New Green Max high rise module system released

[cteno4]

Greenmax is finally releasing the first in the line of a high rise building system in early feb! this system allows you to build up high rise buildings with base set and add-on sets. its a similar idea to the dpm wall system, but looks to be a bit more suited to creating interesting japanese city buildings!

 

lots of info over on Doug Coster's blog here

 

http://jmtn.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/new-greenmax-city-building-kits/#more-611

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Jeff - Nice post, it gives a lot more options and designs for buildings as what I'm trying to on my layout. Thanks!

[CaptOblivious]

Now, I see where Jeff gets all his intel from, Doug's website. Got to remember that for future ref.

 

It was also in the HS newsletter, if you looked closely enough ;)

[Guest ___]

Now, I see where Jeff gets all his intel from, Doug's website. Got to remember that for future ref.

 

It was also in the HS newsletter, if you looked closely enough ;)

 

Yeah, but HS does not post the releases as far back as Doug did.

[cteno4]

Yeah they were in the hobbysearch newsletter this morning, but i read right past it as i went looking to see about my galaxy 999 on preorder with hobbyworld when i saw that on the hobbysearch newsletter!

 

Doug is one of the most knowledgeable japanese model train guys out there and prides himself on keeping on top of stuff. He has posted about these greenmax sets since their first announcement a year or so ago and has been waiting big time for them to show up!

 

his blog has an rss feed if you want to keep up to date with his release info there. he also usually drops posts to jrforum when there is a good new announcement on his site about japanese trains.

 

also has a great page on kitbashing japanese buildings. lots of great ideas to get creative with

 

http://japanese-trains.com/setagaya/buildings/

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Guest ___]

Seeing how I spend quite a bit more time on LJ than on here, might not be a bad idea to get the RSS feed running into the f/page.

[kashirigi]

This is the same sort of philosophy I use to design my buildings, with the big difference being that my buildings are not made of plastic, scratchbuilt and not for sale.

 

Buying some might be less of a pain. . .

[cteno4]

A friend out in CA has a laser cutter system and i keep meaning to try and draft out some generic building sides with window holes and treatments. figured if i could get a bunch of blank side stock cut out then just chop it up as needed. wish he was out here, its not easy trying to do it long distance! If i do get around to this and it works out ill see what it would cost to have him turn out a batch for anyone interested.

 

I wonder why more companies have not done some generic building modules like this. DPM did it for more warehouse looking structures, but i think that was all brick walls. perhaps if we are all making our own it would cut into sales of the prebuilt stuff too much!

 

i was surprised at the price for these for what you get compared to other structures. a 7 story building will run like $32 w/o shipping... It seems like a simpler set of things to design and make than a unique building kit. just churn lots of it out.

 

they are also not providing much in the way of detail or roof details for these it appears. pitty since thats the part of the scene that can look so wild in a japanese city scape and is usually the most visible part of these structures on layouts! DPM does sell a good set of roof details to beef up the chaos on the rooftops.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[lbriand_fr]

Plaza-Japan have this sets since today...

The basic set for 15,5 US$ & the expansion for 9.5 US$

[cteno4]

Yeah some of the sets hit HobbySearch and HobbyWorld this week, but are mostly sold out now!

 

Doug Coster is promising a in depth review of the kits very soon on his blog http://jmtn.wordpress.com/

 

still a bit bummed on the prices as to make any sized building will end up a bit of a bill...

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Well, i decided to pick up one of the 3 story base sets to see how well these came out. $14 seemed a tad high for a small building, but now that i see it, considering the detail and flexibility its does seem worth the money. I have not built the kit (when i do ill post more on my feelings and experience), but it does look like a fairly nice little building and the wall system lets you decide the window pattern you want to do. the walls have a structural interior wall that you attach the exterior facade sections to. they did a nice job of providing linking pieces to make larger wall sections out of the interior structural walls. there are three patterns of facade, a one story rectangular window, a two story tall rectangular window and a one story blank (no window). the bummer is they only give you enough facade sections to build the building so this limits the patterns you can do with it or if you create larger wall sections it could be even more limiting. so if you really want to play you will need more kits and end up not using all the pieces.

