Foreground Buildings

The five foreground buildings on the Tokyo side of the layout are simply 3-D shapes built up from foam core and covered with printouts of the building faces.

After determining the footprint of each building, I had to decide how tall each one would be. I didn't want them to dwarf the background buildings, so the maximum height would be about 5 inches. To provide some visual interest, I varied the heights of each building, alternating short ones and taller ones. I based the building heights on how many stories they would be, using a standard 10-ft story height.

Once I finalized the dimensions of the buildings, I used a computer to create the images I would later print out and glue to the building cores which would be made of foam core. Making the building "wraps" on the computer proved to be one of the most time-consuming activities, mainly because I was using a photo editing program (paint.net) that I was unfamiliar with. It was kind of like trying to fly an airplane while reading the instruction manual at the same time!

I created the images of the buildings' walls on paint.net using texture images from the website textures.com. I also used Google image searches to find windows and doors to round out the images. I wanted to include a couple of common Japanese convenience stores, Lawson Station and Family Mart, on the layout. I found suitable imagery for both and added them as first-story storefronts in the buildings on the left and right side. I added a Yoshinoya restaurant in the same manner on one of the middle buildings. Once I had created the four sides for each building, I printed them out on a color printer at my office (don't tell the boss! 😁).

Making the building cores was a fairly straightforward process of cutting sheets of foam core to the appropriate sizes and gluing them together with white glue. When cutting the pieces, I had to be careful to account for the thicknesses of the foam core so when the pieces were glued together, they would come out with the correct overall dimensions. 

For each building, I made four walls and the roof. I recessed the roofs down about 1/4" below the top edges of the walls to create a little parapet around the top of each building. I reinforced the joints by gluing strips of leftover foam core along the inside corners and edges. 

Completed building cores. The one in the foreground is finished, except for the black roof. The one on the right will have a curved corner and only the two edges of the foam core "floors" to help hold the shape of the paper "wrap". The one on the far left in the foreground will be a farm house on the Mt. Fuji side.

To break up the monotony of the plain blocky buildings, I wanted to give the building on the far right a rounded corner. This took a little while with doing the geometry calculations and borrowing my son's protractor, and at least one "do-over" for a piece that I cut the wrong size. In the end, it came out very nice.

Test-fitting building cores.

Building core test-fit, from another angle.

Once the building cores were finished, it was a simple matter of cutting out the printed "wraps" and gluing them to the cores with a glue stick. The last step was to hide the stark white rooftops by gluing pieces of black construction paper on them.

Finished foreground buildings in place!

That's it - pretty straightforward and quite effective. Now that I've seen how well it works, I plan to use this technique on my HO layout in the future. If I had more time, I'd take the next step of adding rooftop details such as air conditioning equipment and elevator shaft houses. That may be a little improvement project for the next show, but for now, it's on to the next task. International Day would only be a few days away at this point!

City Streets and Sidewalks

With the background building flats planned out on the Tokyo side of the layout, I turned my attention to the foreground scenery. This would consist of some streets, some 3-D buildings, and some small grassy areas. With the background building flats in place, I took some measurements, sketched out the street layout and made room for a single row of 3-D buildings.

The basic street configuration would be one street running side to side between the background flats and the backside of the foreground buildings. Another street would run between the foreground buildings and the track. The two streets would connect with a "cross street" at either end of the block. The material for the streets was cut from gray sheets of thin spongy craft foam and glued to the layout with full strength white glue.

Initial street layout. The street material still needs to be trimmed where the Kato Unitrack roadbed would be placed. I painted the area behind the rear street with dark gray paint to hide the brown surface in the gaps between the background buildings. The white shapes are the back sides of the background building flats, and the wood dowels that hold them up are scattered around. You might be able to see the dowel sleeves made out of drinking straws on the backs of the building flats.

Cities aren't completely covered with pavement, so I wanted to add a little green space, maybe as a park or a vacant lot. The leftmost corner would be one such spot. To add a little visual variety, I made a curving street following the outside edge of the track in the right corner. I initially wanted to put a small building off that street in the right corner, but I ended up just covering the whole area with greenery.

