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Great to hear. Looking forward to your travelogue! Sort of wish I was there to meet up again but traveling on the other side of the world right now. Safe travels! Tony

@ED75-775 Safe voyage, mate! I await your arrival in where I call home, Kumamoto! Bring your "Cavalcade of New Zealand Locomotives" with you, if you're willing to part with it, as I might have something to trade you for it as a thank you. Hopefully you'll come on a weekend here as I'm starting my new (finally) full-time job this June.

I think the issue with Ekinet for British cards may be security. My bank likes to send me an SMS when making online purchases from some retailers, and Japanese websites don't seem to support it so just show a failure message. I'm not sure if there is any way around it other than for Ekinet to support the extra security features.

Any Futurama fans? I'm considering basing some of my buildings on the city level of my crazy layout on Futurama. Already found a printable file of the Planet Express building, and I was wondering what other buildings might be "recognisable". I have some ideas but they are not going to be easy to build the .stl files for. Please post pics.

I can report that I was able to use my US card in reserving several Joyful Train tix from the US using ekinet. These trains are so popular that you should reserve them as soon as they come on sale which is typically 30 days out. I’m in Japan now and I can also report that Ekinet does work on one of my US card here in Japan… but with some issues. Specifically, I first tried to use my Chase VISA Sapphire Reserve card and the system would not accept it. So I tried my Schwab VISA Debit card, and it worked! Reserved three Shinkansen tix, but then ekinet refused to acknowledge same card on my fourth ticket try. I went to the JR East midorinomadoguchi and the agent told me that sometimes the US bank card has security issues on ekinet. So I called Schwab on their international line and it turns out that even though I had previously notified them to allow my use in Japan, their security protocol automatically stops accepting repeated use after a few being accepted, thus I asked them to release the block so I can continue to use the card. Strange that my repeated ATM withdrawals did not have this issue. So usability of US card on ekinet seems to depend on the bank card and their security protocols as well as the way the card is being accessed. On a related note, ekinet, at least the English version, only shows availability of express trains and thus not allow purchasing slower train tix, e.g non-Shinkansen tickets.

I found the same with mine 😎 - post about it if you work out a fix!

Oooh another nice vicarious Japan trip to start the summer with here! enjoy the trip Alistair. jeff

Yeah from my recollections it was the PVA that caused the most noise. jeff

This is when I question the necessity of brass models but I guess that’s KTMs thing. Fantastic for old electric and steam locomotives with all the intricate details needed, but when it’s a smooth sided rectangular tube, with minimal roof equipment, why not use plastic considering how quickly Endo’s Dr. Yellows sold through. Personally my view is if you’re big into shinkansens, N covers the interest very well rather than having brass seating next to visible pickup and decoder wires and bogie securing bolts shining back at you through the windows. But I guess it’s only for those willing to part with the price of a kei car for a toy train.

I'd like to see how they form such a complex nose shape out of brass.....

Aaaaand we're back, folks! Almost a year after my last trip, and with a desire to do more, see more (and perhaps, buy more!) I start my next journey to Japan today! This time around I'll be following a similar itinerary to my previous trip, staying in Tokyo, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Hakata and Kyoto over the course of four weeks. Highlights to come include trips on two steam trains (Paleo Express and Moka), hopefully a trip to the Hiroshima Streetcar Festival and of course catching up with @SL58654号 who has kindly offered to show me around Kumamoto city, where I barely even scratched the surface of what's to see and do last trip (hey, I had a steam train to catch, after all!). Plenty of photos to come once I get going, but first things first: I'm flying to Auckland later today, and overnighting with my family there once again before I fly out tomorrow morning for Tokyo. Alastair

We notice all trains run louder on the ballasted track compared to unballasted. we have the large bridge scene on the layout without ballast and often you have to look while running trains thinking they have stopped or derailed as the noise disappears briefly as they cross. we use diluted pva glue for ballast

@beakaboy I’ve always wondered if some trains run loud on hard ballasted track due to just plain reflection of the motor noise off the hard ballast surface. Many folks thought the ballast noise is vibration causing vibration of the hard roadbed. Does the 500 run loud on just track on the table compared to other trains that don’t run loud on the ballasted track? it’s one of those eternal mysteries everyone seems to have theories for, but I’ve never seen much in the way of actual experimentation on outside one chap that did a half dozen 6’ sections of track on different subroadbeds and ballast glue. It was like 15 or 20 years back and I’ve not dug it up, was probably on one of the old yahoo groups so maybe gone now. From what i remember the only big difference he found was in the glue, with hard PVA being loud and softer acrylic medium being quieter and the subroadbeds didn’t matter much, but my memory is foggy on it. jeff

