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.

Another curved railroad bridge part 1

It often seems that on a small layout or on a module the track must make curves and if you want to have a bridge scene of any length some of the curve may need to go over the bridge as well.

On the Hot Springs Junction Ntrak module I had this situation on the AsiaNrail connection to the Ntrak mountain division track.  On that one I started with the sides cut from an old Atlas bridge and built a straight bridge wide enough to accommodate the slight curve.  A couple of posts from November of 2012 cover how I built this bridge.

For the rail bridge over the highway I again started with sides cut from old Atlas through girder bridges.  These were glued to a base of tempered hard board which was the same thickness as the cork road bed.  This would be a ballasted deck curved bridge made from two straight sections.

Each of the Atlas bridge sides had to be shortened.  I put the cut off ends in the middle and added a section of .080 x .030 styrene strip between to match the other ribs on the sides.

As this is a two section bridge, it would need support columns where the sections join.  For this I used a pair of used Rix bridge columns salvaged from past projects.

After some cleaning up I spliced the two together into a single unit with 4 columns to match the width of the bridge.  Styrene strip was added to the beam on each side to strengthen the splice.

In this photo the darker line is the center line of the track and the lighter line is the center line of the highway.  Holes were drilled into the module base for the bridge columns along the highway center line.

Here the bridge is set loosely in place on the support column structure.  Everything seems to fit fine and is ready for paint and maybe some weathering.

Exterior stairs finished at long last

Just over two weeks left before the Los Altos Train Days show.  I am making a final push to get some more scenery done and have been focusing on some buildings that have been left half done for quite some time.

Here is the prototype photo of the exterior stairs on the side of what I call the mister Donut building.  I built the model of the building back in 2011 and started the stairs at that time but never finished them until recently.

These types of stairs are common on commercial buildings in Japan and I wanted to have at least one example of this.

The stairs were built as a separate assembly which made them much easier to work on then.  I tried to match the paint color of the original building as best I could and air brushed the stair assembly before gluing it to the side of the building.

Here is the photo of the finished building.  It feels great to finally have this project done.

Starting the subway construction scene

One of the central features of the Musashi-Koyama module set is all the construction going on in the area around the station for the new subway.  Up to now this had only been represented on the modules as an opening in the surface and a few trucks parked behind some construction fencing.  I thought it was about time to start to make this scene more complete.

A box was made from .030 styrene to fit into the hole. This can be removed as needed to work on it at the bench.  One of the  be two climbing tower cranes on the site is also seen in this photo.  More on those in a future post.

Across the street from the subway station construction site I am creating a support area  This would be a fenced in area where materials could be stored, vehicles and equipment parked.





The subway station construction scene will be a large project that has several aspects to it.  This is just the start and there will be follow-up posts as it progresses.

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.

Hot Springs Junction wrap up

Over the past few weeks I've been working on finishing all the little things that I wanted to have done on the Hot Springs junction module before the N Scale convention in Sacramento.  Some of those I have covered in more detail in recent posts.  In this post I will wrap up the rest.

Traffic Mirrors

I wanted to add a couple of traffic mirrors on the winding narrow road between the station and the hot springs hotel.  These were scratch built in a similar way to the one I made for the Musashi-Koyama modules in the December 2011 post Seeing around the corners.

Wood rail fence

I felt the edge of the cliff in front of the hot springs hotel should have some sort of fence.  I wanted some sort of wood fence that would fit in with the scene.

I found the Peco NB-45 fence set to be just the thing.  Like the Kato gutter set featured in the last post, this set gives you plenty of material to work with.

Overhead wires

In last Novembers post Overhead wires for Hot Springs Jct. I had identified Tomix 3005 overhead wire structures as being just the right fit for the Ntrak lines.  6 structures were assembled, painted, and installed along the Ntrak right of way.

At this point, the module is packed up and ready to go the N Scale Convention.    This has been an on and off almost 3 year project from the time I started to rebuild the old module and I consider this module to now be 100% complete. I don't think I've ever been able to say that about any other layout or module I've built and it feels good.  Of course there will always be something to be repaired or renewed on the module, or prehaps some tempting new products that come along that I will want to add.

Finishing the 2nd type of retaining wall

Last fall, I finished the first of two different types of retaining walls that I have been working on for the Hot Springs Junction module.  That post can be viewed HERE. Now it's time to finish the second type of retaining wall which is a more simple design but there is a lot of it.  For the background on both types of walls see the post Japanese Style Retaining Walls.

Again as I did when finishing the first type of wall, I show here the reference photo I started with for this type of wall and pick up where I left off on the original post.

After the Evergreen tile styrene sheet is assembled to fit the shape of the hillside were it will be installed, the edges are covered with .100 x .100 L channel strip.

On the front facing and top edge of the L channel, I cut a groove as shown in this photo about every 10 scale feet with a razor saw to simulate expansion joints.

When doing the front facing surface I set a thin sheet of scrap over the tile surface to protect it from being scratched by the saw.

Each assembled section of retaining wall was air brushed with Testors acrylic concrete color.

The next step before installing the wall is to give it some basic weathering.  I like to highlight the grooves between the tiles by using diluted India Ink.

A few drops of ink into a Dixie cup filled to the level shown in this photo.  This solution is spread evenly across the wall assembly.  With the wall laying flat it settles into the grooves and that's why I did this before installation.  Brush strokes should be up and down the wall so it will look like natural streaks.

The completed wall sections are attached to the foam land forms with Liquid Nails adhesive.  After the adhesive has set, the scenery is built up as desired to the walls edge and as shown in this photo sometimes over the edge.  This 4 foot module has about 6 feet of large retaining walls of both type presented here.

