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Yep, like most hobby shops in my experience you can directly ask them via contact form or email for any inquiries or special orders. In my experience, it's always worth inquiring about something you are looking for even if it's not listed because they may still have stock of it or can get it ordered. In J-Scale's case you can use the contact form then work through email when they get back to you, but it might change as part of the upcoming site redesign. Instagram DMs may be another option, or even DMing them on here may work. I'll let @disturbman or @Wolf confirm on these ones though. @disturbman It's definitely possible. The reservation wechat has been blowing up my phone the past couple days with all of the new people joining, much more than the CR200J preorder. I thought the 10-day or so window for the CR200J was nuts, but seeing it potentially in less than a week for the CR400BF-Z would be impressive. At least you get a better chance this way than buying a DF4 or something on Taobao during their "Crazy Thursdays," lol

Hi @TattTatts, Welcome to the forum, glad you found us. Take a sec when you get a chance and introduce yourself over in the introduction forum. I assume you are just wanting to use the power routing of the points in order to control the sidings’ power. Also is this a temporary layout setup or something you want to fix down? If you are going to fix it down then it’s always best to use more feeders in case you get any voltage drops in unijoiners later due to scenery materials getting in there. If temporary you can just experiment. For feeders i am a huge fan of just making your own one of two ways. The most solid day is to use a roto tool and cut two slots in the roadbed just below the rails about 1cm long. Then tin the bottom of the exposed rail with solder and tin the end of a piece of wire for the feeder [like 20g wire] and then place the tinned end of the wire in the slot and hit it with the soldering iron quickly and the two tinned surfaces will fuse quickly. Once soldered put a drop of epoxy over the slot and end of the insulation of the wire. This will make the most positive connection tot he rail you can do and is the most unbreakable. You can then have a feeder on any piece of track not just a 62mm feeder. The second way to make your own feeders is to take a unijoiner and using some pointy needle nose pliers put lol the metal connector out of the plastic roadbed clip housing. You can slide the end of a stripped wire into the plastic housing and slide the metal joiner back in with the wire under the metal track joiner. No solder joint is needed, but you can solder the wire to the bottom of the metal joiner, but you have to make a nice flat solder joint for it to fit back in. You can then use these like the Kato unijoiner feeders. You can use 22g wire [and 20 if you get good at it] and the soldered versions are not quite as delicate as the Kato unijoiner feeders are [they can break easily and are 24g wire] Both techniques require a little practice and also soldering practice to get good at, but thats something a couple of hours and a couple pieces of sacrificial track and wires can get you! Don’t be scared of soldering, it’s really not that hard. Tons of videos on youtube on it to watch and learn from then just practice and experiment some and you’ll get it. Anyone can solder! Using the points for your power control and a power pack on each of your two loops the only real rules are dont put a feeder on as siding or on either track of a passing siding [the mainline track and the passing track]. Its best to put feeders on either side of a passing track [outside the ponts] on each end so each track would be fed well from either side as you cant have a feeder inside the passing tracks]. You also have to remember that a double or single crossover will not supply power thru the crossover, you need to feed them from both sides of the crossover. Only other thing is to make sure you spread of feeders ends up with a feeder like every 5 or 6 feet. If it’s going to get set in place I find it better to reduce that to more like every 3-4 feet to be safe off into the future since all those track joints cant be cleaned later without tearing stuff up. If you do have a power drop develop later you can always add a feeder by drilling a hole next to the track on the outside of the rail and soldering the wire to the outside of the rail to make a new connection. But this is tricky to do to not melt the roadbed and its a bit ugly. if this is going to get nailed down i would first make sure to set it all up on the table and experiment with the feeder placement to make sure it all works as designed and also make sure there are no mods needed to the track plan due to how trains run and such. Playing with the actual track layout with a train is really different than looking at it on a cad screen. you can do all this using the 62mm feeder and or the unijoiner feeders. Just need to engineer in where you can swap out of their straight track to slip in a 62mm and with the unijoiner feeders just be careful with them as they are just easy to break. Down side of the Kato wires is they are 24g and a bit whimpy, so best not to try to feed very long sections of track with them. heres a rough shot of what i would think the minimum for this layout, but i would probably add a few more if getting nailed down to be safe. You can just buy some wire and then dress the wire back to your throttles and connect them all to a little terminal strain. There are simple screw down or lever operated terminal strips to connect all your wires up to each throttle easily. cheers jeff

I'm already a j-scale shop customer, but didn't know it was possible to order or asking for non catalog parts I've made my Taobao order from Parcel Up. It has the most Taobao's system comprehensive interface

@disturbman That is what i suspect too. That 0524 got lot of people to buy in. I know i wouldn't have with an AF-Z coming in next year if it was the regular version. In the span of 3 Months, I have ordered CR400 AF-Z, CR200J3C, HD3CA and now this lol.

It's a great learning experience for all. Sometimes you have to Project Manage the hobby. Picking and choosing the things you go after. There are so many facets to the hobby you can chase minor projects to the point you make little progress on your overall build. I look at it from the number of units needed. For example one will have 1 or 2 auto reverses but 15 or 20 switches. The switch controllers can be costly. So DIY the switch controllers will give you a better payoff. You bringing the Arduino into your build process opens a huge opportunity. Inobu

They probably will close their TB pre-order in a few days if the slots are selling that fast. The European vendor will still have until May 29 to send their reservations. I'm interested to see how they deal with the very real possibility that the 0524 will out sell their planned capacity for that running number.

@disturbman Its going to be interesting timeline for that changming cr400 bf-z. Already 2000+ orders on taobao store front.