 

The one thing i thought might be possible is to use these to create larger interesting wall facades for the front of buildings and then create simpler sides and backs of the buildings as this may not been seen with tall buildings on either side. well the kit only gets you a pretty small potential wall section out of the 4 panels, so its not an really cost effective system. if you want to do any good sized building it would be worth rolling your own, i think, than trying to piece together a bunch of these kits.

 

It will get a tad expensive to get a larger building out of these though. a 5 story building will run about $23. i guess thats on par with the kato 6 story buildings, but it still feels a bit expensive. the cost comes in due to the wall layering they do as it is a lot of plastic in these kits for a pretty small building. I was hoping that the base entrance would be useful in kit-bashing for other buildings, but its pretty small and not a lot of detail or flexibility in it besides putting in side and back doors. the tomix high rises have a better unique back front entry detail possibilities than this IMHO and if you make taller buildings with these you end up some extra bases to play with.

 

Nice to have some alternatives, ill probably do a few of these, but dont think ill do any big custom building with them as it would get expensive fast! it does provide some more variety for city scenes though! I have talked to a couple of us hobby suppliers about these new kits to see if Mokei has been considering to import these to the US. They said they have not yet heard if he is or not, but they worried that this may not go over in the us market well with suppliers as they got pretty burned with the walthers modular wall system that did sell well apparently. The advantage of the green max system, though, is that you have everything to build a nice complete (and unique) building and easily just push it higher with the add-on kits.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[SubwayHypes]

i managed to grab one of these buildings, i think its pretty expensive though.  It costs about the same as a kato 3 story preassembled, for one of these greenmax non assembled joints.  it looks unique though, i will post pics once i build.

[cteno4]

I decided to wait for my next japan train order and get one or two of the extension kits and go for a 5 or 7 story for this one to see how it looks and then see if i want to do any more. going to tape together the facades i have in the base kit to see what it looks like at 5 stories first. the three story looks a tad bland to me for some reason.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Tenorikuma]

I just saw these at the store yesterday. Like a lot of Green Max stuff, they'd be great for kitbashing.

[cteno4]

Tenorikuma,

 

Where was the store you saw them in? just curious.

 

they are a bit more kitbashable than the regular green max kits with the wall sections having custom connectors to let you easily clip them together.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[cteno4]

I did a little playing with the base kit today. really not a lot of flexibility in the parts given unfortunately.

 

my thought was to see about doing a double sized building by using two kits to make a square shaped building. basically each side of the building is either sections of 4 or 5 (each about 15mm wide). you have 1 and 2 story facade units you can pop into each section (2 story vertical window, one story small window or no window). the 5 section wall is the front and back and the 4 section walls the sides. both the 4 or 5 section walls can be joined together with little connector pieces provided. my though is to attach a 4 and 5 section wall together to make 9 section wall all the way around. you need to do this as when you use the vertical windows you need to have an odd number of sections or they dont line up right. well this works, but you dont end up with enough blank panels to fill in between the 2 story vertical windows (because they dont give you any spares). this is where it would have been great if they would have provided a few spares of these facade panels!

 

luckily there is a pretty simple solution in that i can just make my own blank vertical panels out of styrene to go between the 2 story vertical window panels. actually may be nice to have a different texture on these or some vertical details (ala world trade center). only other problem is floors by increasing the foot print by 2x puts the roof at 4x the area! but luckily making floors and the roof is pretty simple. the floor level has enough options to make a nice front with a 5 section entry area framed with two 2 panel windows. this will only take a tiny amount of hacking and whacking.

 

Now i just have to decide if i want to only invest $20 to just make a standard footprint building 7 stories or go for broke and invest another $35 to go for the 5 story 2x foot print or $55 for the 7 story building! think im going to make a cardboard mock up to see what may work/look the best.

 

knoodle knoodle knoodle...

 

jeff

[Tenorikuma]

Tenorikuma,

 

Where was the store you saw them in? just curious.

