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This blog may give you some inspiration of 1142 running. https://c57115.hatenablog.com/entry/2022/04/06/080727

I do that with shoes as well! The only ones I have ever found that properly fit me are ASICS extra wide. Everything else is too small and rubs against my toe, even brands like Sketchers wide. As ASICS are a lot cheaper in Japan, and there are shops where you can try them on (the local one to me in the UK doesn't even carry the wide models). So when my shoes are wearing out I buy new ones in Japan. There is a shop in Ueno that has extra large sizes (I'm a 29), or the flagship ASICS store in Ginza which is more expensive but has everything.

SL Yamaguchi Trip Report 5 Its a rest day from cycling today in Karatsu so I decided to take the local JR Chikuhi Line. Got on the Kuha 103-1514 to Chikuzen Maebara, a local transit center where you can transfer to go further to Hakata. But rather than transfer to the train bound for Hakata, the views of the beaches beckoned me to take the opposite train back towards Karatsu, and disembark at Shikaka Station, and take a short walk to the sandy shores of Obiishi Beach. Not single soul on the beach! Life is good!

I received my D51s from RGR Kobe and I'm glad to say I had to wait a bit longer as they returned about a third of their shipment to be remedied before sending out orders.I'm heading to the club tomorrow to give them a bit of exercise ...and will be keeping a close eye on them. So far on a short stretch of track at home they are nice and smooth. I also went for 4x new release 90000 vans, in the past they seem to disappear quickly from shelves and the 61 350 baggage car. I too am looking to represent a couple of Kyushu locos, D51 1142 was the first Japanese Steam Loco I saw in real life when it was on display in Sasebo in 1999. I'm heading to Osaka next month and will be handing over some yen!

Hi all, As @disturbman already said, on my D51 the fourth driving wheel has a chamfer on about 1/3rd of its circumference on one side. I contacted my seller, but didn't get an answer yet. Apart from that some of the handrails along the boiler are also a bit bent, would have been nice if these had been made of metal.

Thanks Jeff, great idea in possibly using thinner bulb wire. Also found some thinner florist wire too that really helps. Might try it for some ultra large trees that are in the limelight as well, or maybe for H0 trees. The foam doesnt go through a coffee grinder as I dint have one. I tried pushing them through a strainer but it doesnt seem to work.

Haha, yeah I know. He's too emotional in his reviews, clearly favoring some companies over others. This loco at 125 pounds is ridiculous but this one at 200 pounds is fine in my opinion. haha yeah right. Lines are nice and crisp (fuzzier than hell), because he really likes this model. DJM, KR, will probably never be reviewed again. Sprung buffers, firebox flicker, wiper pick ups, cast metal boiler, screws and instructions. Did I miss anything for a 5 out of 5? The only real reason why I watch is that he takes the thing apart so I use him as a tutorial. He's the one that got me into designing motor mounts to the detail that is needed in most cases. Between him and Jenny, I sometimes get a good idea of how much space is inside the boiler for whatever. Ok, sorry, back from dinner. I typically get to the part on the price, fast forward to the instruction set, fast forward to the mechanism and then the run in. Once in a while the thing will fail during the running session. As far as the scores, pass. Now he did mention RMWEB for their criticism of him, I think it was on the subject of his layout being on a carpet, so he made a cleaning video. The review on the Kato/Peco 009 was ridiculous. He prefered Bachmann because it was made of metal. Didn't run for crap, but better. The reason why I mentioned it earlier is that someone had suggested it in the comments area on one of his later videos. Between us 3, we have a consensus! haha

Yes, indeed. Thought I'd take the diplomatic approach and express my divisive views on Sam's Trains Youtube channel to @kusojiji in a message. Just looked at the price point of the D51 in the UK. At the main distributor it will cost £435.00 which is truly bonkers. At Train Trax it will be £374.20 which I still think is a tough sell. For £425 you can get a twin-pack of DCC sound fitted tank engines from Rapido UK or for £439 a collectors edition of the Dublo A3 flying Scotsman with gold plated wheels. Or for £399 a Heljan Garrett which is a big old locomotive by UK standards. As for the chamfering, I'm interested which wheels this is on. One of the driving wheels sets on mine is a marginally different colour to the other 3, looks as if the outer rim is actually thinner although all wheels make contact with the rails. IIRC this is wheel 3 from the front. I wonder whether this is part of the design to navigate R550 corners.

Scanning some old photos and found this shot from Kyoto in 2002: JR West 103 Series, Kyoto Station by Rail Squid, on Flickr

You can pretty much ignore Sam's opinion on anything outside British 00. He has very strong pre-conceptions and seems incapable of escaping them or do any kind of research on other scales, or consider that other regions have other practices. "N so small, why so expensive?" "The details on them TT models are incredibly small." If you listen to him, N scale locomotives should be all metal and priced accordingly to the ratio of their scale relative to 00/H0. Some people tried to educate him on the realities of manufacturing but he decided not to listen to them. As for the D51, if he ever buy one, some of his comments might be warranted, but he will bury them in a flurry of unnecessary rants. Anyway, I actually had come here to flag that @Yavaris Forge had discovered one of his loco wheels had been chamfered.

Used doesn't necessarily mean cheaper than new. It all depends on the rarity of the item at time of listing. To get a good idea of the pricing of an item, and check if Suraga-Ya is indeed overcharging, you can check YJA historic of sales. And yes, if you compare apples to apples, you need to take into account free shipping if the shop offers it consistently. International shipping will always be more expensive than domestic and could explain some of the pricing discrepancy between Japanese and International prices.