After deciding on the sizes of the foreground buildings and marking off their footprints, I finished off the paved areas by adding a parking lot next to the building on the far left and adding alleys between the three buildings in the center. I then applied some Woodland Scenics ground foam and clump foliage to the open areas with diluted white glue to simulate grass and bushes. Finally, I added sidewalks along some of the streets by cutting strips from a thin white styrene (~ 0.010" thick) yard sale sign that I had in my hobby material stash. I glued these to the top of the gray foam streets using a thin layer of clear acrylic caulk.

Sidewalks and ground cover in place. The bright green areas on the other side were my initial attempt at rice paddies on the Mt. Fuji side. More on that in a later blog post. The small black shape on the other side is a section of a country road made from thin black craft foam.

At this point, I realized I should have painted the stark white sidewalks strips before applying them to the layout. I just created more work for myself by needing to mask them off later for painting. However, at this point it was less than a week before showtime and I convinced myself that I needed to get them in place ASAP and move on to another task.

After the adhesive caulk had dried overnight, I masked the sidewalks and painted them with tan-colored craft paint. The paint went on very thin, almost like a wash. I intended to go back with a second coat later, but I liked the way it looked after the first thin coat, so I left it that way.

Sidewalks masked off and painted. Six more strips will be installed along the edge of the back street in front of the background building flats - those are at the bottom center taped to the cardboard. One of the foamcore foreground buildings is at the bottom left - more on those in a later blog post. Also, notice the bright green rice paddies on the back side have now changed to sky blue - more on that in a later blog post! 😁

Background Scenery

As I mentioned previously, one half of the layout would feature a Tokyo city scene, and the other side would be countryside with Mt. Fuji as a backdrop. A double-sided backdrop would act as a center divider running down the middle of the layout, separating the two scenes.

I planned to use photos from the Internet as backdrops. I found a good panorama photo of Mt. Fuji to use on one side, and a good one of downtown Tokyo for the other side, then used paint.net photo editing software to size them appropriately. I also split the images into 8-1/2" x 11" size sections so I could print them on standard copy paper and splice them together onto the backdrop.

On the city side, to give some depth to the scenery, I planned to use a couple of rows of 2-D building photos in front of the backdrop, with some 3-D building models in the foreground. The 3-D buildings would be simple shapes made out of printed images laminated to foam core. (More on the 3-D buildings in a later post.)

Before my business trip, I scoured the Internet for appropriate building photos. I then used the paint.net software to straighten the perspective where necessary, re-size the images for N-scale, and arrange them in 8-1/2" x 11" groupings to make them easier to print. Once I had all my backdrop and building images in order, I saved them to a USB drive and printed them out at Staples while in the US.

After returning to Bahrain, I started work on the scenery. To make the center divider backdrop, I first had to mark off the clearances for the track and the train as it rounded the corners.

Checking clearances for track and trains.

Overall shot of the un-scenicked layout. This stage is known in the model railroading community as the "Plywood Pacific" Railroad. Alas, many model railroads never make it past this phase! The boxes for the train set and Kato Unitrack set are on the back side.

I made the center divider by laminating four layers of corrugated cardboard from large boxes together using white glue. I then used a glue stick to attach the background images to both sides. In retrospect, I could have just used two layers of cardboard instead of four. The extra thickness makes it almost twice as heavy, but does add a lot of sturdiness and stability.

To make the center divider easily removable, I glued three long, 5/16" diameter craft dowels between the middle layers, and drilled corresponding holes in the top of the plywood. To give extra lateral stability to the backdrop, I made sure to place the dowels and holes so they would go through the intermediate support stringers under the plywood. 

City side up showing the 3 mounting dowels and their corresponding holes down the layout centerline.

Backdrop in place, showing the country side and the Shinkansen in front of Mt. Fuji - the way it was meant to be rail-fanned!

I decided on two rows of 2-D buildings on the city side, with about 1.5" spacing in front of the backdrop and between each row. The back row would be individual high rises, which I printed to smaller than N-scale and roughly the same size as the foreground buildings on the backdrop. The front row would be mid-rises, roughly to N-scale. I wanted the mid-rise row to form a continuous line all the way across the layout to help hide the transition between the layout surface and the backdrop. My solution was to fill in the spaces between the mid-rise buildings with images of Tokyo city streets.

I glued the images of the buildings and the gap-filling street scenes to foam core using a glue stick, trimmed around the edges, then tested them out against the backdrop.

