BEIJIAO - a large Chinese HO exhibition layout set in the 21st century

[mjenderby]

Paul

 

For some reason, this post didn't work last time.

 

Re dogs, I had the same problem as Preiser etc only seemed to do pets. However, have you seen Peco Modelscene dogs https://peco-uk.com/products/dogs

 

They're cheap and cheerful. Being OO they're a little on the big side and overfed for Chinese ;-) 

 

However, they can be modded and painted to give reasonable. There's 2 or 3 on this pic of NiHao

 

Cheers

 

Mark

[CameronL]

On 04/04/2020 at 11:17, TEAMYAKIMA said:

 

In assumed it was HO/OO scale

 

I was wrong!

 

 

"A bit more foreground cameo human-interest stuff - especially for kids."

 

If you painted him red you could have a *Clifford the Big Red Dog" cameo. Definitely for the kids.

 

Love the layout 

Best wishes.

Cam

[TEAMYAKIMA]

Have had a quiet day today.

 

One weakness of the Faller roadway was the yellow truck - too shiny and it had European branding on the cab roof

 

 

So two hours of weathering later ….

 

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

So more progress on the Faller roadway. Here is a better photo of the yellow truck - now with the sun visor re-instated. I'm in two minds about fitting the sun visor. On the one hand I'm always saying that I've never seen the sun in grimy, industrial cities, but on the other hand it adds some detail and interest to the truck.

 

 

The roadway basically runs as a single bi-directional road along the front of the layout. But there is a 'point' to allow the westerners' minibus to go over the level crossing - as in this photo. When it comes back it takes a sharp r/h turn and runs along a twisty narrow path closer to the railway. Eventually it will stop along the twisty path - so that the western photographers can get out and photograph the steam trains!

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I just wanted to flag up a specialist Chinese web forum for both real railways and modelling.

 

It's called www.chinarail.be and it's VERY small with only 179 members and some of them are no longer active for whatever reason. 

 

So, if you regularly read my thread PLEASE look at that forum and if you MODEL or PHOTOGRAPH Chinese railways PLEASE post there and give them a boost.

 

Let's see if we can push them over 200 members!

[TEAMYAKIMA]

It looks like I could be on furlough until the end of June and so have been looking for more modelling jobs to tackle.

 

I have an 18 car class 25G passenger train, taking off the baggage and generator car that's 16 cars that need populating and interior detail.  

 

I had done most a few months back but I am now returning to finish the job off.

 

Here is the dining car I completed today - the tables are built into the body of the coach and so are not visible with the body off. Note thye waitress taking orders and the American couple who just arrived and are looking for a free table.

 

 

 

With the body and lights on it now looks like this ….

 

 

 

Edited April 19, 2020 by TEAMYAKIMA

[TEAMYAKIMA]

One side issue I have been trying to address is to turn my shed from a workshop into something better. To turn it not just into a 'layout room' but an old fashioned 'den' which just happens to have a layout in it.

 

I will b e displaying everything that makes 'me' me - mainly, but not exclusively railway themed - I want it to be a museum of my life.

 

There will be a lot of photographs on display and I have managed to buy 30+ identical picture frames - I am so anal that ALL the picture frames must be of the same design!

 

Snapfish have just sent the last group of pictures - time to get them on the wall.

 

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

Of course railways are not my only interest in life and other facets of my life need to be displayed in the museum of my life. Here is a picture which sums it up perfectly :-

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I have just posted this in another thread.

 

My last visit to the Ji-Tong line was in early Feb 2005. Officially steam had ended over the Jing-Peng pass, but my friend had formed a liason with one of the female guides at CTS and she fed him the news that FARRAILS were sponsoring some steam workings over the pass to coincide with their China tour. So me and two friends booked some flights and just happened to turn up to the pass on the same days as the Germans - happy coincidence!

 

In fact there were some normal steam workings at the time as dieselisation had not completely taken place. On Feb 2nd the light had generally been poor and we hadn't managed to get a decent photo all day. Suddenly near the end of the day there was some decent light and we drove ahead of a double-header to get a nice location. We waited and waited, but it was delayed. Minute by minute the shadows lengthened and we thought we would miss the shot, but with minutes to spare it finally arrived.

