Kato Unitrack Diorama's - anyone tried them out?

[ba14eagle]

Hi. My apologies if this doesnt belong here, but i recently discovered for sale the Kato Unitrack Diorama kits and wondered if anybody had tried them out? I am currently working on a small OO9 layout, but thought these looked kinda fun - and even I could reach a good enough standard to make a whole load of them join up.

[Steven B]

If you mean the Mini Dioramas (28-888 and 28-889 or 24-051/24-052), then yes; As part of the N Gauge Society's show at the NRM earlier this year the NGS Yorkshire Area Group was asked by Gaugemaster to build a few. They've since been seen at TINGS and will be on the Gaugemaster stand at Warley/NEC at the end of the month.

 

Being around 6" long and 4" wide they're very small and it's quite hard to produce something to fit in the space available. Many of my ideas just wouldn't work without adding extra length or width. Being so small, there's no where to hide any mistakes. A couple of mine were a bit rough around the edges which would have been lost amongst a layout size module (or even T-TRAK), but on the mini-dioramas they stand out.

 

They are great fun to make. Expect to loose yourself for several hours on each one you build!

 

Watch out for the 124mm curved radius (4.8") on the curved modules - you might struggle to get some of the longer wheelbase models around them.

See:

https://philsworkbench.blogspot.com/2023/09/kato-at-tings-mad-but-i-love-it.html

for some of the UK based modules, and 
https://www.kato-dioramakit.com/

for a whole host of modules ranging from the exquisite to the completely wacky! (some-times both at the same time)

 

The best ones (in my opinion) as those that are those that stray away from what might be called "serious modelling".

 

Steven B

[ba14eagle]

Bought my first kit today and cant wait to get started on some of my ideas!

[Steven B]

Here are some of the ones the Yorkshire Area Group of the NGS built earlier this year:

 

 

Some were built as pairs (including gluing them together!)

 

Steven B