Making 2-D buildings. A finished high rise is on the far left, a finished mid-rise is left of center. Street scenes will fill the gaps between the mid-rise buildings.

Testing 2-D building positioning.

Once I found a configuration I liked, I glued the mid-rise buildings and street scenes together in groups of 2-3 for ease of handling. Then I marked the location of each high rise building and each mid-rise section on the plywood and drilled 5/16" holes for mounting dowels. 

For ease of transportation and storage, I didn't want to permanently attach the mounting dowels to the layout surface. I was also afraid if I glued the dowels to the foamcore buildings, the buildings would get destroyed during the process of installing and removing them from the layout. To get around this problem, I glued pieces of soda straw to the back sides to act as sleeves for the dowels to slide into. The dowels themselves are just held in place in the plywood by friction.

Cherry Trees, Part 4 - Foliage and Finishing Touches

After the tree armatures were finished, it was time to add the foliage. For the bulk of the foliage I started with the polyester fiber stuffing from a stuffed animal from the Dollar Tree.

No animals were harmed in the making of these model trees... only this stuffed rabbit... but just a little bit!

I had some stuffed animals as a kid, and the thought of cutting open this little guy and gutting him kind of pained me a little bit. I was really hoping to find a cheap throw pillow instead (less emotionally scarring!), but that particular day the Dollar Tree didn't have any pillows for sale.

As humanely as possible (!), I opened up just enough of the seam on the rabbit's side to pull out bits of poly fiber.

MINOR surgery in progress. The bunny would recover nicely, if not a little bit thinner :-)

Then I stretched out little bits of the fiber, dabbed a little full-strength white glue on the tips of the tree branches, spread the stretched fiber over them, and set them aside to dry.

Close up of the first few trees with the poly fiber added.

Happy little trees!

The next step was to add the pink foam, but this didn't go so well. Following instructions I had seen on the Internet, I first sprayed the white canopy with cheap hair spray that I picked up from Walmart. Then I sprinkled on some pink foam, and repeated the process to cover the tree.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the foam to stick. After using about 1/4 the bottle of hair spray on my two test trees, I decided to throw in the towel and figure out a Plan B. I think part of the problem was the foam was way too coarse for this application, and was just to heavy to stick to the poly fiber. Another problem was probably due to my impatience in not letting the hair spray dry.

Pink foam fail.

I was a little frustrated that all that time and energy spent making the pink foam was a waste. But, hey, at least now I have a cool little blender I can make smoothies with! Maybe some time later on I'll try to run the foam through the blender again to see if I can chop it up to a finer grade. No time for that now, I have to think about what else I need to accomplish in the next couple of weeks!

After giving it some thought, my Plan B for the trees was to paint the poly fiber canopies directly. I first tried soaking a canopy in diluted pink paint.

Side-by-side comparison: dunked canopy on the left, my best foam-covered example on the right... meh...

The dunking method was OK, but still didn't quite look right, but I knew I was on the right track. I decided to load my trusty Badger airbrush with diluted pink craft paint and spray the white poly fiber canopies. Eureka! This actually turned out pretty well - good enough for the International Day event in 1 week, at least!

Foam-covered example on the far left, front row. Dunked canopy next to it. The rest have been spray painted with an airbrush.

Airbrushing did leave some minor paint "beading" on the poly fiber canopies, but after it dried, it looked OK and passed the all-important 3-foot rule. I went back later and touched up the pink overspray on the trunks with brown paint. I ended up using the "dunked" tree closer to the backdrop where it would be less noticeable.

Much happier little trees!

I still needed a way to attach the trees to the layout. I wanted them to be removable to simplify transporting the layout. I ruled out attaching them to little pins at the bottom because I'd have to drill a bunch of tiny holes in the plywood layout surface, and it would be impossible to find all the holes later on. I settled on simply placing them on top of the scenery, but their tiny wire loop bases were too unstable. To remedy this, I cut out a bunch of 1" circles from two clear plastic salad containers I swiped from a buffet restaurant near my office. I then used a dab of clear latex caulk to adhere each tree to the center of a plastic circle. This worked out really well, but given more time, I would have added some ground foam to the top side of the circles to cut down on their shininess and help them blend in with the finished scenery better.