 

In Japan. :)

[cteno4]

Tenorikuma,

 

Where was the store you saw them in? just curious.

 

In Japan. :)

 

ahh thanks was wondering if someone was importing them yet elsewhere... Lees trains is checking with mokei (the main us distributor of greenmax) to see if he plans to bring them to the us.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[quinntopia]

I've been making slow progress on assembling my 2101 w/ 3 2102's.   While this looks like it should be a deceptively simple kit, its actually fairly time consuming.  And as Jeff /cteno4 states, there's not as much flexibility in what you can do with the basic kits as you would think.  I agree, would be nice to have a few more 'facade' pieces to work with!

 

I suppose I'll have some final thoughts when its all complete, but given that I'm now into this project for about $45, and compared to the cost of the Kato skyscrapers (around $25) which are pre-built, etc... the value is hard to see for this project for a basic skyscraper.

 

Here's a photo of the 2101 kit with most of the pieces out on the table:

 

And here's a photo of the progress I was making after giving them a paint job (which looks greenish/blue in the photo, is actually a light grey, the brown was too dark for my taste)...the slow, time consuming work of removing each window piece, sanding off all the 'plastic nubs' (which is critical to getting the pieces to fit right) goes on...

[cteno4]

Looking forward to seeing your 7 story construction. i was trying to decide to just go in for two extensions to make a 7 story or go all the way and go for a double set of base and 2 or 4 extensions to make a 2x footprint high rise. was going to mock them up with foamcore try and figure out which might look the best. thinking the 2x footprint would be more unique as all the standard size is pretty much the same as the katos i already have. please keep posting picts!

 

thanks

 

jeff

[quinntopia]

Well, made some progress!  Have the 4 sides assembled (but not glued, just held together by friction in the below photo) which finally gives me a sense of what the complete building will look like.  I'm going to apply some transparent green plastic behind the windows to provide that contemporary 'green' glass look so popular in modern buildings these days.  As you can see in the photo, there's some pieces of the facade that did not glue correctly ( >:() and will have to be removed, sanded and re-glued.  I think the problem is that this building is really one that cannot be pre-painted...there is just no tolerance for even a thin coat of paint in all the facade pieces (and painting at this stage is a huge headache as you have to place the plastic windows into the facades themselves.... 

 

Jeff...I agree, I think it has a very similar look to the Kato's and probably a more unique approach would be to add breadth.

 

[cteno4]

quinntopia,

 

thanks very muh for posting the picts and for being the guinea pig on this one! you are right it is pretty close to the kato and green max thin buildings.

 

ok now i guess ill have to pony up the $$ if i want to make the 2x foot print like 7 stories. it is a real bummer they give you enough 2x windows to do the whole front in them! i guess ill alternate the 2x vertical with just blank vertical strips of styrene and score them with the similar pattern on the walls or they might look interesting as long verticals w/o any lines, ala yamasaki and the old world trade center.

 

keep the picts coming, interested to see the progress.

 

jeff

[cteno4]

doug coster has another green max modular high rise he has made here

 

http://jmtn.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/p5317580.jpg

 

and a write up on it in his blog

 

http://jmtn.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/more-greenmax-city-building-samples/

 

also picture of the first one he did on the layout

 

http://jmtn.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/p5227574.jpg

 

cheers

 

jeff

[disturbman]

This one just look so great... but, common, 10 sets!!! It's too much, too expensive.

[cteno4]

This one just look so great... but, common, 10 sets!!! It's too much, too expensive.

 

 

this sucker is at least 9 base kits (@ $14 ea) and 4 extension kits ($9 ea) by rough estimate! so $162 plus shipping... you will have some extra 4 section wall parts left over...

 

doug mentioned on his blog that he also got some sample parts from greenmax and ordered some sprues from them. I wonder if they are going to start selling just a set of wall parts eventually. ill email doug and ask him. i have seen some pictures of japanese train shows where some dealers have boxes of sprue sets of green max buildings. not sure how they got the box of odd parts. they were like 100y, 200y, 300y boxes.

 

cheers

 

jeff