Auhagen Platz (2)

I've spend a great day making some good progress on the 'Plattenbau' today.
At the left the state of the building this morning. Nothing was changed to the original Auhagen kit at this stage, except for glueing two kits together of course. I painted the kit with ocre and light grey acrylics, followed by a wash with black ink. A concrete effect was achieved by lightly brushing some grey/brownish pastel powder (easily made rubbing pastels over sandpaper) on top. The window frames got a similar treatment. A coat of matt varnish finishes this stage.

Where the window frames look quite good, the original door (at the right) is a different story. It's just too course and there's no frame around it. So I used a door from a Faller kit, which was shortened in hight a little to fit.
I also made steps from styrene plate because the ones provided in the kit are too high for N scale. Using those daily would be a good exercise for the residents though ;)

Next up: the roof. I replaced the Auhagen roof with one made from 0.5 mm styrene sheet. Strips of pre-coloured sandpaper were glued on top to simulate roofing felt. I have purchased an 'industrial building detailing set' from Artitec a while ago, which is a great source for roof details. I used a rather large aircon unit, a metal chimney and some flat thing (access to the roof?).
I accidentally spilt some white paint on the roof, but decided it could stay there because it could as well have been done by an N scale painter doing the roof edges ;)

And the result! It still needs some glazing and perhaps I'll even add light and an interior at a later stage, but the Plattenbau-look is there! The green Trabant adds to the DDR feel.
I think the Auhagen kit is a great starting point for making bigger apartment buildings like this one. It's very versatile and combining kits is just so easy! Here's  another example of Plattenbauten made with these kits, very cleverly turning some elements to make the building wider.

Auhagen Platz

May I introduce you my new bit of layout: Auhagen Platz. A hommage to the manufacturer of the big Eastern German prefab building that adorns the square. The space next to the plattenbau will be used for some greenery and perhaps a kiosk or a fastfood burger place.

Conveniently, the inhabitants of Auhagen Platz will get their own tram stop with a good connection to leave their neighbourhood and do some shopping downtown. At Auhagen Platz the tramway leaves the concrete midtown environment to continue as a ballasted track towards Lileau's suburbs.

Looking forward to do some urban building again. Any ideas are of course welcome!

Almost getting there :)

Lighting up

These streetlights are very cheap ones from Hong Kong (eBay, 10 for under € 10,-, and free shipping as well!) but I think they look quite okay on the little layout.
The wiring is nothing fancy, I just connected them to two AA batteries, which are hidden inside the module. A little switch turns them on. I chose to go for battery power because the tiny LED's will probably last almost forever on a battery charge and it keeps connecting modules in the future very simple.

I'm really enjoying this stage of construction in which the city gets more and more alive with every detail added.

And my T7B5 should be arriving shortly! Looking forward to running it. Hope to get some more track in soon as well, so I can start on the turning loops. Then the enjoyment of watching the trams go by can really begin :)

Tram stop construction

Got these really nice street fences from Sankei today. Sankei (from Japan) makes high quality laser cut paper models and various interesting details like these fences. The figures are from Preiser.

Auhagen 14464

Got this kit at the local hobby shop today. It contains two 4 storey 50's/60's German apartment buildings. The design is generic enough to make them useable almost anywhere in the world.
The kit comes with a white/greyish and a light yellow building, but the rather shiny plastic definately needs a coat of paint.
German manufacturers have a good habit of casting the window frames seperately, which always makes the painting process a lot easier. Also nice: all side walls in the kits are moulded together.

It's not the most detailed kit but it's cheap (€ 16,-) and has a big plus: it's completely modular, you can build the buildings any way you want really. The builings can get a tiled roof or a flat roof, fitted with balconies or without, the ground floor layout can be changed, and the best of all: buildings can stacked on top of eachother and multiple kits can be combined.

I really like this modular approach. This is my first Auhagen kit and I must say I'm pleasantly surprised, looking forward to building it!


A couple examples:

Ah, and the alcoholics were on sale :)

Croncrete slabs and rusty masts (2)

As promised in my last post, some more pictures. I have been unable to use any pictures made with my mobile phone, so I took some afterwards. These don't show all stages of building, sorry about that.

The catenary masts. I decided to go for non-functioning overhead for now. In the future these masts can be easily replaced with live wire ones, as the masts are attached to bolts wich slot in holes in the track plates. This also makes replacing a damaged mast very easy.
The base was made from 2mm dia styrene tube, with a drilled hole in which the 1.2mm dia brass tube fits. The 0.5mm brass wire was soldered to the tube. Some insulation from electric wire finishes the mast. I sprayed the whole mast a light grey colour, and then painted the wire-hanging parts black with a little drybrushed rusty colour. After all, Lileau community isn't spending much on maintenance ;)

The track, before and after. Tomix Wide Tram Track is really easy to use but I don't like the shiny rails and plastic. These had to be re-painted. The inside of the flangeways were brushed dark brown (be careful to whipe excess paint off the rails afterwards). I didn't paint the rail joiners and last centimeter of the pieces before joining them together to ensure electric conductivity. When dry, the rails and flangeways were masked and the plates sprayed concrete colour. A light wash of black ink and voilà! Washing all pieces seperately makes the tramway look very lively.

