Building the TomyTec Police station

Besides having over 100 actual Police stations, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has over 800 very small neighborhood Police stations referred to as "Koban".

One of the N scale gifts that I've received in my visits to Japan was this TomyTec Koban kit.  This is a great little quick kit that has all of the parts already painted and small enough to fit in many spots.  I wanted to use it on the expansion module because there used to be something very similar to it at that location.  When the area was redeveloped after the surface tracks were removed a new two story Koban building was constructed.

I used all of the parts with this kit and the only modifications I made was to make the base less thick by sanding the bottom and to the LED circuit as explained below.

This kit comes with a red LED to create the red light on the roof of the police station.  The wires extended from the LED through a black plastic tube for 3/4 of an inch which showed in the window of the building.  I modified this by removing the tube and bending the LED leads then soldering wires to them as shown here.  The wires go over an interior wall and down through the base unseen.

This view under the module shows the small 2 pin plug that comes with this kits LED circuit to make placing or removing the lighted structure easier.  As I have quite a few of these same type plugs from the LED's I am using to light my home layout I plan to use this same idea with other lighted structures..

This shot of the finished scene was taken with the small extension module sitting on the bench not connected to the main module.  Everything beyond the street is all part of a scenery sector plate.  The police van on the left covers one of the two screws that holds the scenery sector plate to the module.

The bus stop scene

Yet another gift that I had received and am using on the expansion module is this TomyTec bus stop set. It comes with two complete bus stops each with 2 benches and some signs.


I did not use the bases that came with the kit but instead integrated the brick parts into the sidewalks that were on the sector plates that were already in place.  One bus stop is on the new expansion module and the other is across the street from in on edge of the existing module.

This scene is about a block from the station.

The joint between the two modules is between the sidewalk and street so the bus in on one module and the bus stop on the other.

Looking across from the location of the photo above this is the other bus stop.  This was shot taken with the smaller module sitting on the work bench.

In a future post that strange green building in the background will be explained.

A building being demolished scene

A great way to fill in those odd empty spaces on a urban Japanese layout is to add a construction scene.  In Tokyo there always seems to be construction going on.  Because Tokyo is already fully developed in most cases something old has to be torn down before a new building can be put up and that is what I'm showing in this scene.  One building is torn down with debris being hauled away and a neighboring building still standing will be next to be torn down.

I had this area on one of the original modules that needed something but I did not want to block the view of the row of Green Max houses so this type of scene seemed like a good solution.

A base of .040 styrene was made to fit the area.  To model what was left of some perimeter and interior walls I used .two courses 080 x .080 styrene strip that I carved up to resemble broken concrete using my hobby knife and spue cutter.


Diluted white glue was spread within the walls and Woodland Scenics talus material was sprinkled into the glue.

After the glue had dried I applied Testors acrylic aged concrete to the walls and the talus.  On the talus I dipped the brush in water first to make the paint dilute so it would spread into the crevices.

To make larger debris I used a metal nibbler tool to cut chunks from left over scraps from kit bash projects.  I also threw in some broken scale wood scraps and small chunks from cork roadbed scraps.

These larger chunks were built into a pile on the site held together with diluted white glue.   This pile was painted in several colors representing concrete, wood, metal, etc. then everything on the site was given a coat of Testors black detail wash.

This TomyTec dump truck came with a very plain load.  I used it as a pattern to cut a piece of styrene the same sized then plied up some of the large scraps and saturated it with diluted white glue.

So here is the almost finished scene.  The older building still standing was left over from the TomyTec sake shop kit and heavily weathered.  It also hides one of the screws holding the scene to the module.  The large blue back hoe hides the other screw.

Installing TomyTec traffic signals

Another of the gift items I had received was a TomyTec set of traffic signals.  The set includes 8 poles with traffic signals and pedestrian walk / don't walk signals and 4 control boxes.   I noticed that the green lights on 4 of the poles are actually blue but don't know the meaning of that.

My three way intersection with three cross walks on the expansion module would need 3 sets of traffic lights and six pedestrian lights.

In this photo of the intersection I have placed labels showing the type, location, and direction of each signal needed.

P = Pedestrian
T = Traffic.

Because of the odd angle of my intersection I needed to change the angle of the pedestrian signal in reference to the traffic signal on two of the signal poles.  To do this I cut the pole in between the two signal heads and glued them back together at the angle needed with a polystyrene tube  for re-enforcement.  A third traffic signal pole was used without being modified.

The poles were repainted Floquil CN gray which was a close match to the original pole color then given a wash of  Model Master black acrylic weathering wash to bring out the details.  The set comes with a base for each signal pole.  I did not use the bases but found them handy to hold the poles while painting and weathering them.

Three of the poles were cut off between the signal heads to be used as a pole with pedestrian signal only poles.

To do a typical 4 way intersection it would take 4 of these plus 4 unmodified signal poles so a single kit with 8 poles could do it.

Here is a shot from a similar angle as the one with all the blue labels with all of the traffic signal poles installed.  All six signal poles and the control box are visible in this photo.  There is still much to be done on on this intersection scene but so far I am happy the results.

Street markings

I have always wanted to apply some sort of street markings on the Musashi-Koyama modules.  Adding the small expansion module with it's streets seemed like a good time to do it.

Shown in this photo is a Kato set of road stickers that is part of their Diotown series of products.  I would need quite a few of these to get enough of the white striping and they seem to be hard to find right now.  I did not even see them last year when I visited the Kato store in Tokyo.

On the Hot Springs junction module's station platforms I had used Builders in Scale HO scale yellow highway striping to create the platform edge warning line and had liked the results.  I posted about this in June of 2014 in a post titled Scratch built platforms - Part 3

So I picked up two versions of this same product in white at my local hobby shop.  One version has solid lines just like the yellow one and the other version has dashed line of varying lengths.

I was concerned that being HO scale the lines might look over sized but they are actually just a bit slimmer than the lines that are on the bases of some of the kits.  This photo shows a side by side comparison of a TomyTec bus stop base and my striping work on the Musashi-Modules.

To do the boundary lines I used a .010 x .250 strip of polystyrene as a guide lined up along the edge of the road and held in place with blue painters tape.  The painters tape I used is the type that is for delicate surfaces.  It takes a bit of practice to keep the lines straight.

I used a narrow paint roller handle with a hard plastic roller to press the lines down once they were in the right position.

Gentle curves like the one showed in this photo can easily be made.  I also did sharper curves around a 90 degree corner but those were quite a bit harder to do.

I had originally planned to use the dashed lines product for the cross walks but realized that it would create too narrow of a cross walk.

So I cut a 3/4 inch strip off the end of the solid line product to use for the cross walks.  This would scale out to about 10 ft or 3 meters which is about right.

When applying the cross walk lines I used a square cut piece of polystyrene sheet as a guide to line up the edges and the spacing between the lines was just done by eye with the spacing between the lines being the same as the line width.

The line ends were close but not perfect.  This flaw seems to be the most noticeable so I used a straight edge and a hobby knife with a new blade to even them up using the two shortest ones as a guide.  The cut off sections were then gently pulled away.




When all the basic lines and the cross walks were done, all of the streets were given a little weathering with Bragdon weathering powders and a coat of Testors Dullcoat.