed in place on the Hot Springs Junction module, it's time to start filling in the terrain with foam insulation board.  The obvious advantage to using this material is it's light weight.  Styrofoam material is also very light but not as dense so can be more easily compressed if you happen to put weight on it later. Styrofoam is also much more messy to work with.  This will be the third major layout project I have attempted using this type of material.  The others being my current 2 ft x 12 ft home layout and another 2 ft x 4 ft Ntrak module.  I've also used this material in building scenery on a few smaller projects.  Like any material, one learns a few tricks and pitfalls of working with it and in this and the next few posts I'll share some of the techniques I've I learned.

Material

The material comes in a choice of thickness and density and normally comes in a 4 ft x 8 ft sheet.  It may be a blue color or pink like the in this photo.  When I rebuilt another Ntrak module about a year ago I had purchased a sheet of 1 inch thick at Lowes and used about half  on that project.  Hopefully the remaining half will be enough to do this project.

Tools

To cut and shape this material I used the 3 tools shown in this photo.  I used to use a serrated kitchen knife but like the hacksaw blade better because it makes a finer cut.  For shaping the Stanley Surform tools also work well in place of the rasp I use.