Finishing a Tomix corner building

This Tomix corner building is one of a pair that I modified about 14 years ago to form the entry of the Musashi-Koyama Palm shopping arcade.  They along with the rest of the arcade structures have been sitting on the module all this time with a primer gray color while I worked on other areas of the modules.  The photo below shows how it looks with the other structures removed.  The modifications to this structure had been that part of it on the left side had been removed to make it fit in the space available and the windows had been covered with a styrene siding.

Up until the late 2000's, the actual location that this model is based on had been a yakitori chicken place.  That's long gone now but I wanted it in my representation of the area as it was in the 1990's.  I recalled noticing what seemed to be a take out counter and my wife remembers it having both take out or eat in options.  So leaving out the clear plastic front door insert, I made a counter and back wall attached to the base.

And here it is with the building re-installed to see that everything still fits OK.  I plan to add lighting over the counter area and some detail as well.  The opening to the right of the counter will be the entrance to the restaurant.

To light the area of the take out counter I used 2 surface mount LED's glued to a piece of clear window material left over from a kit and dulled with sandpaper to defuse the light.  The LED's were connected to a leftover board from an Atlas locomotive to use it's current limiting resistor. Scraps of decoder wire were used to connect the LED's to the board then 22 gauge wire was soldered to the inputs of the board to connect it to the 12 volt DC buss under the module.

A sign was created for this business and attached to a sign board that was in my stash of parts.  The sign board and exterior trim was painted yellow and the visible interior walls were painted a darker yellow.  Some menu board images from the internet were shrunken down to side and pasted to the wall behind the counter.  In these last two photos it will be noticed that tile flooring has been added.  How I did this will be covered in a future post.

To finish this building the visible exterior walls were painted white and the roof received some 3D printed details.  Then the roof received some black weathering wash which really brings out the detail on the items on the roof.

Finishing a Green Max office building

On the small extension module I added to one end of the Musashi-Koyama modules to make the set 2 meters long, I have a kit bashed Green Max building from set 46-7 that I never finished.  Coming off the completion of the Kato building, I feel now is the time to tackle this building.

The building is separate from the styrene base and both are held in place on the module with a single 4-40 screw.  The building first got 2 coats of a pale blue color.  It was my first time using Vallejo paint in my air brush and it worked out well after thinning the paint a bit with distilled water.  I'll be using more Vallejo paints in the future.

One of the ground floor entry pieces was installed on the first floor after the trims and door handle were painted with a silver Sharpie pen.  The roof, base, elevator tower door, and awning were all hand painted, and one of the stickers from the set was installed above the ground floor making that floor a bank.  The tenants of the building will be in the financial services industries except for the 2nd floor which will be restaurant.  I painted the window frames on the 2nd floor gold. 

The Green Max building kits don't come with window glazing but include sheets of clear plastic that can be cut and glued to the interior walls.  I used canopy glue to do this.  This particular building was modified to fit in the space and the back wall was left off as it would not be seen once the building is on the module.  This made it easy to access the inside of the building.

The side of the elevator tower got some paper signs that I made on the computer.  The second floor restaurant is a izakaya serving tako which in English is grilled octopus.  The billboard is an advertisement for some sort of fruit yogurt drink.   

Two of the vertical signs from the kit were modified and placed on the corner of the building, a stock broker on the 5th floor and an insurance office on the 3rd.  A real estate office occupies the 4th floor and uses the small sign board.  All of there signs are stickers from the kit.

Finishing the grade crossing scene

In a previous post, I had described the modification and installation of a set of TomyTec grade crossing signals and gates.  In this post I want to describe the finishing of the scene as a whole.  As a starting point, here again is the overhead photo of the scene as it has been for the past couple of years.  There is a removable catenary wire structure that has been removed while I do this work.

And here is the same scene after I had finished with the crossing gates.  I added yellow border stripes to the pedestrian crossing and removed the white stripe across the road on the side closest to the front edge of the module as it was not in the correct spot in relation to the gate.  As I had some gray paint out to paint the border around that removable gate, I also painted the sidewalks closest to the front edge and the support structures on all of the signals. 