Not that I know of. It looks like they could maybe work. I personally ever had problems coupling and uncoupling Changming wagons, but I have used Japanese close coupling systems for years. I also run my trains as fixed formations and haven't needed to find a solution for shunting. Do report back if/when you try swapping them. There might be some 'magic' needed to deal with the skirt.

And C62 pulling the open cars.

Dang drawbar! Yeah, I watch this guy regularly as he reviews and runs JN stuff sometimes. This is the video that made me go look and find the ones that I posted above. What I hope not to see is Sam's Trains do a review. I can hear it now that my hated Bachmann is going to be better just because this one is made of plastic. He'll be correct about the DCC and lack of instructions on removing the bottom plate for maintenance. Oh yeah, the split chassis he will definitely hate.

So there is youtube video showing more details about the tomix e8 (from tomix own channel)

I love these layouts, and the four seasons modules are giving me some ideas for my own layout, which is modular and has... four modules .... ; )

Soldering does help make much better electrical connections and they are solid, even the soldered unijoiner connectors are better than the Kato ones. Just some practice. Just have to sacrifice a piece of track or two or a few unijoiners to get it down, then it’s easy pezzy. Where to best put the feeders is pretty straightforward just working from where you dont put them, then figuring out the best place to put them in the areas they can go into depending on the track plan. Always good to play with a layout plan in real life. You will find things you never saw on the computer screen and discover some things you may really dislike to avoid. Will also let you experiment with the wiring some to see how well it all works for you. But always good to over do it a little on the wiring if you are nailing it down as with time you may get some voltage loss on some of the unijoiners and harder to add more connections later. Keep at it and cheers jeff

Nice tree! I love the wire trunks, my favorite way to do them. For smaller, finer trees you can also use like 18g lamp wire. Just pull the insulation off the stranded wire but leave like a half inch on one end of insulation to hold it together. Then you can unstrand the wire into like 5 groups and twist and then break those into smaller ones. Like what you do with the floral wire just thinner. Same paint with glue or solder to lock thins in place and texture. I think you said in the other post you made the ground foam, was it just a sponge and paint, dry and then coffee grinder? jeff

This chap seems to be having the same issues. https://youtu.be/hxKp2R3CtF0?si=vqYY8I0uwDufvHw8

Nice modules! At times actually over doing some colors and things is good in modeling to make things a bit more vibrant. Its not really looking gat the real world anyway and many liberties have to be made juggling scale, viewing distances, lighting, detail level, etc. when we look at layouts we are usually a few hundred scale feet away and not how much of our visual memory is, thats either up close or way back. Sometimes at a distance the proper color level is not the same as when you are up close so turning it up some can help the scene jibe with our up close visual memories and also make the scene just pop some. Its also your world to play with! Might also experiment with using some thin wood veneer strips for the sides of your modules. A nice wood finish always frames the content so much better than black paint will. Our minds just accept natural wood finishes and doesn’t get fixated on it at all. You can buy it in rolls and either glue it on or some have a heat activated glue and you just iron it on, then oil or varnish. It’s amazing how it just makes things look more finished overall then! looking forward to more shots of the modules! Doing module scenes is fun as you can focus on one scene at a time and also learn scenery techniques in small bits. If you dont like how something is coming out no big deal to chuck it and start over. cheers jeff

You might be thinking of the Meitetsu 5000 series, yes. They're remarkably similar in terms of physical shape but the Meitetsu was painted red whereas Tokyu was painted green. I am not aware of something similar for the Tokyu 5200 series though https://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20210808/09/mohane5812002/79/72/j/o1727116914983794854.jpg?caw=1125 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Meitetsu5000_TokonameKosoku_JinguMae_19810726.jpg/800px-Meitetsu5000_TokonameKosoku_JinguMae_19810726.jpg

I can see that. Their price for some Kokis was way higher than the new ones I purchased at Tam Tam a few months ago. I was lucky I found a bunch of items - figures, road signs, buildings - for under $10 apiece. The trucks had strange pricing - some were about $12 but some ran up to $30 or more for essentially the same model. Can't quite figure out their pricing strategy to be honest. It also took more time than I liked to wade through the items. If I had not found a couple I really wanted right off, I would probably not have bothered. But once I found several items I had been looking for, I decided to keep at it. Tony

@Tony Galiani I have been comparing their prices to other places as you made me aware of. For example, looking at a Kato DD51 (which is on my wish list), their used prices is more than new prices at Plaza ($64 used vs. $59 new). It's even $52 new at HS. Granted they do have free shipping and potentially 20% off if you run up your order so that has to be factored in too. The search continues... 🙂

ARRRRGGGG! @Tony Galiani you outed my 17 year run of putting subliminal advertising on the forums and collecting enough kickbacks to keep my model train habit going! You never felt the blipverts getting to you did you?! I learned everything from Max Headroom. Once you join the forum you are tracked relentlessly! Ha ha ha ha ha [maniacal laughter and hand wringing] Well you got me back Tony, as i had looked at that Shikoku Kiha and little sightseeing car a while back and thought hmmm that looks good for small Ttrak setups or mini onetrak I should get it and promptly forgot to get it. So i just picked one up along with a small pile of other stuff I had waiting… The forum is really very enabling… maybe we need to set up a separate forum for some group theray or 12 step program… jeff