 

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I have been part of a general discussion in another thread (EXHIBITION CANCELLATIONS) about the impact of COVID 19 on exhibitions.

 

I mentioned the impact of exhibition cancellations on me personally and I regret that it took that thread slightly off topic. The issue was that there are three kinds of large exhibition layouts.

 

1. Large layouts owned by clubs where they have large club rooms so that the layout can be set up on a regular basis

2. Large layouts owned by individuals who own barns or outhouses so the layout can be set up permanently.

3. Large layouts owned by individuals who don't have the room to set the layout up at home at all and so can only run their layout at exhibitions.

 

I regret that I am in section 3 and that causes all sorts of problems in the building/testing/repairing of the layout, but it also means that in this new situation we find ourselves in - NO EXHIBITIONS IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE - all the work (10 years) and all the expense (£tens of thousands) have been completely wasted as the layout has no purpose other than being shown at exhibitions.

Edited May 8, 2020 by TEAMYAKIMA

[TEAMYAKIMA]

However, I can reassure everyone that there are other things in my life other than model railways - the only trouble is that they are cancelled for the foreseeable future as well!

[Joseph_Pestell]

12 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

I have been part of a general discussion in another thread (EXHIBITION CANCELLATIONS) about the impact of COVID 19 on exhibitions.

 

I mentioned the impact of exhibition cancellations on me personally and I regret that it took that thread slightly off topic. The issue was that there are two kinds of large exhibition layouts.

 

1. Large layouts owned by clubs where they have large club rooms so that the layout can be set up on a regular basis

2. Large layouts owned by individuals who own barns or outhouses so the layout can be set up permanently.

3. Large layouts owned by individuals who don't have the room to set the layout up at home at all and so can only run their layout at exhibitions.

 

I regret that I am in section 3 and that causes all sorts of problems in the building/testing/repairing of the layout, but it also means that in this new situation we find ourselves in - NO EXHIBITIONS IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE - all the work (10 years) and all the expense (£tens of thousands) have been completely wasted as the layout has no purpose other than being shown at exhibitions.

 

Paul,

 

I think that you were right to raise the issue on the other thread. We all need to give this some thought.

 

Indeed COVID-19 is making a lot of us take stock of our future in every aspect of life. I have been planning, for many years now, an exhibition layout that, like yours, would only be able to be put up and operated at exhibitions. I was lucky enough to have some workspace (a winery) that I could use to put it up occasionally. I no longer have access to that workspace and so I have had to reevaluate whether that project makes any sense. In fact, as COVID has wrecked my future business plans, I am looking at taking an early retirement and buying a property with space to build the layout. The problem is that cheap large houses are in other countries so the layout would only get "exhibited" by way of RMweb and other media.

 

I don't think, in any event, that you should see it as wasted. An exhibition layout is not just about showing it to the public in a hall. It has given you many hours of modelling which, hopefully, has given you pleasure. Certainly. many of us here have enjoyed watching its progress.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Joseph_Pestell

[TEAMYAKIMA]

Thank you Joseph, but I can assure you that there are things I miss more than exhibitions and this is one of them.....

 

Man cannot live by model railways alone - and when you work mainly with women 20-30 then work nights out are something to look forward to. 

 

So I'm missing cocktail bars just as much as model railway exhibitions!

[TEAMYAKIMA]

28 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

Paul,

I don't think, in any event, that you should see it as wasted. An exhibition layout is not just about showing it to the public in a hall. It has given you many hours of modelling which, hopefully, has given you pleasure. Certainly. many of us here have enjoyed watching its progress.

 

Joseph,

Returning to the main issue in hand.

 

What I was saying in the other thread was basically that the layout has never been shown to the paying public in a way that I have been proud of . This has been due to various reasons, some technical where electronics simply haven't worked or where scenic have not been completed, but mainly because until I/we could run the layout for hour after hour and viewed it as others see it we could not see the layout's shortcomings.

 

Until we ourselves saw it in action I/we could not get a feel of how it appeared to an outsider, someone who doesn't know the story of China in the early 21st century and in many cases doesn't care.

 

So I am very keen that at least once (and I genuinely believe it would have been at Aly Paly) we can show the layout in its mk2 format, incorporating all I have learnt from previous shows and disappointments. Then if viewers had simply walked off after 15 seconds I could honestly say - YOUR LOSS!

