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For anyone who wants more, here are my Flickr albums Zurich trams https://www.flickr.com/photos/65881702@N00/albums/72177720326031023 Basel trams https://www.flickr.com/photos/65881702@N00/albums/72177720326035108 Swiss SBB Trains https://www.flickr.com/photos/65881702@N00/albums/72177720326017716/ Captions for Basel trams are not complete.

Seems unclear if this is a skyliner replacement or if this will be a reintroduction of airport limited express services on the Main Line. Keep in mind the previous skyliner series were built 1990–1993 and retired 2010–2016.

If declared properly, it should go through as United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) exempt.

Yes country of origin is going to be enforced at some point. I suspect the first cases will be obvious trans shipping and warehousing countries. In the end it’s going to be a mess with different tariffs for each country to calculate and also paperwork for shipper, shipping agent, and customs to deal with and way more places to go afoul. Wish if they are going to do away with all de minimis they would just put a simple uniform tariff from all countries for something like under $500 at like 10% and make it simple and just prepay it with the state tax. That would eliminate so much of the costs, time delays, and backlogs. my Sakatsu package looks like it cleared customs yesterday day finally in anchorage, they didnt end up asking for anymore paperwork that i know of but maybe contacted Sakatsu as the shipper. But its now sat a day in anchorage at fedex office and no word on when it will be moving forward. Looks like another ebay package from canada is going thru fine with usps de minimis [no fees right now for canada de minimis]. jeff

Ok sounds like some hacking and whacking to do. im going to go back and look at what i had done. It was a tgw not world kougi power mechanism. Didnt go up really high it was more the sides of the shell needed some shaving and a frame built to hold the mech in place. It is a thin tram. thanks jeff

Your most welcome. Always good to share these finds!

So here is the Kato / Noch Bernina Express Souvenir Coach. It has two numbers, one Kato and one Noch. It listed on page 29 of the Noch 2023New Items Preview. https://www.noch.com/media/c7/9c/9e/1674931747/RS22073_71630_GB_Neuheiten_Prospekt_2023_150dpi.pdf Noch # 7074061 Kato # 05250-9 It is described as Panoramic coach Api 1301, incl. straight track, Equipped with close couplers and Without Arnold coupling. The price at Zuri-Tech seemed pretty good at 31.90 CHF. I've seen less and more at 28.00 to 36.00 Euros online, but online costs shipping. Still I'm happy with my souvenir purchase. One other note. Just out of curiosity I searched for this item in Japan and I have not found this item listed with a Japanese dealer. And this completes my Excellent Swiss Adventure.

Bill, THANKS!!!! I've a big fan of the Rhaetian Railway trains and I think I own all the 1:150 Kato has made. I wish they would put out more freight cars. Toc

I was recently updating my "Currently Available N Trolleys and Trams" list (http://www.trainweb.org/n-trolleys/available.htm) and discovered that Interurban Models (Volkmar of Paris, France, who makes models of U.S. prototype trolleys) is now offering a color-printed trolley shell. He once had a Shapeways shop, but when that went away he started doing his own 3D printing in-house and set up a Shopify sales outlet: https://interurban-models.myshopify.com/ If you look under "Streetcars Interurban [1:160 N]" on his sales site, the last item listed is "Interurban Wooden Coach Trailer #160-1681 - Painted." By "painted" he means that he prints them in color-calibrated resin. He can do multi-color prints, as long as the color breaks are horizontal. Apparently his 3D printer will alert him at certain points in the process and he changes the resin to the next color and proceeds from there. The pictures show the same car shell printed in a number of different color schemes. He prices them about the same as his other models, even though these have the color printing, floor, interior, trucks (without wheelsets - use Micro-Trains) and dummy radial knuckle couplers. It's really something to see this technology progressing! Rich K.

Living on the German side of the Swiss-German border highlights that monetary difference in some interesting ways, I can tell you that much 😅 Supermarkets near the border get a lot of traffic from Swiss people since not only are groceries a tad cheaper, but also because any VAT charged in Germany can be reclaimed at the border (Switzerland isn't an EU-Memberstate afterall). That has the somewhat annoying effect of clogging our streets here with shoppers on Fridays and Saturdays (both German and Swiss ofc), but oh well... Working cross-border (i.e. living in one country and working in another) is also a bit of a quirk here many people enjoy the benefits of, though it's primarily done by Germans working in Switzerland. It has the obvious benefit of getting a (higher) Swiss paycheck while still living in Germany, where the cost of living is lower. So basically you get the best of both countries...