And here is the finished scene.  The sidewalk and all of the gray parts on the signals have been weathered to better represent concrete.  The ballast and turf scenery has been touched up around the closest crossing gate and other spots as needed.  A new white stripe near the closest gate has been added, and several figures have been placed in the scene.  

One of the figures is this 3 wheeled delivery vehicle from a TomyTec set which are so common in Tokyo.  This and the other figures were attached with canopy glue.  I like to not glue down most vehicles so I can arrange them when setting up the modules.  

Installing TomyTec crossing gates

On the small extension module that I built to make the Musashi-Koyama module set a full 2 meters long there was this grade crossing that had never been fully finished.

While shopping during our recent trip to Japan I saw this Tomytec set and thought it would be just the thing for this unfinished grade crossing as it had the signals for a separate pedestrian crossing just like in the scene on my module.

This is all the parts to the set after I had installed the crossing arms.  The pavement parts I won't be needing for this project so they will be put away for some future use.  The gate arms are separate pieces and in this photo I have already installed them.  They can be set in either an up or down position. 

These crossing gates are intended to be installed below the level of the cork roadbed and it was necessary to make some modification to have the grossing gate arm at a more realistic level when down.  I ran into the same issue with the Green Max gates on the 1st crossing and covered that in THIS POST.  For the gate on one side of the street I cut down the height of the base as shown here so it could be glued down to the existing scenery.

On the other side of the street things are a bit more complicated.  The gate will actually be on another module as the edge of the street is where the seam is between the modules.  For this gate I cut an opening in the cork that the base could fit into and attached a small magnet to the inside of the base with E6000 adhesive.  

And here are all of the gates and signals installed on the module.  On the 3 that are not held by a magnet I used E6000 adhesive to attach them to the existing base.   Of course there is more I need to do to finish this scene and I will cover that in a future post.

Finishing a Kato office building

I know, long time no post.  I've been keeping busy with my American theme home layout but with another 5 day long exhibit of the AsiaNrail layout coming up at Hiller Aviation Museum in April I wanted to finish a few more things on the modules.

This Kato office building was one of the first Japanese buildings I bought back around 2009 but never finished.  A couple of years ago I did get around to painting it to get rid of the plastic look.  Now I want to get rid of the vacant look.

The Kato part number is 23-435 and they are still available.  These buildings are particularly well designed, have interior walls, and can be easily made taller or shorter 2 floors at a time.  I'm leaving this one at it's stock 6 floor height.

I decided that I wanted to light and detail the lowest 2 floors.  The ground floor was going to be a convenience store and the base already had detail for a restaurant so I cut that off with a hack saw. 

The base got a new floor and wall arrangement to resemble a small convenience store.  Shelves and counter were made from scraps of styrene and printouts of on line photos pasted to the shelves. 

The 2nd floor was going to be a pizza restaurant and the interior for that was built on the existing 2nd floor insert that is part of the kit.  Most of the fixtures were scratch built and the chairs came from a Pieser set. 

The upper floors windows got blinds printed out on paper, taped to the inside of the windows and set at various heights.  The upper floors businesses include a music school,  an optometrists,  a language school, and a dental clinic.  The signs were created using Google translate, then copying the Japanese text into Microsoft Visio where it can be edited for size and color.  Background color and any graphics are also added then printed out on plain paper.  Glossy package tape was used to give the signs some shine then they were pasted on styrene strip.

Here is a closeup of the floors with interior detail.  Two surface mount LEDs were used on each floor.  The restaurant has warm spectrum LEDs and the convenience store has white LEDs.

Here is the completed building back on the module.  I added that billboard sign on the side of the building from a image I found on the internet.  The type of glue featured in the ad is the same as what I used to paste some of the paper parts of this project.

The vertical signs on the front of the building were made the same way as the signs that are above each window then pasted to each side of a strip of styrene.

Highway module - Details and Done.

Over the past few days I have been adding some of the little things to the module.  Biggest of which were the overhead trolley poles.

The forest that I had started has been augmented with some shrubs and forest debris.

I have a Greenmax sign set but the speed limits seemed too low for a highway so I found a graphic on the Internet for 90 kmh and made a decal that I applied to one of the Greenmax signs.

Of course I added some vehicles to the highway, more on that in the next post.