Maybe that's the plan then. My gimbal only has a clamp for phones unfortunately though. Maybe I can get an adapter or something.

Hi Thanks so much for the answers, so if I’m understanding it correctly InfraRed isn’t the way to go, I’ll have to change to current sensors…. I’m still learning (especially when it comes to Arduino’s and setting them up)…. i see I have to learn a lot, but it’s a great hobby !! So i want to appologize if sometimes i aks for the obvious (for most of you) At this moment i’m not using sound on my locs, but maybe in the future i will, so my goal is to build a full proof system that works for any situation…. No doubt i will have more questions… sometimes my mind 🤯 Tom

If you are in Japan, the used market is insanely good for great cameras at cheap prices (compared to the US).

Pure molded resin/plastic. No covering. No padding! That's NYC (subways) for you! 🙂

What are they covered with where you live? In the UK they used "moquette", which is apparently a blend of wool and synthetic fibres. It has a reputation for being very durable and stain resistant, although the latter could just be due to the garish pattern it always comes printed in, which I suspect is to hide soiling.

I've said before that I'd like to get a proper camera, but I find it hard to wrap my head around setting cameras up to take good shots, and the only ones with really good auto modes are very expensive. Something like a Fujifilm x100v (or the newer model that replaces it) would be good, especially for reducing noise in night shots... But it's hard to beat how convenient the Pixel phone is, and how well it works. That said I could probably improve what I do with the phone. I need to get better at framing the image, and I need to experiment a bit more with Night Sight to see how it affects noise in the RAWs. I tend to think it looks too bright, but of course that can be fixed easily enough if you have the RAW.

It has an effect you just don't see it but I think you can hear it. If you were running sound decoders they will restart and the sound will re-sequence meaning playback its start up file again. The impact is minimal because you basically have the Arduinio unplugging the track and flipping the wires. The difference in your configuration is its a visual trigger verses what Chadbag was saying Electrical. The modules he uses monitoring the current on the track. Its reacting to the electrical activity on the rails. Your setup is triggered by an external event. For example sunlight or florescent light could trip the IR sensor which will reverse polarity for no operational reason. A Current sensing configuration would give you an UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) type operation. Its one of those things where you are achieving a task but really you aren't. Having your little brother turn on the TV. You could call him your TV remote but really he's not a TV remote control. Inobu

I didn’t do too much, just highlighted a few details in case you see into the cab between the eventual crew. It’s certainly way off what some of the new detailed cabs the UK manufacturers are adding to some of their locos. The image I used actually had the inside of the cab painting pale green as you can see from the block that houses a collection of valves. Not sure I will go far enough the paint the inside of the cab shell.

@Kamome I am ok with most of the japanese trains brands prices except for the recent endo jr500. They are still substantially cheaper to their European counterparts (even hobbytrain unless they go on big sales in europe). I still buy the European ones but choose carefully and go back/forth till release. The japanese and changming i just go in without much thought. The tomix E8 8 car full set is literally an bargain at 250cad from hong kong vendors meanwhile i am likely going to pickup the 7 set fleischmann obb nightjet siemens viaago OR Hobbytrain 6 set SBB Stadler Kiss and that can go to 1000cad.

Something I let pass, but MicroView is releasing (has released?) a few single soft-sleepers of their 22B passenger coaches. Sets were supposed to come back around the end of May and then again in August.

Which proxy did you use? In my experience, the international shipping options can be relatively expensive and might force you to under declare, which is always a bit risky. I'm personally glad not to have to deal with them anymore, they are not as seamlessly easy to use as their Japanese counterparts. If in France, you can always contact J-scale for specific models or check if shipments are en route. There is a big one full of Minicity trucks and vans that will leave China in a few days. For buildings, it's so far only on request as the market is not there and they are relatively bulky. And in general, due to the value of Minicity models, shipments are only once every few months.

Uh, ah, sorry had to do it! 😛 I really love my terrier.

I would really like to see how you detail the cab, so if you would please? Yeah, the grade up kit is a total waste. I had high hopes that it would really increase the impact (?) of the model. All of the photos that I have seen of the D51 have all been old black and white, so they all look kind of nasty. No real help there. i have a lot of charcoal dust in my weber if you need some 🙂 If you haven't seen this yet: https://d51498.com/db/ Degoichi runs well! Wow, in my search, I found this; https://www.oldtokyo.com/j-g-r-j-n-r-steam-locomotive-evolution-1872-1948/ Just renumber some of the UK models. https://www.steamlocomotivejapan.com/ neat stuff. You going to try to get that rear lamp to work?

Since Taobao purchases are closed for France, I had no choice but to place my first order through a Taobao proxy for a few Minicity products that couldn't be found elsewhere. The contract is clear for the first part: 10% commission. I'm now waiting for the second part of the payment, which includes shipping and probably some import taxes.

Hi Tom, Yes, correct. You have to change the polarity / phase of the loop (= "swap" the two DCC wires connected to the two rails) while the train is inside the loop. The decoder will not be affected at all. Marc

Hi Guys….. i have one question to start with : Can you change polarity of the loop (or i should say phase) when a train is INSIDE the loop ? Or is is harmfull to the decoder ? I have seen it does work and the train doesn’t seem to be affected but i want to make sure… Thanks for answering Tom

Those Daiso cases make great little diorama projects. There's a flat one like the video shows and a half-raised version which allows track or other scenery elements on 2 levels.

Hi all, Going to give this layout from Steve's Trains a go. I'm going for DC and have 2 controllers and a couple of splitter power leads (Kato 24-833) - so what is the best way to wire this layout up? I'm still fairly new to the hobby so explain it to me like I'm an idiot 🙂 Thanks in advance.