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Bit later than I planned I'll tell you the tale of 'Super Saturday. A rail bonanza unmatched in recent years on the U.K rail network, I had already been tipped off weeks before about the return of the Class 55 Deltic 'Royal Scots Grey' to the main line . These cult locos with their twin Napier Deltic engines knocking out a very healthy3,300 hp (not bad for a loco built in 1961) are always a big draw for railfans. It was doing a Wolverhampton to Newcastle railtour and was slated to be the first of the big beasts attacking the climb up to Shap Summit on the West Coast main line As it approached it was obvious it was only working on one engine and the Class 47 at the rear was adding its grunt to the train but was still awesome My mate Dave, who was mainly responsible for getting it out there was in the support coach with every finger crossed! Next up was the 'Tesco' train. An intermodal train assigned to one chain of supermarkets for their Scottish stores. At the time we were having real problems with our class 88 bi-modal locos so we had put two EMD Class 66s on instead. 66 303 'Rail Riders' headed 66 431 on the Daventry-Mossend service Broklyn and I had just missed a light engine steam move when we arrived at Scout Green but the excusrion train soon arrived with preserved 86 259 on the front. The steamer was to take over at Carlisle. 86 259 has different nameplates on either side and is known as 'Peter Pan- Les Ross' with 4040Hp it made light work of the climb to Shap. Brooklyn's picture More soon (need another beer!) Kev

Kev, great work! Brooklyn enthusiasm is great, wonderful experience for him. cheers, jeff

The exhibition scene in the U.K is now fully back up and running post pandemic. By this summer Hakuho should have done at least ten shows but they all got cancelled anyway, back in August it came out of the flight case for the show organised by Leyland Model railway club. Brooklyn had his first 'stopping in a hotel' show experience and loved it. He concentrated really hard all show and ran the layout very well A couple of weeks later we were called in at the last minute to take it to Carnforth show as one of the pre-booked layouts had to scratch due to health issues. It ran perfectly all weekend So the big question is what to do with the back of the layout? I've changed my mind at least three times now so I've cleared all the exisitng track and work and am starting again The layout is already picking bookings up for 2023 so I had better get cracking! More soon Kev

KATO USA does seem to do a lot of US stuff -- especially on the locomotive side. They have all sorts of locomotive styles in all sorts of liveries (railroads). I am not heavily invested in US railroads, but do have 4 KATO Union Pacific locomotives (SD70Ace and ES44 or something like that) in 4 different liveries and numbers. I also have several sets of the 53' double stack well car sets in a few names (BNSF, TTX, etc) but otherwise don't do much US. Looking at the KATO site, they have Amtrack, Metra, Virginia liveries for various types of passenger rolling stock. Locomotives as well as far as I can see. (And KATO Kobo custom shop periodically releases customized versions like the Utah FrontRunner). Even though my few US are freight, I don't know much about freight but they do cover a few bases as far as I can tell in various railroads...

Well, if you want to know how many items fit in a box I've never had a shipment split into more than one box. Hobby Search's largest boxes would probably take at least four train bookcases plus other smaller items. The only issue is magazines and catalogs which almost always printed on coated paper and get quite heavy although not physically large.

Any unboxing pics?? how many sets per box?

Would an external modelling company have any luck striking a deal with KATO to supply motor and traction packs? I'm thinking of Arlo Micromodels and their (rumoured) Portuguese N scale collection. It would be nice if they used Asian traction components. Everyone here in the N scale community praises KATO's motors. They're treated as diamonds.

Trains coming from the south, mainly because there's a stabling point there, which is an annoyingly neither-here-nor-there kind of place to terminate trains but apparently there's a lack of depot space [1]. [1] https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q12100556302 I suppose it's conceivable there might be the occasional train terminating from the northerly direction (e.g. from a late evening service which terminated at Omiya), but I don't know the line well enough to say. If it's any use, here's a timetable showing trains *starting* there (the times underlined in black, AFAICS all in the early morning): https://ekitan.com/timetable/railway/line-station/79-9/d2

It’s very straight forward, the usual Kato affair. The loco has a very ingenious clip design on the tender so you push it out, and the whole rear assembly with ladder and grab iron comes off, giving easy access to the coupler mount. I assume it’s the same design for the 8620 model but I don’t have one of these to confirm. The loco has a short shank included along with optional knuckle and rapido for the front. I chose to keep the fitted dummy on the front. The 50 series coaches have a coupler assembly that removes easily from the coach. I’d suggest taking the leading bogie off first. Already fitted is a familiar two piece Kato assembly with a bent piece of brass as a centre aligning spring. (If you have any other Kato coaching stock, blue trains etc..) The upper piece of this assembly can be exchanged for the included detailed version, with air hoses. There are 2 different versions, A and B, for the Ohafu 50 701 and 702. I chose to reduce the gap with a shorter coupler but it isn’t necessary if you just want to fit the medium shank ones included. We’re talking very little difference but as I spent some time converting all my loco and coaches to these, I have a few spares. I have been considering replacing a number of coach sets with magnetic couplers to aid easier loco changes.

Hello, Can anyone tell me what train services terminate at Higashi-Jūjō_Station? Coming from north or south? Better yet, access to a Keihin-Tohoku Line timetable would be good. FWIW, I'm playing a game called Nimby Rails, where you model up a real or fantasy line and run trains on it. Just wanting to understand how the "terminating services" mentioned on Wikipedia are operated.