Edited May 8, 2020 by TEAMYAKIMA

[St Enodoc]

39 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Thank you Joseph, but I can assure you that there are things I miss more than exhibitions and this is one of them.....

 

Man cannot live by model railways alone - and when you work mainly with women 20-30 then work nights out are something to look forward to. 

 

So I'm missing cocktail bars just as much as model railway exhibitions!

20 - 30 women at a time? I'll bet you look forward to them!

[TEAMYAKIMA]

As you know, one of our USP's has been the 'pop up' photographers who appear/disappear depending on whether there is a steam train to photograph. Two of the first were located at the extreme left hand end of the layout in the area where there are blocks of flats at the front.

 

 

Now once we started exhibiting the layout we discovered that whilst viewers would come down to give this area a quick look they generally didn't congregate in this area to view the layout in action. Moreover, the figures appeared behind the wall and so they were partly hidden from view and I had overlooked one thing when building the layout  - the layout was 4ft high, I am 6ft 4inches tall and so I could see the figures reasonably well, especially as I was looking for them and crucially when I was building the layout I viewed it from right up close to the base board edge. Now at exhibitions, most viewers are considerably shorter than me (especially children) and most importantly they are viewing this feature a further 18 inches away because of the barrier. Consequently, most viewers at exhibitions had a completely different view of the figures than I had had when building the layout - very often just their heads - so in short this feature was a waste of resources and effort - viewers just didn't see them unless they were pointed out and even then they were difficult to see.

 

 

 

[TEAMYAKIMA]

So, I have now removed the two photographers from there and moved them centre stage as part of the truck stop area - right where most visitors stand!

 

This was my first attempt and I didn't like it. The mechanism needs something to disguise it but the (unpainted at the time) wooden crate just looked plonked down and the two photographers somehow made the scene too busy - it was not immediately obvious to the casual viewer what they were doing.

 

 

So the final version has the one instantly recognisable photographer with the crate replaced with some random clutter. Hopefully this new location will make him far easier to spot.

 

 

Until, of course, the steam train has passed and he returns to the café for a coffee.

[phil_sutters]

On 01/04/2020 at 13:59, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Another one from 2004v - I absolutely love this photo and wanted to recreate it on On30 - not sure that will happen now though

 

That's a great photo. I think that I have previously mentioned the Chinese railways photos by 'Tarboat' on the photo-sharing site I use. He has recently uploaded one I particularly like - not the industrial/rural contrast we see here, but all industrial http://www.ipernity.com/doc/302581/49921874 . Thank you for sharing your photos from your trips to China.

Edited May 8, 2020 by phil_sutters

[PaulRhB]

7 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

3. Large layouts owned by individuals who don't have the room to set the layout up at home at all and so can only run their layout at exhibitions.
 

I too fall into that category and I have built a large layout that only attended 7 shows before I retired it because it didn’t fulfill what I decided I wanted. 

So I sold off some of the stock and kept some to run on friends lines. 
I used the money to build my second too big to put up at home layout but included some ideas so I could run parts of it at home.

Taking it a step further you could do something similar to what they’ve done with the Devon groups American ‘RS Tower’ layout and add a modular branch line that can be attached to it at shows or run separately at home, designed to fit your shed?

 

So could you run part of the yard at home as a switching layout by setting up just one or two boards incorporating a minimal fiddleyard or even continuous run around your shed with 6” wide boards that stack out the way when you need more space? Like I did you could plan for the next one to fit in the shed but include additional boards that only get used at shows. My development of the above layouts were more drastic as I changed scales but kept the same subject to get what I wanted, (if I had a barn I’d much rather have done it in G!)

 

Quote

- all the work (10 years) and all the expense (£tens of thousands) have been completely wasted as the layout has no purpose other than being shown at exhibitions.

1. It’s certainly caused interesting discussion on design and presentation  so your learning has informed you and the rest of us

2. It’s different to the common fare and has been enjoyed out and about already even if it caused you stress. I know that feeling when at the last NG South West my HOm performed badly for the first few hours until we realised it was the moisture in the hall causing the still not dryed through layout, last min finishing too, to tarnish rails!

3. It’s getting better each time as you add more details which makes us want to see it again and my Harz has only gone out complete twice in 3 years and now possibly the next two outings are cancelled. It’ll still be lurking once we know what the new normal is. 

