November 2016 photo update

I managed to get a little time in on my layout over the weekend and it felt great. I need to make more of an effort in the hobby area - it helps to center me and get me a bit clearer.

This round was spent on less production and more shifting and arranging. I still have a few areas on the layout that needed some clarity and I think I have a few items worked out now. Case in point, the small area here to the right - a new warehouse area I shifted over from the Harbor.





I moved my Dad's R&R building over as well - a simple 90 degree shift that gave me a little more space around the building. I still need to address the height of the "sidewalk" base area. 

Another view of the bridge. I have not color corrected the image and you can see how orange the lights make things in photos.  It actually looks rather clear to the naked eye.

The little industrial area by the factory is coming together. It's looking like the area I meant it to be. Slightly grungy and work worn. It'll be fun to weather the streets and the like. I moved the little scratch built building I made over to the area. It's working well in the space.

I still need to get a fence for around the shipping area. I'm thinking about going with the Casco YP-308 Tilt Net Fence Green 1/150 N scale. I like the laser etched stuff more, but the price difference is BONKERS. Of course....the laser stuff does look awesome. I may end up talking myself into the $15 each for them. :)
The fence will run around the darker grey area all the way to the engine house in the bottom left of the frame - all the way around the shipping area.

Man....the metal fence is way cooler though......

ANYWAY....Shizuka is coming along. I still have not addressed the building shifting I wanted to do and I'm looking at the way traffic is looking now that I have more vehicles in the space. It's moving forward. What I ended up doing with the cars in Soyokaze is thinning them out a bit. The lore was that traffic was limited in Soyokaze due to the fact that streets were tight and the area had historical significance, so I moved many of the cars out of the area and over to Shizuka. I need to do another round, taking out heavy trucks and the like and moving them over as well. Always thinking. :)

Moved the snack shack area over to the bus turnabout.

I want to address the vendor area of Soyokaze as well. I like how the two white tent shop areas look in the photo below. I want to do more of this style with more shoppers milling about.

I think the back area on the modules need a bit more foot traffic. Of course that's another N•RAIL mantra - MORE PEOPLE! :)

The historical area is working. Needs more detail bits, I believe.

This little station is a forgotten nugget. I like the smallness of it. The old style. I think I'll dig it out of the scenic material around it and I'll push it in a bit closer to the tracks a tad. From certain vantage points, you can see that folks would have to leap from the trams to the platform! heh

I have areas that are too white. Styrene that I didn't dull down before putting into place. I'm going to hit them with some paint to take them down a bit. You can see the bridge details popping like crazy. I have the same issue with the sidewalk areas in one of the back module spaces around the apartments.

Less cars in Soyokaze feels right. I think I'll do another round, then look at sidewalk options and...yup...MORE PEOPLE. :) The main roadway is really wide, so I might look at making the walkway part of the road with barriers to keep pedestrians safe.

You can see a small Tori Gate I have placed in the general area of the Soyokaze Temple area - by the two buses in the parking area. I need to install that and do some more work on the Temple walkways and the bridge that crosses over to it and how that gets worked into the environment.

I dig how Kiwamura (foreground) and Shizuka (background) are working together. Looking right. 

More foliage is really working. I'm planning on adding even more.

The background...:::sigh::: That's still a thing in need as well.

Kiwamura residential needs some street markings.

Lay of the land.

I made another switch to the odd little center spot in the yard area. Another little industrial something-or-other now occupies the spot. What it is...I don't know. :)  It dawned on my that I've eaten up a lot of space now and I'm not sure where the kiaju monster and military is going to go now. Hmmmmm..... 

Shizuka space. There's a large bare plywood square to the left of the photo below. That was where my scratch built building was, but I realized that I wanted to have the road roll through there, so I moved it. Still working out the details there. I might need to move the brown roofed restaurant by the green DUCCO glue container. :) 

The area where the orange guard fence is right now was a construction type area, but I want the space back, so it's going to be a little more Soyokaze area with additional buildings like the grey, Greenmax building that's there now. I have two Sankei paper buildings waiting to be built at the moment. I'm also going to hit the area in front of the snack area (blue roof) with a finer ballast. This was looking too large in photos as it stands now.

So I have some things rolling and many irons in the fire as usual. I want to do a few more rounds of shifting in Shizuka, the factory area, and Soyokaze to accommodate some details and flow issues. The factory area along has SO MUCH additional detail I have planned for it. All the pipes that came with the set, workers, and lights. All that is going to take a ton of time.

I have people as well, so I'll be setting those up in various places and seeing how things shake out before buying more people. I'm going to look at a mix of TomyTec and Kato people for the hero areas closer to the viewer, then go with the cheap, Chinese pre-painted figures and hit them with some additional paint details for the back sections of the layout. Should work nicely. 

The kaiju monster and military scene I wanted to sneak in slipped my mind. I need to see where that will go. It might end up being something I move in and out of the layout like I do with my 1/144 scale Gundam figures. Take some photos, them move it off the layout again. We'll see. There is an area towards teh back of the Shizuka section that's not being utilized very well at the moment - it might makes a nice spot that's not right out in the open. We'll see.

Ok.....onward!

Thanks for reading!