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So i got my mouth so watered up so for some Tonkatsu i thought I would try some from a local restaurant tonight that I had not tried for Tonkatsu. Sadly not very good… oh well. jeff

Was waiting for a new camera car so this is nice.

Bill must have been recovering from his Swiss tram trip, usually he is the first here with the Shizuoka Hobby Show videos! 😜 jeff

Just took the body off one. It's not as easy as the video states, they just don't fall out of the shell. The cab interior wants to come with it, so be careful. So, it does become quiet without the shell. The two halves just want to fall apart since there are no screws. The brass strip wipers fall out and are a bit difficult to get back in. I put the shell back on and it did quiet down a little bit, but not as good as without the shell. Maybe a little wedge between the halves might work. I'll wait a bit and see what Steve comes up with.

I bought two of these things and both are very noisy runners. I thought since both do the same thing, that it was how they were made and were POJ. Anyway, I just found out that I was wrong. Steve's Trains just put out this video and he shows a good one and a bad one. Take the shell off and the noise goes away. I will try that on mine and hope it works. Then I will wait impatiently for Steve to put out an update. I read on other threads that people put grease, but I don't want to have this thing leaving oil spots in my driveway.

Well, you may use my case as ammo if you need it. 🙂

The Forchbahn runs from near downtown Zurich to Esslingen 16 km from the city. Inside the city the Forchbahn runs like a tramway on street track, then past the end of trams at Rehab the FB operates on side-of-the-road track, a short subway with two stations, some single track line and much double track line out through the Swiss countryside. Currently, many construction projects are under way to upgrade the FB. included amongst that will be 10 new 75 meter rail cars that will replace the Tram 2000 style interurbans. FB interurbans are 2400mm wide versus 2200mm wide for the Zurich trams. And like the Zurich trams they have upholstered seats. The ticket agency at Forch even has flower pots outside its little shop. Photos: 1. Tram 2000 style stock at Stadelhofen. 2. Old school interurban interior with upholstered seats. 3. Train arriving at Forch Station. 4. Flower pots at Forch travel agency.

Tomix

I wish there was English subtitles. 😞

A number of Japanese Youtubers seem to have product that they’re quite happy with. The fact that multiple issues have occurred for us customers on a relatively small forum group (by comparison to Kato’s market) would suggest that problems are with a significant number of the production. How a company deals with its challenges is a fair better gauge of its competency than how it deals with its successes. I’m certainly not going to fade in to the background quietly and I will give those contacted some grace to decide what they’re going to do. Perhaps the number of affected models outnumbers the available parts to repair. For a large company with a good reputation, I’d be taking steps to identify what went wrong, how many models are a problem and factoring in either a recall or looking at where you could fit in production of parts and/or repair. If it’s a smallish number of models, even easier. The fact Kato made this models release so well publicised in Japan has done them no favours in this regard so better to take the bullet on this one and restore their customers faith. That was a lot of fanfare, D51 returning after 20 years, newly tooled etc.. We’ll see what they say. I sort of expect a generic response in the first instance. I have had this when dealing with Tomix on 2 separate occasions and on both times they came through like a great company shoild. The issues were far easier to resolve in this cases. (cosmetic parts)

Not bad for my first rodeo lol.

Added wooden planks on top of the bridges, glued the structures in placed and touched up the edges of the structure foundation. I've been stockpiling figures and parts for two years and now I can finally take them out and utilize them. Which means many little small parts to prime and paint!

Lots of neat items, including a camera car, American B-Shorties and 3D printed figures..

Yes i think you got it most pork cutlets like that in the us are very lean and konkatsu needs that bit of fat on the outside there to keep it nice and juicy. Ive also noticed that the tempura and other frying at many us japanese restaurants is declining. Getting just the right delicate crust and keeping the inside nice and juicy is a very delicate balance of the batter and oil temp. Timing is so crucial as too long and the crust gets hard and oil ladened. Delicate crust lets the oil drain well also. I grew up watching our Nextdoor neighbor making tempura at his restaurant, he was a high end japanese chef and ran a fancy restaurant. His tempura was a work of art! Jeff

We are semi-fans of the Katsukura chain. https://www.katsukura.jp/en/ We have tried to replicate a tonkatsu meal at home. The most difficult part is finding fatty pork loin in the U.S. Most of the pork in the U.S. is far more lean. We did find the magic extra fine cabbage shredder tool at Tokyu Hands (now just "Hands"). You can get it from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Cabbage-Shredder-Non-Slip-Julienne-Vegetable/dp/B08MDYDCZC?th=1 I credit my wife for finding the sesame seed grinding mortar and pestle. https://mtckitchen.com/products/japanese-style-mortar-suribachi-medium-30-fl-oz-7-44-dia Bull-Dog tonkatsu sauce is widely available in the U.S. and is okay if not as good as Japanese restaurants have. http://tonkatsu.bulldog.jp/bulldogsauce/

Sadly our little d210 puts full leader spacing between the sequence of numbers when using numbering, so about the same as doing them individually! Brother does everything they can to make you waste the tape, it’s how they make their money. It also does not let you turn framing on and off. We had an older model that was more sophisticated that let you turn all the formatting on and off for some of the characters in a label, but that one is long gone. I remember doing a project with a ton of small labels and doing a bunch in a row with different formatting and just spitting the whole thing out and chopping it all up to save tape. I’ll mess with the Bluetooth one tonight it lets you do a lot of editing and layout with the software, but is very unintuitive. Jeff

Oh, what the heck. Here's the entire kit. 😁

OK, I was curious and went and look. It does have serialization. Brother calls it "auto-numbering" and the function happens just as you are about to print the label. Take a look at the instruction in MY manual. Could be model dependent. BTW, my model is PT-2030VP with carry case (room to store blank tapes too) and AC adapter. It was purchased in February 2013 for Buy.com (not Rakuten I think). Must have been some kind of deal/sale as I paid...what for it...$15 new, which included shipping! The outfit was in a mini typewriter (remember those? 🤣) plastic carrying case.

Droolllllll. Oh for some tonkatsu like that around here! Usually nothing special even at better places around here. Not very crispy and juicy like that! jeff

Nice! Yes its always a process of trial and error, but you learn from success and failure and usually learn more from failures, so a bit of a payback for the frustration… cheers, jeff

Great it was a hit! Extensions look good. Always nice to have passing tracks like that to easily bring out different rains fast. With visitors around its usually good to have operations as simple as possible as easy to get distracted with people talking and such and keeping the train rolling helps keep folks attention, some get frustrated with more complex switching of trains on and off sidings and leave at that point. Also easy to direct public operators to stop at the station, you switch the points and then they take the other train out, fun for them and easy to direct. Are you planning on some different depth modules to get more scenery bits into modules? jeff

Some small progress in the back corner. Still a bunch to do here, but starting to look like something... learning lots of things ("Dammit, I should've done X instead of Y...."), but that's the primary point of this exercise.

Oh ok, I see there's an 800 # 8 may give them a call.

Great photos and additional information. Love riding the Swiss Railway network (a bit closer to the UK than Japan is). Have done the 3 main tourist trains and quite a lot of the main network but barely any of the branch lines. Hoping for another visit sometime this year.