esngblog

My last Tomytec temple building arrived today.  It took a whole 30 minutes to build, and I was able to lay out the buildings on the baseboard to get a reasonable appearance.  I’m sure that this doesn’t match how a Japanese temple is arranged, and it’s a bit cramped, but a little amble around Google Maps shows them shoe-horned into all sorts of small urban areas, as well as the larger shrines in expansive grounds.  So Rule 1 applies…..

I was also pleased to pick up a couple of temple wall kits from Plaza Japan, arriving in the same package, so I will be able to surround the temple appropriately.  Next task will be to fit the foam board to raise ground levels in the temple grounds.

Martin has also been busy.  A fiddle yard all laid and working, and the first structure on the scenic side of the layout.

And to close, a little inspiration…..

I’ve had two or three days solid modelling, and the layout shows some real progress.  Having played around with the buildings, I chose what seems to be an interesting layout, and one that allows those with entrances on both sides to be used to best advantage.

I then added pavements and tarmac, leaving ‘holes’ for buildings with deep base plates.  There are a few pavement joints that are not very good, but I suspect a strategic person or two will cover those in due time.

And this is the end result.  Just a little fettling, and a touch of paint needed on the scenes.  Some of the original Kuritu buildings show some natural weathering, and one or two came apart and needed gluing back together.  However, I wanted to keep the original structures to keep the something of the character of the original layout.

And what to do with the other half of the layout?  I had a very pleasant hour building the Tomytec temple buildings.  Precoloured, and with painted details, they are designed to clip together – but a little solvent helps hold it all together.  Here is the pagoda.

I’m waiting for a final building delivery to finally lay things out on the layout, and create the scenery, but it may look something like this…..

While I wait for the postman, I may return to Minories, or build the lighting ‘box’ to sit above the layout – both to provide illumination and some of the dust off.  And there are still some cherry trees to plant around the edge of the layout….

A little more progress on the layout, despite the distractions of fine weather and gardening.  I’ve started the ballasting, and the tram depot has taken shape.  Also on its way are the first two buildings on one end of the layout.  These low-relief buildings seemed a good way to use some of the background buildings from the original Kuritu.

One of the original features of Kuritu was the temple on the rural side of the layout.  I wanted to keep something of this if I could, so I thought that I would upgrade the buildings to keep with the rather nice Japanese garden from the original layout.  I haven’t spent much on this layout – it’s all recycled really – so I ordered these buildings from PlazaJapan.  Excellent service, just a week to get them here.  But then some fun with the Post Office.  They were due for delivery on Thursday – and nothing arrived all day.  I then get a notification on Friday morning – Good Friday – that they tried to deliver at 7am and there was no reply.  Well, I would have been asleep by then, but I suspect this was just a holding message, to make me rebook the delivery.  So I rebooked it – Tuesday!  But mid-morning Saturday, there was a knock at the door, and the parcel had arrived.  I’m not sure what was going on – blame Bank Holidays and covid, I guess.  But these three look very nice, pre-painted, and just needed a little weathering of the roofs and some matt varnish to tone down the plastic look.  A nice simple modelling task for next week, as the UK temperatures plummet!

I will continue with the ballast, pavements, buildings, and get some ground cover in place.