Here are more photos of the progress of the river area in the westside. 1st pix id the basic river and the last shows the rock formations on the riverbank added. Pix 2 & 3 are of a small quarry at the base of the Large mountain, I plan to add Realistic Water into the quarry. 4th pix is the start of a small town at the banks edge.
Hi Bernard, Here are a photos from around the web: http://cb-nchu.cocolog-tcom.com/cbnchuroom/images/enoden.JPG http://static.flickr.com/24/43784019_ecac9046d0.jpg http://www.hankyu-hotel.com/hotels/13dishonan/upload_image/stay/Enoden.jpg There's a couple of movie clips here of the Enoshima Dentetsu: http://www.enoden.jp/ also a search on you tube for 'Enoden' will bring up lots of good stuff. Here's an Enoden layout being built http://www.secondintention.com/pleasure/enoden/ I'm having trouble finding any good kinks for the Kiso Forest Railway, I think this is a modelling society page, but pretty much any link will take you to something interesting: http://kiso-mc.com/index01.html There's some really amazing modelling being done there! -Cody
Cody, Thank you for all the fantastic research! There are so many connecting links. Every link I've screened so far is amazing. Talk about you tight radius and conjestion on roads. You are right there is a lot of amazing modeling going on in Japan. You wonder if those guys ever look at the trainboard site. What got you interested in the Japanese Rail system? I really forgot, until seeing the clips, how they utilize every amount of space they have available. I even liked seeing what they did with legos to make trains. Thanks, I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I am.
Bernard...Very nice layout...you got me drooling! love the yard shot! I need to get in gear and start on a yard...my trains are fast but my modeling is SLOW!
Don, I love your album, I often go in there to look at the bullet trains, how did you get so many different trains? Also I was surprised to see the photo of the gauges in English in one of your shots. I bought my tunnel portals from WS and then I saw your shots of the Japanese portals and how you copied them, I wished I had found that tutorial earlier. Here are some more shots of the progress of the layout.
Bernard, the gauges are from an American locomotive...It may be misleading on my part to display that pic with the others. I haven't used those portals because I wasn't happy with the scribe lines. I have since made more portals which are much thicker and do a better job representing the Tokaido line prototype. For the Tohoku Shinkansen portals I will use cut PVC pipe which looks similar to the prototype. They look like simple concrete tubes.
Don, I thought I saw PVC pipes in one of your pictures. Also who is/was Charles Rickle, what was his profession (great photos of him) I sent you a message and my order from Japan arrived today, to my surprise. I finally found a place that sells those impossible to find Kato Japanese train re-placement couplers. I highly recommend this Japanese seller for people who are building Japanese rail system layouts, he has items no one else stocks. I ordered some prototye Japanese buildings that will now replace the ones I have in the layout. Before I post the information about the seller, is there a policy about promoting sellers who don't advertise on the trainboard? (He is located in Japan)
The seller that I recenty found and am using, is a company in Japan called Hobby Search and here is their website: http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/rail/ If you are interested in anything to do with Japanese RR modeling they have an extensive selection plus parts (like special couplers) that I couldn't find anywhere else. His delivery is very fast (3-4 days from Japan) and well packaged.
Hi Bernard, I had been modelling HOe/HOn30 for a little while and purchased a used N scale Kato JNR DD13 with the idea to use it as a chassis for a narrow gauge model. But I really liked the look, and how well it ran, which sparked allot of research and then finally, abandonment of most of my other miniature rail projects. It's funny how that happens... -Cody
Well this weekend I did some more work on the layout but it was too nice at the lake to stay inside. I did some work at night on the top of the large mountain. I'm going to run a small loop around the top for my DC trains that I'm having trouble converting to DCC (minitrix and some earlier Tomix models) I had problems with a different camera I was using so I'm only going to enclose 1 photo that is very soft in focus.
Okay, I finally was able to get some more work done on the layout. This time I started on the top of the large mountain top. I put a small oval there with the plan to run my DC trains that I'm having trouble converting to DCC (a lot of Minitrix - Powersteamguy would love this - all steam engines.) This is my first attempt at using my airbrush to weather the rails. Also put a decoder in an older Tomix passenger train and not an easy task, Kato is a lot simpler to do. Here are some photos: (sorry about the fuzziness of the photos, it's an older camera and there is a problem with it.)
Here is more progress on the large mountain with the addition of a planned waterfall to a small lake.
That's looking great Bernard, Are you going to install any overhead wire for your bullet trains? -Cody
Steve, I don't know why, but when I did my first test run with the DCC and all track in place, everything run with no problems and has since. (I was surprised) The only problem I've encounter was an area where I had one 16" radius and a couple of the longer Bullet trains had problems so I made some changes and the 16"R is gone. Cody - That is an idea I was thinking about but with the overhead wires would it be difficult to get to trains if problems arise? If I do go with the overhead wires that will be at a later stage. At this point I have a little more than a 1/4 of the layout complete with a lot of scenery to do. I still haven't figured out how to make a "waterfall" from the top of the mountain that runs to the small lake. Cody, how is your layout coming along?
It's been some time but I started work again on the layout here are some photos. I started work on a town.
Great layout Bernard. Here's a web site called byun byun Shinkansen. All kinds of info on Bullet trains. http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/%7Edajf/byunbyun/
