Toni Babelony - In progress thread

[Krackel Hopper]

A thread for Toni Babelony to post weekly (or more) updates.  Questions or comments should be directed to the discussion thread.

Discussion Thread:
http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,3260.0.html

[Toni Babelony]

Today I'll be going to the local DIY market (Praktiker) to buy a small amount of 280 x 280mm and 70 x 280mm planks as the base for my project. I'll also take a look for a good base isolation material to build on. Maybe cork is cheaper than Styrofoam, maybe not. Depends on the price of the material. It's not going to be thicker than 5mm anyway.

In the photo included you can see a temporary setup of the main materials I'm going to use. It's mostly Tomy(tec) dominated:
- Tomix track;
- Tomytec Machinami collection R3 and 2;
- a few other Tomytec houses;
- Tomytec sub-urban station;
- Greenmax 33 & 34 (resp. Shops and Houses), they fit in perfectly with the R3 street geometry!;
- Greenmax decorative parts;
- Tomytec cars and people.

Building is going to be as dense as possible, with a in front of the station building a small bicycle parking, a bus stop and a place for one or two taxis to wait.

[Toni Babelony]

Now working on preparing the Greenmax 33 and 34 kits (seriously a lot of work!) and details like signalling, people, advertisements, etc. Tomorrow will be a day of spending money on new matte paints for the houses... A few greytones (concrete), yellows (walls, details), greens and blues. Some part of the painting isn't going to be done very neat, as doing a sloppy job will let buildings and details fit in more nicely with the Tomytec buildings.

Also, the size of the module has changed to 297 x 630mm (3x a DIN-A4 paper, the length of 2x S280 and a S70 Tomix rails), as I've found a goldmine of wood-planks the size of A4 and A3 papers. Nicely fitting in with the Tomix geometry :3

[Toni Babelony]

I've already started constructing my first Greenmax 33 buildings. A painstaking and very detailed work... Here are two pictures of the progress and a comparison to a Tomytec house.

[Toni Babelony]

The buildings are in place where they are planned and details like electricity poles, lights and signals are as well. Not all is fixed in place yet, as I still have to do the road pavement (probably just standard asphalt), ballasting (I bought extra fine gravel) and plants (a few trees, grass, small gardens).

The pictures give a general overview of the module so far. The row of houses on the backside of the 2nd platform (those with blue roofs) have access through a small alleyway as seen everywhere in compact city-centre situations in Japan (and anywhere else). All in all, I've managed to get 30 buildings on a 650 x 297 mm space including a station, parcel station and a railway crossing.

Last picture is how the module is 'stored' still enough opportunity to play around with it in live action!

P.s. sorry for the shoddy pictures :P It's quite dark in my room.

[stevenh]

I really do love that station; especially how it's backed right onto the houses... so Eizan Dentetsu.
Your work is amazing, I just can't wait to see some foliage :)

This makes me wonder why I don't have any actual construction photos of my current hack layout... I'll do that this weekend pending weather.

[Toni Babelony]

I really do love that station; especially how it's backed right onto the houses... so Eizan Dentetsu.
Your work is amazing, I just can't wait to see some foliage :)

Thanks. I think it's not too bad for my first attempt for a layout. The worst part is going to be laying the roads... That'll take some fine tuning and precise measurements... 

Anyway, I hope to finish it by the end of next week as I'm heading back to my parents' after that. Also, I don't think I'll have much time to work on it next week, as I'll be teaching a Dutch language crash-course then.

This makes me wonder why I don't have any actual construction photos of my current hack layout... I'll do that this weekend pending weather.

Looking forward to it! It's part of the rules, you know... Posting updates 

[Toni Babelony]

Hurr... Boredom struck today. So I've made roads, fixed all the population and vehicles, started on some grass patches and other detailing.

1. the sign saying: "銀座通り商店街" will be changed later to: "ご注意！踏切・架線" or something like that...
2. Everything except some buildings, lamps and electrical posts, is fixed to the plate! The only thing to do is ballasting, some gardening in the far left of the picture and the fine stuff, such as traffic signs, more advertisements and street details (e.g. manholes).

BTW, the illuminated parts of the lights are going to be repainted with 'glow-in-the-dark' paint to have a little Easter-egg when it's dark.

[Toni Babelony]

Some of you might want to kill me for this, but I've repainted the Enoden... Horribly... It's all the fault of the wrong paint-thinner I used. At first I painted them silver directly, but then I realised they had decals for green lines. These, of course, shrunk under the spray paint and left a horrible pattern on the sides. I tried to remove them with Nitro-thinner, but after a while the plastic as well got affected :( I tried to save what was left and went on with my repainting project... Such a shame of the decals as I could just have had them removed with lots of water and soap.

Anyways, the TomyTec 12m car's repainting went more smoothly. No decals here...

Now some more touching up is needed, as well as new decals/stickers. I think I'm going to mask the failures with advertisements.

[Toni Babelony]

From now I'm the Netherlands, a few 100 kilometers away from my project. The following 3 weeks I won't be able to update on this project. All there is left to do though is ballasting and maybe a new layer of 'asphalt' on the streets. Then the work is probably done. I hope you don't mind JNSForum ^^"

[Toni Babelony]

I've decided to scrap my previous attempts and start anew with a more sensible size (single A4-size and not 3xA4 size).

Just for now a photo or two of what I've been up to in the last three days: three modules finished, except for extreme detailing as signs, trees and so on.

The modules from front to back:
- Point module with dense building section of the centre of town and two level crossings;
- Station module with shopping street;
- Corner module with an interesting level crossing and entrance of the town centre.

All modules are according to standard DIN-A4 sizes (297 x 210mm), with the corner module being a bit larger (297 x 297mm). The modules are all connected with Tomytec S18 pieces, thus no connectors sticking out and making transportation easy.

Tomorrow I'll be heading for cities yonder to look for some additional materials and rails.

Photo 1: overview of the three modules so far;
Photo 2: close-up of the point module in one of the alleys (my gf was interested in what was to see there);
Photo 3: my inebriated mug holding up the point module with sheer willpower.

P.s. neither of the buildings is fixed in place, so there is room for exchange of buildings and such.