Kato 28-889, mini diorama curve Kato 28-889, mini diorama curve

Above is the Kato 28-889, mini diorama, which I just finished building and am waiting for the wood glue to dry. A surprising use for Machine Learning.

Kato is a Japanese company which manufactures a lot of nifty model railway products such as this one.

The Japanese part is where the problem is, as this product is one just for the domestic Japanese market and consequently the instructions are only in Japanese. For the most part the pictures were easy to follow, until I got near the end and needed to understand what to do with the foam and left over pieces.

Google Lens to the rescue. An app for Android & iOS, it detects text, that text’s language and translates it. Which enabled me to work out how to finish the diorama stand.

This was significantly easier than trying to look up each of the Japanese words, which for someone with a Latin alphabet on their keyboard could take a while.

Hopefully at some point this will be a completed diorama.

Update Finished diorama Finished diorama