Summertime distractions

For most of us, even us Californians, our model building time during the summer months is impacted by doing the things that we can only do in the summer.  For my wife and I, one of those things is getting in a few camping trips.  Northern California offers many great places to camp and one of our favorites is the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Recently we visited the Feather River Canyon near the town of Clio, home of the Clio Trestle on the Union Pacific line that was once known as Western Pacific's "Feather River Route".

Here's the view from under the Clio Trestle, about half a mile from where we were camped.  Standing under it was a little creepy to hear the occasional "pop" sounds as the steel heated up in the morning sun after a 45 degree low at night.




No train passed over the trestle while we were right there, but of course as soon as we got back to camp  one did.  We could hear about 6 to 8 trains go by each day we were there and from our campsite we could see a bit of the trains between the trees and at night the headlights of the engines.

We were only about 15 miles from the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola.  It had been 10 years since I had been there so I sent a good part of one day there.  One of the great things about this museum is that they let you climb into just about everything.



As I was there on a week day, they did not have anything running but on the weekends they to have excursions.   It's well worth a visit.

My new favorite adhesive

As I had written in the blog posting You can never have too many people I had been using Wathers Goo for attaching N scale figures to the modules.   It was suggested that I try a product called "E6000" which is available from a specialty plastics store in my area.

As you can see from the photo of the tube on the left, I have been using it for attaching more than people.    It is clear, sets up in just a few minutes, and then cures in about 12 hours.   It holds firm for as long as you want, but can still be removed without damage.




So far  some of the applications I've found for E6000 where I had previously used Goo are securing decoders and wires on DCC installations, attaching vehicles and other details to the modules, and securing headlight lenses inside locomotive shells.

In this application I had removed the stock ties from a section of Atlas code 80 flex track and used the E6000 adhesive to attach the rail to the bridge ties that came with a Walthers bridge kit.

And it works great on N scale people too.

I bought the E6000 adhesive at Tap Plastics.  They are not a large chain and are only on the west coast but they will do mail order of it to the United States and Canada.

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.