Haha sharp eyed there @Kamome! I hope i'm not venturing too deeply into the HO bus range... and NO sorry no HO scale trains to go along. That rabbit hole is SEALED and PLASTERED shut for me ~ 😛 Great review on the SL Hitoyoshi! Being the only steam train i have rode, it certainly brings back memories... Didnt know there are so much more work to make the entire train more realistic! How would you rate the difficulty of exchanging the couplers?

I'd point out the venture coaches are (currently) amtrak's planned replacement for almost all of their existing fleet, both regional and national. Should this come to pass it will be a question of if, not when kato makes venture coaches to stay relevant with existing amtrak trains. I suspect we'll see only national level trainsets similar to the superliner and amfleet coaches, as kato usually does not make region specific coaches for US releases. It may not happen anytime soon, as it will be years before they replace the existing coaches in amtraks fleet.

Just for the record, Tomytec, and TGW both make non-functioning traffic signals. https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10352372 https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10078937 Currently both are available at Hobby Search.

John, this looks great and decent priced. Looks like simple pic controller. These can be perfect for these sort of repeat things and have a few programmed settings. Shipping to us is quite good, I may need to get one to mess around with! cheers jeff

Hi Jeff thanks for your reply , I think I have found a solution if I buy The BLOCKsignalling TLC2A Traffic Light Controller that has been designed for railway modellers to make it very quick and easy to add traffic light signals to their layouts. I will use 0402 LEDs that should fit the Kato dummy traffic lights but will need to remount them unto tubing to hide the wires etc. Could make an interesting project over the Christmas holidays. John

Peco can be very odd on occasion. I'm convinced they're waiting for Sydney Pritchard to return and don't want to make any rash decisions in the meantime.

There's also Carhenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carhenge

Hi friends, quick outlook on 2012 roster .. happy to share with you. JM

Over the edge : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Ranch

Another HO bus @JR 500系? Probably need some nice HO trains to do them justice. My long awaited SL Hitoyoshi arrived this evening. Wasn’t gonna miss out on another 8600 loco and as the train has been announced to retire, keen that I included it in my collection. The “special” outer sleeve is not the most exciting but nice to have a black book case as well. Inside is the usual green and white printed instructions as well as a leaflet to create a Hisatsu-esque layout using Kato’s new red oxide bridges. The steam engine 58654 is stunning in N scale with the gate style deflectors, gold lining and red drive rods. Also the fact you can see under the boiler to the other side just shows how well this model has been engineered. The modern additions are also present such as the GPS antenna, modern water tank and even the funnel gauze is modelled. The only thing I don’t like is how large the rapido coupler is. This one certainly looks thicker than the usual Kato ones. As I never use them, it’s not an issue but for those who prefer the shunting ability of rapidos, it’s a monster. The 50 series coaches are also exquisite with beautiful gold printing. This holds up well to the eye but with a magnifying loupe you can see some of the gold flecks of the paint reduces the ability to get it super crisp. There are some added coupler housings with air hoses which I’ve added to mine. Not sure if there are issues with these for very tight corners as they’re not fitted when you receive the model. Kato includes their medium length knuckles which I decided to replace with the EF66 short shank versions to give more realistic distances between loco and train. The intermediate couplers between coaches are their body mounted, clip knuckles as used on their 24 series coaches. I still very much favour this mentality as opposed to the Tomix method of fitting everything with bogie mounted rapidos. Other additions are a black short style re-railer, and a headmark for a DE10. All in all, this is certainly a great looking set. It’s a slight shame the outer sleeve couldn’t have been a bit more exciting, perhaps the Hitoyoshi headmark in gold would’ve been a better option. But I cannot fault the contents. A really nice addition that we’ve been waiting a couple of years for.

Nope, i asked Rokko to assist me on Yahoo Auctions, they can do so with a fee. I just had to get that Hokutosei basic set!

We have this in tiny bits all over when questions come up on just about all the forums. But if you have say a bunch of RR related language things then fell free to set up a topic in the japan rail: news & discussion forum. Similar thing could be done on the Japanese n gauge general forum for maybe search terms in Japanese for usual things for searching supplier sites only in Japanese. Search terms for RR picts on google image search also would be helpful. as for the discord, I would suggest doing a topic and trying to see if there are members interested in speaking Japanese on discord and try to se up a schedule with them and use the topic to announce when they may happen. I don’t know if our discord allows a sub room or not, been a long time since I’ve used it, maybe Martijn can see about that. But something like this always needs some one to run it with scheduling, announcements. participating, etc, so maybe tag you’re it! We are happy to try to assist if you need anything specific, so just contact staff and we can see what we could do. cheers jeff

This question spans both this forum and the Discord server, but after my post in the Maintenance Car Database thread, I wondered, has there ever been a suggestion for a Japanese practice section? Such a section is present on both anime Discord servers I am part of, and since I’ve started learning Japanese, I am more conscious and eager to incorporate it as soon as possible into the hobby. I’m sure a language-focused thread or sub-forum with a bent towards railroading would benefit many of us here, whether it’s as simple as asking about Japanese railroad terms and phrases, or full practice conversations about what we did on our layouts.

Wow restock for the Hokutosei? On website didn't appears.