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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

They’ve slowly been inflating the prices versus their Japanese site (you can browse that to see the differential) and I think the formula they use to do that adds to the variation. The minimum price of an item (probably more relevant to magazines) has also jumped from Y300 in February last year to Y650 today, and the commission on the order from Y500 to Y900. That said there’s still bargains when you look at the overall landed cost.

Suruga-Ya's prices are all over the place - or at least that is how it seems to me. I open the HS web site as a means to compare prices and sometimes check other sites as well when shopping at Suruga-Ya. Some of the items I purchased were real bargains though some were not. The Shikoku DMU I purchased was only slightly lower than the original retail even though it was used. But I could not find it anywhere else. @Kingmeow - I am worried - are you feeling okay? If so, all I can say is that it is hard when the great ones lose it! Though even Otani doesn't hit a homer everyday! I had no trouble running up an order several times that amount - though I pared it down significantly to focus on the items I really thought were important for my projects. Tony

Every month, MicroAce continues to solicit my wallet for pre-order money. This month, their Rapi:t release is the one that will spirit away a few hundred CAD from it 🤣

Quickly tried a few trains for some length testing. Looks about what I was expecting. The urban platforms are maybe a bit long, they can hold around 7-8 coaches. Local line can hold 3 car trains / loco + 2 cars, and if I do decide to add a platform to the shortest track, that could hold 2 car trains. Might be a good place for the fox / squid / crab Kihas. Will do more experimenting once all the track is lined up between the 2 sections and the sub roadbed is screwed in place. Need to fine tune the position a little bit.

At first glance, I didn't see any savings as I thought the prices were quite high for used, but I could be wrong.

Is somebody has tried to install microtrain couplers on chinese rolling stock? I've only stock with less than 1 year, but I find quite difficult to couple or uncouple wagons with the standard Changming coupling. I'd like to do some shunting and with the standard coupling it looks impossible

Changming Wechat, always worth following. I am ready to go if its worthwhile item.

this photo is a little better. The major learning from this run out is that AIA should have printed the railhead a little high so I could grind it back and get a decent surface. 1.2mm instead of 1mm should do the trick