So wasted time? I would suggest no because you know even more about what works and what doesn’t for you and others at shows. Money wasted? I recycled trees and the money from selling bits off my Swiss layout into my German one saving nearly £2000 so all that stock, buildings, details and track still has a lot of value. I ended up throwing away probably £300 of plain track, flock, wood, das clay and polystyrene blocks when I recycled mine so look at it as invested money. I’m sure at least one of my Chinese diesels has ended up potentially running on your layout as I think it was Al that bought it!  

Edited May 8, 2020 by PaulRhB

[298]

TeamYakima- I too was contemplating the meaning of my modelling life when things return to normal, and realised I need to stop prioritising exhibitions as deadlines and simply enjoy the pleasurable hobby for what it is, basically an outlet for wasting time, spending money and daydreaming. After seeing alot of others knocking together quick new projects during their lockdown time whilst I have less available, I dusted off the wraps over a Cuban project that has been laid dormant in the Car-hole and found a new optimism that it has the potential to be enjoyed at home. 

 

I've been feeling a bit "meh" over exhibitions for a long time now and prefer to travel when time allows to a good show to see particular layouts or go to modular or specialist society meets rather than go to lots of local ones with bored kids in tow. So I've refocused on what will fit into my modelling display space at home and started a mood wall with inspirational photos of scenes that I want to include, as it's something that can be quickly looked at rather than searching through books and videos that wouldn't be seen unless I went searching for them.

 

One solution as currently shown by Pelle Soeberg that might work for you is to build a small module (or Cameo/Fishtank) at home with a Chinese theme, it doesn't even have to be that thrilling to operate, just have it sit there lit up making suitable noise to remind you of the larger project.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

Today I have been doing more work on the truck stop feature. This is a car workshop. Have added lighting so that viewers can actually see the detail!

 

 

Only the left hand end done so far - tyres oil etc. Still needs a bit of weathering.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

It has been pointed out in the past that ' the layout needs a lot more people! '.

 

Now I'm not sure that is totally true myself - YES, China can be VERY crowded in certain places - main railway stations come to mind - but I have loads of photos of semi-deserted streets in China.

 

That is my excuse for so few people! And a reason why there are so few people on my layout is that all the Chinese (as opposed to western tourists) are modified and that takes time. You can't turn a 6ft tall Ayrian into a Chinese person simply by painting his hair black!

 

I wish I had planned this better, but I didn't take a photo of the figure in the container before I started work in him, but here he is - nearly finished - alongside another typical Preiser workman

 

 

So what I did was

 

1. cut off his safety helmet

2. cut off his feet and then shorten his legs - I didn't glue his feet back on as he was going to be viewed from behind.

3. he always had quite a long coat and so with shorter legs he had a coat that came down to his knees. So I carved off a section of coat and then cut up between his legs to raise his crutch.

4. after this photo was taken I painted him and with black hair his head just looked  too big so I trimmed his head again and with a shorter body his left arm looked too long so I shortened it slightly.

 

Then after I painted him I semi hid him inside the dark interior of a building where 99% of viewers would never see him - so now do you realise why I added lighting to the container???

Edited May 10, 2020 by TEAMYAKIMA

[TEAMYAKIMA]

On 08/05/2020 at 14:55, phil_sutters said:

That's a great photo. I think that I have previously mentioned the Chinese railways photos by 'Tarboat' on the photo-sharing site I use. He has recently uploaded one I particularly like - not the industrial/rural contrast we see here, but all industrial http://www.ipernity.com/doc/302581/49921874 . Thank you for sharing your photos from your trips to China.

 

Thank you so much for that link - will be ordering his book

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I am still working on the layout but more slowly now - planning the next one!  And the next one will be a home layout which can be exhibited - rather than an exhibitions only layout!!

 

Anyway I thought you might like to see this cameo - it's not new, but I don't think I've posted it before.

 

Here's the local TV/DVD shop and next door the shutter seems to have jammed and staff are having difficulty getting in!

 

 

 

[CameronL]

48 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

I am still working on the layout but more slowly now - planning the next one!  And the next one will be a home layout which can be exhibited - rather than an exhibitions only layout.

Will it be another Chinese layout?

 

Best wishes

 

Cam