Cherry Trees, Part 3 - Trunks & Branches

After I returned to Bahrain from my trip to the US, I needed to make the armatures (trunks & branches) for the cherry trees. I had two options using the materials I brought back with me: unraveled bits of jute twine, and floral wire.

My plan for the twine was to cut it in short lengths, fray one end to represent branches, soak the whole thing in diluted white glue, then let it dry overnight to become stiffer and hold its shape. I quickly realized the twine wasn't going to work out too well because the roll I bought was so tightly wound it had a natural coil that would have to be straightened somehow. Also, the individual strands, when unraveled, still looked too much like three little corkscrews and would need to be straightened and shaped somehow. I determined that making the twine work out was going to take more time than twisting floral wire, so I ditched that idea. Maybe I'll try it another time when I'm not so pressed for time.

I then turned to the floral wire to make my armatures. It was a fairly simple process of cutting a 50' roll of wire into 5" lengths. I then bundled four wires together, bent the bundle in half, and twisted the bundle tightly starting at the bent "loop" end. The looped end would be the bottom of the tree, and the "free ends" would form the branches. About halfway up the "trunk", I split the wires into two equal groups and twisted those about half the remaining distance, and so on. When finished, I spread the branches out to look like a natural tree, and then I bent the loops at the bottom of the trunk up 90 degrees and spread them out to make a little base for the tree to rest on... at least temporarily.

Cut wires waiting to be twisted into trees. The bottom left shows groups that have been folded and twisted together a couple of times, awaiting the next step. A finished tree armature can be seen left of center.

After some initial experimenting, I ended up with about 29 trees with a couple of bits of wire left over. I then painted them all with some clear latex caulk with a little dark brown craft paint mixed in to try and hide the obvious twisted wire look of the trunks and branches. It took a couple of coatings of caulk slopped on pretty think to get the desired result. I then slopped on a good thick coat of dark brown craft paint to further hide the twisted wire texture and green-painted wire.

At that point, the tree armatures are ready for their polyester fiber canopies.

Cherry Trees, Part 2 - Pink Ground Foam

The method for making your own ground foam, as I understood it was as follows:

1. Cut up seat cushion foam in cubes about 1"

2. Add the foam cubes and a little water to a blender

3. Squirt in some craft paint in the color of your choice

4. Blend, then dump the slurry out on some newspaper and air dry

Using this process, I made three batches of pink foam during my trip to the US while visiting family. For the first batch, I just spread out the wet foam slurry onto a large sheet of white paper. Because it was still very wet, when it dried, the foam turned a slight yellowish color on the bottom where it had been in contact with the paper. I assume this is due to some of the chemicals in the paint, and how the wet diluted paint ended up drying on the surface of the paper. Overall the first batch didn't turn out too bad and had exactly the color I was looking for, but I wasn't happy about the little bits of yellowish color mixed in with the pink, so I decided to try it again.

This time, before spreading the foam slurry out to dry, I used a clean rag to squeeze as much of the pink water out of it as I could. Then I used a stick to break up the resulting fist-sized clump of foam bits and spread them out. Something weird happened with the color on this batch. It ended up a much brighter and more vivid pink color than the first batch, and even more so than the paint itself! I've seen different varieties of cherry trees with different colored blossoms, so it was still within the realm of being realistic, so still usable. I also noticed this batch of foam ended up noticeably coarser than the first batch, probably because I didn't blend it as long.

First batch on the left, second on the right.

Second batch compared with the color of the paint used 😕

I wanted to make another batch with a color closer to the first, so I tried again, using a little less paint, and again squeezing out the wet foam before spreading it out to dry. This time, the color came out more like a light cotton candy color. Still usable, but now I had a third shade of pink foam to deal with 😬  I was a little light on the blender this time as well, so this batch came out noticeably coarser than the last one.

I put each batch into its own Ziploc bag and took them with me back to Bahrain for the next step.

Cherry Trees, Part 1 - Concept and Gathering Materials

Blossoming cherry trees are the quintessential symbol of springtime in Japan and an important part of the Japanese culture. As such, a bunch of tiny pink trees was a scenery element I wanted to include on the layout from the very beginning.