Yes, the "E" series offers that flexibility, if that's what you want to do. If I could start all over from scratch I would use the "E" track pieces (by which I mean the ones that actually have rails in them). My ideal would be to use them with the decorated street pieces (the ones without rails: traffic lanes/sidewalks/city blocks) but without the directional lane arrow markings and the intersection "stop bar" cross-lines so that they look right for both left-side and right-side traffic flow. You're in the U.S.? If so, please let us know in the Tariffs Etc. topic what you experience with your coming shipment in terms of tariffs, duty or related fees. The regular (non "E") Unitram pieces have just been pushed back by Hobby Search Japan from "May" to "late May" so my small order will be coming after yours. Rich K.

Jeff, I actually removed the powered part from the surrounding frame that it sits in. I also had to carefully shave down the rather thick side clips and rounded ring shape on the sides of the powered part in order to fit it into the carbody without bowing the sides outward. It still sticks up pretty high into the double-deck body, interfering with leaving the top deck interior piece in. Other options now are the N Goya/Aru Model and Tsugawa/TGW tiny power units, which come in several wheelbases, but have small low-voltage motors. They and the Tomytecs are all speedsters! Rich K.

"The game is afoot, Watson!" (Sherlock Holmes) Good luck with the sleuthing. Rich K.

Small update of the diorama. The backdrop of one half of the building is nearly done. Only the curtains and lighting are missing. I looked up what manga/anime was popular around Ogaki and chose "A Silent Voice", "Adachi and Shimamura", and "Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl" for the bookstore's big advertisement posters. They all have scenes around Ogaki so I thought it was a nice touch to have something close to the region being advertised. I hope that I get the street markings done in the next days too... so I can glue down the station platform and start with adding the blast. (The original reason for the diorama 😅)

We have an entire section dedicated to suppliers, https://jnsforum.com/community/forum/51-suppliers/. I recommend checking there. All our favourites are listed there and each has its own (pinned) subject. People usually buy from Ami Ami, Hobby Search, Plaza Japan or Rail Gallery Rokko. There are a few other sources, but they are less used and/or more specialized, like Mandarake.

As I started making logs for the diorama, I wanted to redo the logs for the logging cars. I previously used chewing sticks for small pets (which is one of the methods Japanese modelers use) but it doesn't match the scene. The logs are made from balsa dowels using the same method as I did with the cedar trees. I like the look of these logs better.

You can check amazon jp. Not sure about the shipping fee though

Got the 009 Large England Welsh Pony!!! Got the current surviving England Engines in my fleet!!!

@disturbman Thanks for the tip. I probably will stick with taobao for the near future, it seems to be overall the best deal due including caniano shipping costs. Also seems fastest shipping. The HO Scale freight locomotives caught my attention too. More to keep my eye on.

Hi guys. Just designing track and looking at buying kato and tomix direct from Japan. I am looking at buying from Banzai models and Japan plaza. Exchange rate is better for me direct to Canada than buying from Kato USA. Do you have any other sources you use from Japan. Thanks.

For those who might search for a train/railway from an anime in the future, I just found these two sites with maps for anime locations: https://animenavi.org/main-map https://anime-tourism.jp/

Hey all! First of all, thanks for the kind words, it's appreciated. I've done a little more research in the cause of the slow downs, and while I know why the forum slows done, I'm still not sure what the underlying cause of it is. We're running the forum on AWS. We have 1 server for the database and 1 server for the website. The database has been doing fine, but the webserver has been seeing several CPU spikes over the past weeks. Basically, in order to keep cost down, we're using AWS's general purpose instance types. These are relatively cheap for still very decent performance. The way they keep it cheap, is that you build up "CPU credits" when you're not taxing the CPU very much. This is usually the case most of time on a webserver with not a great deal of traffic. When the CPU load goes above a certain threshold, CPU credits will get used for that additional load. Once the CPU credits are used up, the server basically gets limited CPU power. And that's exactly what's been happening the past few weeks. So, the question is, what is causing those CPU spikes? I've noticed that the spikes coincide with a large increase in network traffic. So there is a fair chance some new bots/spiders/scrapers have been introduced which we aren't blocking yet. Another possibility is that the forum is running some background tasks, but while that can cause CPU spikes, it shouldn't cause additional (external) network traffic. So, what I want to do somewhere in the coming days/weeks(/months?) is: Check / update our bots/spiders/scrapers blacklist, and update it if needed Look into some possibilities on the server side to improve performance / decrease network traffic Regardless of whether or not that fixes anything, set up a new server instance with an up-to-date OS, and migrate everything to that instance Update the forum software to the latest 4.x version Should that prove insufficient, look into spreading the load over multiple server instances, if the forum software supports that. This would mean increased cost. Worst case scenario, look into the cloud hosting that Invision Community offers. This would also mean increased cost, but also less flexibility

The item sold out in minutes. Though i wasn’t that keen on it. I will wait for HXD1D or 3D plus whenever FXN3C/5C (no rush there).

Ahhh thanks. Wasn't sure if they were part of a big company or anything. Couldn't find any mention about it. Such a shame it looked great in quality and steady. They said it was through wifi I believe

Appears to be a custom build by these guys who build layouts.