The zebra crossing is a rub-on decal from (I believe) a Busch set. To get some of the whiteness and shine away, I gave the crossing some local weathering after applying.

This picture also shows the top of the M4 bolts the masts have been attached to. They look a little big, but I've seen examples of these in real life so I'm not that bothered about them.

By the way, the platforms aren't glued down yet, this will be fixed soon.

Concrete slabs, rusty masts and brand new Combino's

I've tackled two jobs this weekend: making overhead masts (design based more or less on these) and painting the tram track.
I would like to show some of the process, but I'm having trouble uploading pictures from my mobile phone to blogger, so you'll have to do with this picture of the results for now.
Will upload some pictures of the work in progress when I have figured out the problem.

By the way, really looking forward to the release of Modemo's Combino. Some mouthwatering pictures of the prototype can be found here.

Work in Centre-ville

Lileau's first module will be a downtown setting with several late 19th century and early 20th century buildings. From the left to the right these are Artitec's Kaufhaus 14.160 (status: needs detailing and glazing), Faller's Stadthaus 232307 (status: done) and Artitec's Gable 14.140 (still needing a lot of time, but the time-consuming job of cutting out all windows is done!). There will be a fourth, very narrow, building, probably a modified DPM kit.

In front of the buildings, there will be a pavement and single lane road with some parking places and a bus stop. I have planned a tram stop in the front of the module, with platforms on both sides of the double track line, connected with a level crossing. I hope there's space for some trees left after all of this :)
When the track arrives from Japan, I'll probably cut slots in the plywood for it to fit in, in order to get the top of the rails level with the streets. That should give the track a bit more a tram-like appearance.

Recent developments

I have gotten rather unhappy with my micro tram layout lately. Not only because some rolling stock doesn't like the tight curves, but also because of some design errors like the curved platform (causing huge gaps) and the limited room for buildings, giving the layout not quite the look as I wanted it to have.
Well, I decided that I won't finish it the way it was intented, but instead use the layout as a base for a new layout in G9 scale (1:22,5, running on 9 mm track). Read about these developments in the thread I've started on the Gn15 forum. Now I just have to find a nice prototype to model :)

On the N tram front meanwhile,  I'll go for the modular approach, using 15x35 cm modules which together will form a small tram network. This allows me to work on a manageable, small project at a time, while not having to compromise on urban look, curves radii and platformlenghts. I have just started on the first module, depicting a downtown scene, with a double track tram line in the front. The buildings in de background are just 3.5 cm deep. I'm very happy with the way things are looking so far!

The story*
As I think every layout needs a story behind it, here's mine:
Alfred Mongy is known for constructing the grand boulevards between the french towns Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing, giving the towns a connection by tramway. However, little known is that he also did a similar project in Lileau, a town with roughly 50.000 inhabitants on the French/Belgian border. Finished just before the beginning of the 20th century, the boulevard and tramway (althought slightly less wide as in Lille) connect the city center with its suburbs.
Originally, two-axle vehicles drove the line, which were later replaced by 4-axle units. In the 1970's it became clear that much had to be invested in new trams, to replace the aging stock. However, the city counsel made plans not to do so and replace the trams by cheaper city buses. An end had come to 80 years of tramway history in Lileau...
...if it wasn't for the Lileau people. They were outraged and absolutely weren't going to lose their beloved tram. By the smallest possible majority the plans were rejected and the tramway was saved, be it that not much money was invested in maintenance and rolling stock. The community transport authority had to purchase trams second hand from many European and even a few US cities, making Lileau a favorite city for tram enthousiasts. Düwags, Tatra's and even PCC cars can be seen operating on a single network.
Things have been looking good for the tramway recently. Although mostly second hand stock is used, rumours have it that the transport autority will be investing in brand new light rail vehicles. A tram from Toyama has even been spotted during test runs...

*This story is completely fictional and not by any means final. It may be changed without prior notice ;)

Collecting for my new layout...

I found these two facade kits, by Artitec. They're highly detailed resin models of a 30's department store and a late-19th century townhouse. They also have some nice etched details.

Guess that solves the dilemma whether my new layout will be European or Japanese ;)






A couple of pictures of the resin castings (I just started on the department store):