Another custom sign I made was something I had seen several times when riding the bus through the mountains in Japan.  It is a sign warning of monkeys possibly crossing the road.  This again was a decal made from graphics mounted on a Greenmax sign.

I had an idea to have a few model monkeys on this module but not finding any I used the two remaining deer left in a Pieser deer set. 

This module is now ready to go.  With the time left before the convention I hope to add a few things to the Musashi-Koyama modules.

Another curved railroad bridge part 2

Finally we get to the second and final post on the curved railroad bridge.  I needed to get the highway done first before installing the bridge.

The bridge assembly was air brushed with Testors pale green and then weathered with Testors acrylic weathering wash and Bragdon Enterprises weathering powders.

The highway sign was made from a photo I found on the Internet.   The printout was glued to a .020 thick piece of styrene which was then glued to the bridge.

The support columns were paint Testors concrete and given the same weathering treatments before being glued into place in the highways center divider.

With the bridge installed, the module is now ready for track and ballast.

The Highway

A module called the highway module needs to have a highway and I intend to have this be the focal point of this small module and will use the space to display some of my Japanese vehicles.

The highway surfaces were cut from .030 Evergreen 24 inch long styrene sheet and glued onto the base with Liquid Nails adhesive.  The lanes were then painted with Testors acrylic Reefer Gray and the striping was done with Builder In Scale products.  Then the road was given a spray of Dullcoat.

I picked up Kato set 23-213 Guardrails and Road Fences to make some highway guard rails for a scene on my American prototype layout and used it again on this project.

These are really handy sets to have around.  They have both highway guard rails and the type of street fences that are common in Japan both in various lengths.    I will be adding some of those street fences on the Musashi-Koyama module set and will post on that when I do.

To make a double sided guard rail I removed the posts from one section and filed the backs of both sections flat.  Then I glued them back to back and brush painted them with Floquil Old Silver.  To create a long guard rail several shorter sections were used with the joints staggered.

A few of the standard posts were cut off and a hole drilled in their place.  Then a short length of .040 steel rod was glued into the hole.   These longer post were glued into matching holes in the center divider between the lanes.

Here is the finished highway.  The glue in the center divide has not dried yet and has just gotten some ground foam scenery material blown onto it.  I may also add some small shrubs under the guard rails between the post when I am adding details.

Third update on the new module

This is the third general update on the progress of the new curved highway module.  Since the last update land forms were created with my usual method of foam insulation board glued down on the module and shaped by carving and sanding.  Then this was covered with plaster cloth and a coat of sheet rock joint compound smoothed out with a wet paint brush.

Before I got much further I wanted to provide the means to attach acrylic shields to the sides of the module like I had done on other modules.   Using the shields from the other curved module as a guide I drill holes and installed 8-32 Tee nuts.

The hills were given a coat of brown and green acrylic paints so none of the white would show through the scenery and some small rocks were added here and there.  Then the retaining walls were air brushed with Testors concrete.

A base coat of sanded grout was applied over the entire area and when that dried several different shades of Woodland Scenics ground foam was applied.  The steeper areas were left showing more of the sanded grout as bare soil.

I am trying some Testors black weathering washes on the retaining walls.  I like how it settles into the recesses on the tiles and in between the tiles.

Using Greenmax wall sets

On the Hot Springs Junction Ntrak module, I had made my own retaining walls using Styrene sheet and rod materials.  This came out great but was quite a bit of work so this time I found a ready made product by Greenmax.

Greenmax makes 3 different patterns of stone walls that come in a 3 pack with each of the 3 sections measuring 60mm in height and 200mm long.   I choose number 2107 which is an interlocking pattern of square tiles.

To get the height right all of the wall sections needed 2 or 3 rows cut from the bottom leaving the header row at the top.

The length of my retaining walls was long enough that I had to use two sections on each side.  The patterns will line up when the uncut ends are placed end to end.

As the highway crosses the module at an angle, the ends of the wall sections needed to be cut at an angle to match the edges of the module.

On one of the module edges I cut away several rows of tiles to simulate how a wall like this might get lower following the terrain.

I had placed the walls so that the header on top was just above the edge of the module base.  After the wall section was glued into place, the header was cut away in the area where the bridge would be so the bridge could sit on the edge of the module base.