To keep costs down, I knew I had to make my own trees. Easy enough, there's a fairly well-established method of making model trees using the appropriately-sized armatures (i.e. trunk and branches), polyester fiber to form the bulk of the canopy, and ground foam (or similar material) to add texture to the foliage. The challenge then became sourcing these three elements.

I started by looking for a commercially-made pink ground foam or similar product that I could include with my upcoming online order of the track.  The only thing I could find find was made by Scenic Express, and it was $10 for a 16-oz container. The price was enough of a deterrent that I decided I would try and make my own ground foam from scratch. I had seen online articles about how to do that with some seat cushion foam, craft paint, and an old blender, and I had always wanted to give it a try. Now I had an excuse to do it!

I planned to get my supplies during my upcoming trip to the U.S., so I started making a list. Once I was there, I gathered the supplies I needed for each of the three main components of the tree.

For the armatures, I thought about collecting tiny bits of twigs from nature but quickly realized it would take too much time to collect and prep them for use on the layout. Time was not a luxury I had, so I decided I needed to make my own armatures. I thought of a couple of different ideas, either using bits of jute twine with one end unraveled to represent the branches, or by twisting bits of floral wire into shape. I planned to make the armatures once I got back to Bahrain, but couldn't decide which method to use, so I picked up both a roll of twine and a roll of floral wire from the Dollar Tree.

For the ground foam, I planned to make what I needed while visiting with my family in the U.S., then take the finished product back to Bahrain with me. I purchased a piece of white foam and some pink craft paint from Hobby Lobby. I just needed to find a suitable blender. To make a long story... less long..., I ended up getting a small personal smoothie blender from Walmart for $10 that seemed to do the trick.

The last ingredient I needed was poly fiber to form the tree canopies. I knew I only needed about a handful of plain white poly fiber, but all I could find in the stores was a pillow-sized package for about $4. This was way more than I needed and was willing to pay, so I started looking for alternative sources. I found a small stuffed Easter Bunny at the Dollar Tree and figured he had more than enough stuffing inside to do the trick!

Benchwork

Turning my attention to planning the benchwork, I had an idea of what I would like to build.  I envisioned a simple wood open grid frame with a thin layer of plywood on top, and a layer of pink insulation foam on top of that. The sides would be covered with Masonite or luan plywood to give it a nice, finished appearance.

One of the perennially frustrating aspects of being an American living in Bahrain is that you can't simply run down to Home Depot and get what you need to build a simple project like this. For some reason, DIY isn't really a thing in the Middle East, so finding stuff like lumber and building supplies is a real challenge. Bringing this kind of stuff back from my upcoming trip to the US wasn't really an option because of its size, so I knew whatever I was going to use for benchwork, I had to find locally.

The one store I thought might have what I needed was inconveniently located at least a 45-minute drive away in heavy traffic, and there just never seemed to be a good time to attempt a trip there. Fortunately, scrounging around our storage room at home turned up just what I needed: some under-layout shelving I built for my HO layout that I had shipped with our household goods from the US but wasn't able to use in our current apartment.

The shelves consisted of a couple of thin 2'x4' loose plywood sheets that sat on top of simple 1"x3" frames that I screwed to the layout benchwork. This was a perfect start! Based on what I had on hand and the space I expected to be available at the event, I quickly determined the optimal layout size would be 2'x4' (which then dictated the track configuration and the specific Unitrack set I needed to order from the online hobby shop). I then set about cannibalizing the storage shelves to make the benchwork for the Shinkansen layout.

The two pieces of plywood are behind one of the frames on the right. The other frame has already been dismantled, and its pieces are on the left.

When I originally made the shelves, I had to trim 6" off the end of each sheet of plywood to fit my HO layout benchwork. I hated to give up any more straightaway track on the Shinkansen layout than necessary, so I decided to stick with a 2'x4' overall size. To keep the 4' length, I had to cut a 6" strip off the end of one of the sheets of plywood. I had also originally rounded the front corners on each piece of plywood, so the finished Shinkansen benchwork has a few of these funky quarter-round gaps in the plywood surface.

Somehow I ended up with two different thicknesses of plywood (of course!). To keep weight down, I used the full section of the thinner piece to cover most of the area, and cut the 6" make-up strip off the thicker piece. To keep the plywood surfaces even with each other, I trimmed off just a smidgen from the top edge of the frame under the thicker section.

