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Sega's baseball team sometimes uses "Geki! Teikokukagekidan" from Sakura Wars during matches which has always amused me.

I wouldn't want to test that theory lol, I think it'd at least fade the colors from the sunlight

New rolling stock just pulled into the station. Fitting a DCC decoder to this Kato E127 took me nearly a day. But it moves...

The small brother of the big Buddha 😉

@disturbman they are, thanks for reminding me, but reasonably priced they are not! Some of the details are also a little coarse, though perhaps I’ve been spoilt with the detail on Kato and Tomix models.

Yeah, I wonder how the plastic would hold up inside on a hot summer day.

I think if you can't find the number, just buy a 0051 to try···· And I don't think that 6426 should have a special bogie.

Somehow I have overlooked that Tobu has their own YT channel, which currently has two front view videos: First, 9000 series prototype set 9101. This is from Shinrin Koen to Yorii on the Tojo LIne, where they transfer to the Chichibu Main Line which is not shown in the video. The video resumes at Hanyu on the Isesaki Line, where the train proceeds to the Watarase North sidings off the Sano Line, predictably north of Watarase Station. Unfortunately, this out-of-service move is to scrap the train. Next, for the hardcore amongst us, a night time trip on the 500 series Revaty rolling stock on Urban Park Liner service. The run is Asakusa to Omiya, Omiya to Kashiwa, and back to Omiya. The beginning of this in the relatively well-lit areas around Asakusa is cool, after while it's pretty hard to see anything.

Only little bits and pieces this time, but I’m moving on to Kyoto tomorrow so this’ll have to be quick: I picked up the Tomix 8752 KoKi 200 flats yesterday at Nikkyosha Models, while the 3164 containers and Kato brake wheels came from Popondetta Hakata today. ISO tank containers are expensive particularly when you’ve only got Popondetta’s own range of such items to choose from, but these 20 foot containers were a bit more manageable. The brake wheels were needed because I had quite the ‘fun’ time this morning trying to set the brake wheels on the 8752 set. I eventually got one on during a running session at Popondetta, but the other and the 2759 I snagged in Akihabara have now got Kato brake wheels instead. Note to self: have a pin vice handy next time, just in case. Not sure I’ll be in a hurry to start buying things in Kyoto or Osaka tomorrow, but who knows…? Alastair

and cheering squads, and a brass band, and a gym/auditorium? Oh, and that the team has a YouTube channel? Me either. Maybe I knew that large companies have this kind of thing, but I forgot. This is separate from the formerly JNR-affiliated Swallows pro baseball team. The YT algo comes through again! Who might they play, you ask? In another video, at the end they show a bracket: Tokyo Gas Honda Revenge99 (no idea) Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance possibly JP Morgan Saginomiya (air conditioning and refrigeration) Gold's Gym Sega NTT East Japan

Hi @Tony Galiani, living in Paris subburb, I don't see that many Mirai as taxi. There are a few of them and the major issue is the "refueling" as there are only a pinch of H2 station https://www.h2-mobile.fr/stations-hydrogene/region-ile-de-france/ Jm

I think in the end we will only use hydrogen where energy per kilogram is a really big issue, like aircraft. For everything else, batteries are getting so cheap so fast that hydrogen just won't be able to compete. For the road warriors Nio has battery swap stations in a few countries now, 6 minutes start to finish, although even conventional charging is now so fast that it's beyond what most humans can tolerate in terms of needing comfort breaks. Japan is unfortunately not doing so well with EVs. Most Japanese manufacturers were late to the game, and most of the charging infrastructure is 50kW only. Europe has 400kW chargers, with megawatt range ones for special applications. On the plus side, many people do have somewhere to park a car at home for charging. I'd like to rent an EV, but I've had trouble finding out what the situation is with paying for charging. Are they still using RFID cards, or can you use an IC card or a credit card? Or are they still operating them for free like much of Europe did in the early days?

YouTuber member nimo5 just posted a video of the last few days of operation of the 381 Series train sets in Yakumo service: Being the oldest type of JNR era express train sets in service, they have served well over the years and finally get their deserved retirement. I believe the six-car 381 train set painted the old JNR express train colors will make a few excursion runs in middle August 2024 as their final runs. I hope to see that very train set preserved and put in a museum.

And if a live steam locomotive weren't enough, look what my friend plans to make to go with it! You do after all need riding cars to carry passengers in the live steam hobby! Will they have their own JR ladies?

I think the biggest issue will be availability once it's out of production. I did search around and found that the set HN3505 seems to be available in this shop https://www.jkmodel.dk/n/passagervogne/arnold-hn-3505 Contact them to confirm existing stock and eventual delivery costs. Good luck.