Modeling a bicycle parking area

Many residents of Tokyo use bicycles for shorter trips in their neighborhoods or to get to the train station. It is common to find a large number of bicycles parked in the areas around any train station.

This photo I found on the web is an example of what I am talking about.  This is right next to the tracks and it looks like there is a station platform in the background.    I wanted to create a similar scene on the Musashi-Koyama modules.




In the August 2013 post Modeling Japanese bicycles I prepared a number of Tomix bicycles and that is mostly what I am going to use to populate this parking area.

TomyTec kit # 095 represents a small, covered bicycle parking area.  While I did not assemble this kit as intended, I did use some of the parts from it to make this scene.  I wanted a more open scene so I did not use the awnings but they will get used in other scenes.

The base is made from Evergreen tiled styrene sheet airbrushed brick color then a wash of cement which settled into the cracks.

I made by bike racks by removing every other vertical post from some roof top railings from a Tomix building kit.

Here is the finished bicycle parking area just a short distance from the station entrance.  This is also the place to catch a taxi.

Overhead wires for Hot Springs Jct.

One of the things I've been working on for the past several days was to get all of the poles installed that would simulate overhead electric wires.  In theory, my free lanced Hot Springs Junction module could be one of those places in Japan that uses Diesel rail cars as those are more common in the more remote mountainous areas.  But the trains that will be run on the mountain division and AsiaNrail lines will include electrics so I wanted to include the wire structures.  Kato, Tomix, and TomyTec all offer versions of this type of model in N scale.

For most of the line I used TomyTec kit No. 020 shown here.  I picked this up on one of my trips to Japan and it looks like I paid 690 yen for each set of 3 double track structures.

I needed single track structures so I cut out the middle section to get two structures from each as shown in this photo.

After removing the model from the spue and cutting out the middle section, I touched up the paint.  The brown of the pole was close to Floquil rail brown and the green of the cross arm was close to an old bottle of Polly Scale paint I had around.

To mount these type of poles I drilled out the inside of a 1/8 inch styrene tube to give the pole a snug fit.  Then drilled a hole in the scenery and glued the tube into the hole.  The tube was then painted a concrete color.

This is a very similar method I used on the Musashi-Koyama modules and that has worked out well.

As with any other track side details it is important to maintain the proper clearances from the tracks, particularly on the inside of a curve.

It's also not that hard to scratch build overhead wire structures for those places where needed.  Here is one of 4 identical ones I made to use between the platforms at the station.

The pole was painted a gray color with the colors of the cross arm, braces, and insulators being a close match to the TomyTec pole structures.

Here is one of the four installed at the station.  For these I drilled a smaller hole and glued the exposed wire on the bottom of the pole without using the plastic tube sleeve the way I did on the TomyTec poles.

Here is the over all view of the station area with all of the poles installed.  I used 13 of the single track poles plus the 4 scratch built double track poles.

Eventually I would also like to have overhead wire structures on the Ntrak lines as well.  The 3 track type of the style from Tomix that I used on the Musashi-Koyama modules line up just right with the Ntrak track spacing as shown here.

Finishing the 1st type of retaining wall

In the post last March titled Japanese style retaining walls, I showed prototype photos of two different types of retaining walls I have seen along side the rail lines.  In that post, I also showed the beginnings of the walls I was building from styrene plastic.

For reference, I again show the prototype photo here.  Most of these that I've seen are not quite this bent up.


Recall from that previous post, the wall sections were made from .080 square styrene rod attached to .020 styrene sheet.

When this was fully assembled, it was air brushed with Model Master acrylic aged concrete color.

Then the spaces between the rods were hand painted with a grimy black color.

After the black paint had dried over night, a bit of scenic cement was applied to each section then fine turf color ground foam was sprinkled on top of that.

The retaining wall was attached to the module with Liquid Nails for projects and held in place with home made spring clamps as shown in this photo.

When the wall structure is blended in with the surrounding scenery it begins to look like this.  A bit of the ground foam has fallen out of a few of the spaces.  The reason I painted those areas was to help hide this.


Next I used a bamboo skewer to apply small amounts of diluted white glue to those bare areas where the turf ground foam had fallen off.  Then sprinkled on some fine green ground foam and that tended to settle near the bottom of the sections.  I also added coarse green ground foam in some of the sections to simulate foliage that might grow out between the columns.

The photo above shows the completed retaining wall section.  While I am quite happy with the way this came out, it was a lot of work !  This is only about 9 inches at one end of the module out of almost 60 inches of retaining walls needed.  At this point the rest of the retaining walls are going to be the second type which go together much quicker.  In the near future I will post about finishing those.

Scratch built platforms - Part 3

To simulate the yellow warning stripes along the inside edges of the platforms, I decided to try something new.  I used some HO scale stickers designed to be used as highway stripes.  After applying the stripes, I sprayed the platforms with a flat finish to seal them on the platform.

Any additional details such as light posts, benches, light or wire poles, and of course people can be added after these platforms are installed.

Scratch built platforms - Part 2

I had 4 new packages of the Plastruct HO scale ladder stock plus a few scraps that I air brushed Floquil engine black to match the hand railings on the small Green Max station.  Doing this at this point with the air brush would ensure that all the odd angles would get covered but there will still need to be some touch up by hand later.

The full sections were cut so that the joints would meet on one of the raised sections of the platform as shown in this photo.  Medium CA was used to make these bonds.

Once all of the hand rails were in place, I added an .040 half round all along on the top.  This was to add some strength to the joints and give it a more unified look.  This half round stock was bonded to railings with Plastruct solvent.

Here are the platforms after all of the half round tops of the railings and anyplace else that needed it had been touched up with a brush.




Next steps will include some yellow striping along the track side of the platforms and maybe some light posts or small shelters.