Soon enough, I had the benchwork assembled. I really wanted to top it with a layer of foam, because one of the scenery elements I was hoping to include was a bridge going over a shallow valley of rice paddies. I never found the time to go to that local hardware store, so I had to give up on that idea and settle for the flat plywood surface. Maybe I can still include some rice paddies, just without the bridge 😞

Also, I was never able to get hold of any Masonite or luan plywood trim for the sides, so they ended up being covered by nothing more than a coat of paint.

Top view of the finished "benchwork" after a coat of latex house paint (a sample size can from Lowe's that I brought back from the US). Notice the seam between the two pieces of plywood on the left side.

Underside of the finished and painted benchwork. The seam between the two pieces of plywood runs directly above the "double joist" on the left side.

Initial Preparations

I immediately knew the basics of what I wanted to build - a simple small oval of track with a Shinkansen model running around it. The "layout" itself would be a small portable flat surface that we could set up on top of a table.

The purpose of the layout is to showcase Japan, so I had several ideas of scenery elements I wanted to include on it. After a brief discussion and brainstorming session with my wife, I decided to go with a double-sided display with a scenery divider lengthwise down the middle of the layout. Half of the layout would depict Tokyo and city scenery, and on the other side would be a more rural setting with cherry trees in full blossom and Mt. Fuji as a backdrop.

First things first, I knew I had to order the actual model train and track ASAP if it was going to get to Bahrain in a timely manner. I quickly learned that the only place you can get a Shinkansen at a reasonable price is from Japan itself. A quick eBay search turned up a complete 4-unit set at a decent price and included expedited shipping to the US. My upcoming business trip to the US happened to be in the area where my family lives, so I was able to have it shipped to them so I could pick it up while I was in town. Meanwhile, I also ordered a Kato Unitrack V5 set from an online hobby shop in the US, and it arrived in Bahrain before I returned.

I made a list of other supplies I needed, and gathered what I could locally, then picked up the rest during my trip to the US.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to bed...

By way of background, I am an HO scale model railroader, and my main interest is (more-or-less) modern North American diesel freight trains. My wife is originally from Japan, and we currently live in Bahrain. Most of my model railroad stuff is packed up in storage in the US, but I did bring a small section of my layout and some rolling stock to play around with.

One night in late Feb 2017, my wife was at the computer in the living room and I stopped by to tell her good night on my way to bed. She mentioned the upcoming "International Day" at our kids' school in late March, and wondered if I had any good ideas for an exhibit for Japan. I was too tired to think at that point, so I told her I couldn't think of anything right then. She went on to say that last year, the Japanese table was kind of lame, and that the neighboring Italy table was getting all the attention because the people running it went all out and were giving away all kinds of amazing Italian food samples, etc. It seems like there was a little bit of international rivalry going on there 😁  She said none of the other Japanese moms seemed very enthused about doing anything interesting for International Day this year. I gave a sigh of sympathy and went off to bed.

After a few minutes as I was laying in bed, she came rushing into the bedroom and asked, "Do you have any Japanese trains?!!" I was kind of stunned at first but could see her thought process. I tried to explain that I did have one model made in Japan (a Kato SD70MAC), but it was a model of a US locomotive. Then my wife, who is usually super frugal, made an outrageous suggestion: could I buy a Japanese Shinkansen train model to use as a display for International Day?

(Editorial note: Shinkansen is the Japanese name for the high speed passenger "bullet trains" in Japan. Read more about them by clicking this link.)

I was initially encouraged, but didn't want to take the bait. I explained that all the Shinkansen models I knew of were N scale, and I'd have to buy the train as a set, plus the track to run it on. In total it would probably cost a few hundred dollars. Her response: "Well,... that's OK! Let's do it!"

After I agreed, she left the room and I laid there in bed with a bit of excitement and a flurry of thoughts racing through my head. I suddenly realized I was on the hook to build a small N-scale layout in a little over a month. And by the way, I was a few days away from leaving for a week-long business trip to the US. But I was determined, if I'm going to do this thing, I want to do it right! 

The next morning, I double-checked with her to confirm that she was still serious and that I wasn't dreaming the night before 😁  No, it was all for real... so, GAME ON!!!