Wasn't the E10 one of the rare MA steam loco to scale?

This is looking lovely so far. Those bridges are nice to look at, and that little orange speeder is so cute! Very charming.

I’ve been looking at the Tomix 5574 TCS automatic unit and thinking of ways in which it can be used. I have heard that with Tomix track it is apparently fairly easy to operate a reverse loop on DC - just throw the points and reverse the polarity together and the train should continue on without stopping or needing special wiring because of the “fully power routing” turnout, correct? My question is about mode 2 of the automatic unit. The train is meant to start from the center, drive to one end and stop, then reverse into a passing loop, then repeat. What I am wondering is if this mode might be able to run as a reverse loop instead. Rather than reach the end of a straight line, the train would stop at the sensor in the middle of the reverse loop, the unit would throw the switch and reverse the polarity, then the train would continue onwards as normal. I was thinking this mode might be able to run a simple layout consisting of two reverse loops connected by a single line, for a trolley or small train. Could anyone confirm with me if this might work, and if I have a correct understanding of how Tomix reverse loops work? Thank you very much. 🙂

Ah, I forgot they already have one preserved...still would be nice if it went there or maybe the Saitama museum

Hi @doodlebugdepot welcome to the forum!

Quickly looking over some pictures of the museum’s main hall, I’m not sure if they’ve got more room without shuffling things around or removing something. They do have a 0 series inspection car, they could replace it with one of these. I wonder what plans the various museums have for periodically refreshing their collections.

Ha, quite a story. They've been doing more of the Shinkalion stuff for Plarail as of recent and having seen a few episodes of the first anime I am super tempted to grab one. The robot transformation is genius with the way it works.

No, that’s part of the overall effect! Getting it to stay in the track at the curves will be the challenge! one birthday in grad school at Berkeley a fellow student gave me a little Estes mosquito rocket to build as they knew I loved to make thing and use to shoot off rockets (and made them in grad school from nitrocellulose, but that’s another story). It was a little feather weight rumble recovery rocket, no parachute or streamer. He also gave me a pack of motors that fit the main tube size not looking at the instructions where you only use tiny motors in these and there is a smaller rocket tube fit inside the main body tube. I made it and painted it and it sat in my desk for months and late one night (a beer or two may have been involved waiting for a gel to end) Tom (who gave me the rocket) asks why I haven't shot the rocket off. I said well no clear place around here to do it we would loose it, the motors we have for this are like 10x what is sposta use so it will just disappear, and we would probably have the cops on us. I sat there thinking how could we shoot it off and not loose it and it came to me why not shoot it on a wire horizontally! We went to the stock room and found a spool of like 20g copper wire. We went up to the roof and erected the poles that folded down on the corners of the roof (we were never sure what these were used for but like 7’ tall when folded into the upright position and pinned in place) and strung the wire about 200’ the length of the building from one end to the other. I attached the rocket to the wire and we lit the fuse. We’ll let me tell you with the big motor and without the motor thrust having to lift the weight of the rocket against gravity and the very little friction it had going down the wire it was to the other end of the building in less than an eye blink! We had draped some pieces of cheesecloth around the far end to try and stop the rocket in a light net, but this plan failed. Plan B for the rocket with plenty of thrust and momentum at this point was to completely rip off the two epoxied tubes attached to the rocket that held it to the wire. But this violence ended up on turning the rocket into a flaming pin wheel still with forward momentum, but now slower and very spectacular flaming pinwheel. This proceed across the street and into the chemistry building, which unfortunately had the 60s design element of each lab having a 6’ wide external patio, which usually held bikes of grad students to keep them from cutting the lab up. Our now flaming pin wheel hit one of these and then proceeded to bounce around on the patio behind the railing and among the bikes there in a spectacular display of fireworks for a couple of seconds! At this point Tom and I have the same vision flashing through out head of the chem building in flames and us in handcuffs! But the motor ended finally and smoke cleared and no fire, thanks to all cement, metal and glass construction. But it could have put us at war with the chem department and they had way better materials for making projectiles and fuel than the molecular biology department. new rule, never do rocketry late at night after a couple of beers. Never got busted, but one of the other grad students came up to me the next day and asked if I was shooting thing off the roof the previous night. Apparently she was on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle getting a ride home on the road between the two building and saw the whole thing. She said she figured it would be Jeff… jeff

It’s so great when folks end up meeting like this all over the world (especially in Japan) through the forum! Makes the forum worth having just for an adventure like this happening. Glad you guys got to get together, thought you would have a fun time. cheers jeff