All Activity

not much of a progress on scratchbuilding Rolling stocks. making a scrap rolling stock from downed units and the inspiration

As in the title. Who is keen to meet in Japan in a year's time?

Great pictures. Thanks for this post.

oohhh. Mmmmmm. KoKi and containers....

At least in the USA they don't care. The recent time we came back they didn't even care much to ask details like they have in the past. And if you are traveling with your family each person gets $800 worth. Even that infant you're traveling with. I've never had an issue with customs no matter what I had coming back to the US. Except once when they randomly chose one of our bags to get scanned and they kept asking me if I had any knives or anything. They were trying to get me to confess. I said I thought I might have a ceramic kitchen knife in one of my bags but otherwise nothing. So they finally asked, after asking me the same question in different ways about a dozen times, if they could search. I said that was fine. They opened it up and went into where there scanner thought the elusive knives were and found our stash of nail clippers. Japanese nail clippers are the best and we had bought a bunch to give as gifts. I guess on the scanner they looked like butterfly knives or some other sort of knife that is verboten. They thanked me, closed it back up, and we were on our way.

Hi Arkh, it is this Epiphone. It was so cheap compared to home. It instantly felt great to play too. I have Gibsons and Fenders at home, but I've always wanted a jazz/rockabilly style guitar.

I like the idea..... 🙂 Certainly is the aim of the layout. We will see what name "sticks" eventually 🙂

Re-did the front of the spiral chamber. so each section of spiral has its own window..... much better... Hard to get far enough away to get a flat view, so top spiral looks a bit odd.. especially as it is incomplete. !.

I got my first shipment from RG-Rokko. Shipped using FedEx on the 6th of May from Japan and arrived here in Texas today (the 8th of May). I will buy from them again. The package was 17.5 x 14.5 x 12 inches (45 x 37 x 30 cms) and weighed 5.3 kgs which is slightly less than 12 pounds. I mention this because if I would have purchased the same amount of items from buyee, the package probably would have been twice the size. This order contains: TOMIX 2720 JNR Chi 1 (with wood) ｘ 9 TOMIX 2721 JNR Chi 1 (with clay pipe) ｘ 9 TOMIX 2774 JNR Chiki 7000 ｘ 9 KATO 23-579 Type U50A container (Sagawa Express) ｘ 12 KATO 23-575-A ISO tank container (NRS / INTERFLOW) ｘ 3 KATO 23-503-B U41A type container (Zero/NISSAN) ｘ 10 KATO 23-503-A U38A Container (Nissan Land Transport) ｘ 10 KATO 8058 Taki 9900 Nippon Oil Transportation ｘ 2 KATO 8058-1 Taki 9900 Nippon Oil ｘ2 KATO 10-1573 JRF Koki 200 (No JRF mark/No container loaded) - 2 car set ｘ 7 KATO 10-1377 Tora 90000 - 8 car set ｘ 3 Here are some pictures:

The Multiverse Line? The track appears to pass through several different worlds.

Having a brakeman or guard on any freight train is rare now. Most are driver only operation. You still occasionally see brakevans used by JRF to escort oversize or hazardous loads.

Arguably an LRT system would impact the local community less than a mass of buses by taking traffic off the roads. This assumes the visitor cap remains so you are shifting the same number of people to a less intrusive mode of transport.

I’ve used the same technique on old motors to revive them. Many small motors now days are sealed and don’t have the two screw in bumps on either side of one end of the motors where you can unscrew a cap and pull out the brushes and springs to clean or replace them. jeff

No issues whatsoever. Total value was about CAD500 so we were well below any limit that might exist, but customs didn’t even bother to ask… just waived us through at YVR after we filled out the touch screen form. Maybe having a cranky 2 year old coming off an 8-hour flight was like having a free pass, because nobody wants to deal with that! i was surprised that nothing went off at security at Narita since I had a bunch of stuff in my carry on. i thought all those small parts would appear kind of sketchy on the scanner. They must be used to people travelling with trains 😃

Based on this video, it should fit I guess. Though it does seem to sit a bit high, but that might simply be because of the smaller bogeys used in the Kato chassis.

Angled overpass bridge for level 5,6

apologies. just realised, these are sealed motors. Where I can't get to the brushes or armature, I have used CRC 226 product which is a lubricant/ electrical aid/moisture removal product. The wand for spraying is hard to control the amount dispersed, but after spraying at each end of motor on shafts and running motor with some wires attached to controller, you should see an immediate improvement in speed and smoothness. I have had stuttering motors on old units come back to life when nothing else worked. it dosen't dry out, so you need to wipe down excess.

you can declare up to $800 duty free so i would imagine it would be alright from that photo to the untrained eye (can pass off as toys ). that is unless he had even more gifts that he bought

Pretty much as it says, just sound recordings of various steam trains. I had a similar one as a kid of us steam. Japan has a lot of rail related stuff like this a it’s been a very rail centric country and tons of rail fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is still around in cd format. jeff

I've been meaning to post some photos here, but never got around to doing it until now January 2nd, 2024 Kaiun Hatsumode-go. I only found out about this special service about two weeks before my trip, yet somehow there were still seats available, so I reserved a ride from Shinjuku to Chiba. Being a JNR fan, I naturally had a great time on it. I do slightly regret not going for the full ride to Kashima Jingu though (I have the exact model of this KiHa - Tomix 98013) First visit to Kominato Railway, as well as my first ever ride on a KiHa 40. I've always wanted to ride one of these diesel cars. Loved the retro atmosphere throughout the railway. Heard that they're doing a collaboration with JR Hokkaido, so I might visit again during my next trip in June. January 3rd, 2024 Took advantage of my JR pass and spent half the day or so on Shinkansens. Headed to Nasushiobara early in the morning. I was quite surprised when the E2 J66 rolled into the platform as my first ride of the day; I didn't think I'd even get to see it in person And for the return trip as well... Guess I won the Shinkansen lottery that day! Spent about an hour at Nasushiobara, before taking a short ride to Utsunomiya. Both the Silver Tsubasa E3 and the Disney E2 passed through during that time As well as an E3-1000, which is now retired from service 😢 Seems like there was an abundance of E3s during that hour Transferred to the Nikko like at Utsunomiya, and headed for Shimo-Imaichi station for a jump back in time. Had a relaxed 30 minute trip on the SL Taiju to Kinugawa-Onsen, where I then got on a Kinugawa service to Omiya. I had originally planned to get more Shinkansen photos there, but it was already 6pm and the sky was completely dark. I'll try to post some more photos soon, although they're mostly just the usual JR commuter trains

I've used Eneloop a lot. Mostly Pro but I also have the regular ones in my Z21 controllers. I also use IKEA brand ones in my trackpads and other issues. But the Enerloop are the ones I use in my camera flashes, and other "heavy lift" uses.

https://batteriesamerica.com/collections/battery-cells The R/C guys (my other hobby 🙂) use them a lot.

Correct that Kato USA does not do decoder installations for customers. The job posting is for someone on staff to do decoder installations for items to be sold as "Equipped with DCC" when they arrive at the distributors/dealers. You will see these as Kobo Shop items in the US. It's an internal thing and not public facing.

Was Customs an issue coming back?

thank you - how did you take it apart to clean the armature and brush area?