Not sure where to post this, so I thought here. First impressions from someone new to Japanese N. I got a chance to briefly run both and have these impressions: Tomix 120-300: very nicely decorated, and has functional very tiny head/tail lights. A fair bit nosier than the Kato, and the interior light is a blinding bright white so will need to figure out how to tone it down, or just remove it. Easy to pop the shell off but looks hard if not impossible to add a driver. Due to the chassis coming up almost to the bottom of the windows any passengers added will be cut off pretty much at breast height but as the Geibi Line does not see a lot of use there won't be many to add. Kato KIAH 58 from the starter set: Also very nicely decorated and with functional head/tail lights. Much quieter than the 120-300, and has ability to add a driver and almost full passengers. No standard interior lights. Fiddly extra details to add which I attempted but have put off for a bit. Overall very impressed with both trains especially when factoring in the prices. Looking forward to acquiring some more (1 pre-order already made).

Instead of being launched onto the water in the Viking boat, its sent down the rails on a rail car! Fitting. jeff

Christopher, if you find your lights too bright you can always wire in a small variable resistor to dim them some at your running speed. Traditional lighting kits have the issue of having the LEDs at like 80% brightness at 12v. This gives you mini suns in the carriages and means the cars get righter as the train goes faster with more voltage supplied. The way around this is to use a power regulator chip that will spit out a constant current output. You just feed it 0-12v and it spits out a set voltage and amperage. You set the amps by a resistor across two of the pins. So once your voltage hits around 4-5v the lights come onto your set value (the amps you set the regulator chip to output with the resistor) and it stays at that brightness even when voltage is increased. Really is a slick way to keep constant brightness lighting if you are rolling your own lighting. Toss in a capacitor (or more, you can go small with tantalum bricks not too expensively) to help with any flicker from pickup issue. Here is a great tutorial video. we have had a few mentions around the forums of folks trying to make power connectors between cars using magnets (took a Quick Look but didn’t find the posts). You can easily get 2mm dia x 1mm thick magnets all over and 1mm and smaller magnets from specialty places. Ideas is use silver glue (carry’s a current) to glue magnets onto the ends of wires at the ends of cars. Issue is getting magnets small and at the same time hold with the flex of the wires as so small hard to get the wire super flexible. jeff

GEMCO Australia has supplied rail flaw detection vehicles/devices to JR Tokai in the past (RTV-A3 model). They are typically labeled as RFD/Liteslice. Could be related to that.

new additions to my collection getting a run recently. The kato 500 series came from fellow forum member Alastair and runs very smoothly for an older model. Trains seem to run noisy on our ballasted track, even though we have cork underneath.

KTM announces they start producing JR-C Shinkansen N700S in HO Brass.

Yes, it's a second run but the sales stuff says they wouldn't produce many.

brill27mcb, thank you very much for the highly detailed and informative reply along with the links. I have a much clearer understanding of how I need to set things up now and you’ve answered questions that I didn’t even think about until now. Good to know about the switch’s built-in feature for future reference when I decide to add them. I’ll definitely start shopping for supplies soon. Much appreciated!

A bunch of 1:150 Toyota Hiaces, and Kato V3. Technically I didn't buy it nor do I own it yet, but my friend currently on vacation in Japan did buy them for me.

The bogies on the Tomytec HO Naro trains will swap out for another Tomix bogie with contacts if necessary . You could then solder wires to these to power your tail lights/interior lights in the non powered coaches. Alternatively add copper contact pieces to the axles. Probably need to mill out recesses in the existing bogies for this. The other option would be to fashion some wiper pickups or I’ve seen it done with a spring wrapped around the middle axle as long as thats metal and one wheel is isolated. Just need to make sure the wheels are in the right way. so that both polarities are connect.

They were heading south on Stock Road, intersection of South St, south of Perth. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y1D9n46PJZJFMAs3A

@Mutro You can look at my reports of my February trip for some views from the JR hotel in Hakodate. We lucked out and got a room overlooking the station tracks. That is a north (more or less) view. Rooms on the opposite south side have views of Mount Hakodate. Ciao, Tony