Takahama Trainwatcher Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 (edited) We've run a mega Plarail layout (whole day affair) around the house for my nephew. All the trains ran using NiMH batteries, though at various speeds as many trains were second hand. No issues in them running. Some trains used AA, some AAA and some even used C (we put AA into a C sized adaptor and that ran fine). Always 1 battery per locomotive. (No experience with the remote control unit.) Edited May 7 by Takahama Trainwatcher Link to comment
Kamome Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 (edited) 3 hours ago, cteno4 said: Also it’s one AA battery per train, not two, correct? It’s been a long time since I last played with plarail. Some of the older chassis use a C or D battery. I’m sure a couple of my kids freight locos, EF66 and EH500 use a C sized battery. All other chassis use a single AA. Also some of the sound cars use 2xAAA iirc. We generally used rechargeables as things tended to get left running when kids found something else to do. Also I “upgraded” our shinkansen with Tamiya Mini 4wd motors so they fly around the track but burn through batteries. The only other issue with that is the stop tracks no longer can stop the trains. 😂 Edited May 7 by Kamome 2 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted May 8 Share Posted May 8 Thanks great info. Hoping the kids there will enjoy the trains and can have fun setting up new layouts all the time. jeff 1 Link to comment
Nanahyaku Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 Just recently got back to this hobby after a literal decade, and now as a young adult. It's kind of sad that I have to head to Japan itself to get any sort of fair pricing, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the sake of my childhood self. I've been planning to get the N700S twins, as well as a long Doctor Yellow set to complete my trio of the 700 series. (hopefully immigration won't grill me too much 🤫) It's nice to still find an active Japanese rail forum in this day and age, much less an active thread talking about Plarail of all things. Thank you for this little oasis of childhood joy! 🚅🚄 1 Link to comment
MeTheSwede Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 On 5/7/2024 at 11:52 PM, cteno4 said: May have found a general answer to using the 1.2v ni-nh batteries. To get the maximum performance out of Plarail trains, you shouldn't use 1.2v batteries. 😉 Now this will surely caught the attention of the kids. No risk that they will get bored during the time the train is running. Some improved propulsion methods seems to have a somewhat detrimental effect on the longevity of the rolling stock though. 3 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 Ok I’m starting the modifications for the kids… hmmm maybe model rocket engines… jeff 1 Link to comment
Martijn Meerts Posted June 14 Share Posted June 14 Rocket powered Plarail? I'm in 😄 1 Link to comment
Zeether Posted June 15 Share Posted June 15 I think you'd have to use different materials than plastic for that since the exhaust would melt it 😆 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted June 15 Share Posted June 15 No, that’s part of the overall effect! Getting it to stay in the track at the curves will be the challenge! one birthday in grad school at Berkeley a fellow student gave me a little Estes mosquito rocket to build as they knew I loved to make thing and use to shoot off rockets (and made them in grad school from nitrocellulose, but that’s another story). It was a little feather weight rumble recovery rocket, no parachute or streamer. He also gave me a pack of motors that fit the main tube size not looking at the instructions where you only use tiny motors in these and there is a smaller rocket tube fit inside the main body tube. I made it and painted it and it sat in my desk for months and late one night (a beer or two may have been involved waiting for a gel to end) Tom (who gave me the rocket) asks why I haven't shot the rocket off. I said well no clear place around here to do it we would loose it, the motors we have for this are like 10x what is sposta use so it will just disappear, and we would probably have the cops on us. I sat there thinking how could we shoot it off and not loose it and it came to me why not shoot it on a wire horizontally! We went to the stock room and found a spool of like 20g copper wire. We went up to the roof and erected the poles that folded down on the corners of the roof (we were never sure what these were used for but like 7’ tall when folded into the upright position and pinned in place) and strung the wire about 200’ the length of the building from one end to the other. I attached the rocket to the wire and we lit the fuse. We’ll let me tell you with the big motor and without the motor thrust having to lift the weight of the rocket against gravity and the very little friction it had going down the wire it was to the other end of the building in less than an eye blink! We had draped some pieces of cheesecloth around the far end to try and stop the rocket in a light net, but this plan failed. Plan B for the rocket with plenty of thrust and momentum at this point was to completely rip off the two epoxied tubes attached to the rocket that held it to the wire. But this violence ended up on turning the rocket into a flaming pin wheel still with forward momentum, but now slower and very spectacular flaming pinwheel. This proceed across the street and into the chemistry building, which unfortunately had the 60s design element of each lab having a 6’ wide external patio, which usually held bikes of grad students to keep them from cutting the lab up. Our now flaming pin wheel hit one of these and then proceeded to bounce around on the patio behind the railing and among the bikes there in a spectacular display of fireworks for a couple of seconds! At this point Tom and I have the same vision flashing through out head of the chem building in flames and us in handcuffs! But the motor ended finally and smoke cleared and no fire, thanks to all cement, metal and glass construction. But it could have put us at war with the chem department and they had way better materials for making projectiles and fuel than the molecular biology department. new rule, never do rocketry late at night after a couple of beers. Never got busted, but one of the other grad students came up to me the next day and asked if I was shooting thing off the roof the previous night. Apparently she was on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle getting a ride home on the road between the two building and saw the whole thing. She said she figured it would be Jeff… jeff 1 Link to comment
Zeether Posted June 15 Share Posted June 15 Ha, quite a story. They've been doing more of the Shinkalion stuff for Plarail as of recent and having seen a few episodes of the first anime I am super tempted to grab one. The robot transformation is genius with the way it works. Link to comment
arkh Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 (edited) I got a few of the new Shinkalion: Change the World toys recently and now I really want to get some Plarail tracks and trains since they are compatible. Does anyone have any particular recommendations for getting started? It looks like they have decently priced starter sets for tracks and then I'm looking at getting some of the motorized shinkansen (E5, E6, and E7) that I'm hoping will be able to attach to the Shinkalion stuff. But it seems like there's endless variations of the starter sets and the actual Plarail trains so it's hard to decide what to get. Edited June 21 by arkh Link to comment
cteno4 Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 For the homeless kids shelter I got these sets as it seemed like a good variety of track and each has a train. One is the remote control version. https://www.ebay.com/itm/204410135446 https://www.ebay.com/itm/235285420960 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BWM2R143/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 hoping they can do 2 good sized loops if they want or a giant one or 3 smaller ones. jeff 1 Link to comment
arkh Posted June 22 Share Posted June 22 Thanks cteno4! The last set was one of the main ones that I was looking at but those first two also seem nice. I'm not sure if I want to go all-in on Plarail as I more just wanted to be able to run the Shinkalion models I have. I don't necessarily want to collect more Plarail models outside of those but, like with n-gauge, it's such a slippery slope. Especially seeing things like those remote control options really make me want to try out more than just a small sample. Link to comment
Kamome Posted June 22 Share Posted June 22 There are a number of innovative ideas in Pura-rail. Also, they get the latest trains first, 36+3, Tobu Spacia and now even E8. I even quite like the Real Class EF66 blue train, although the prices are a bit high. The 3 way autopoint (turnout) is quite a nice option, essentially it switches tracks 1,2,3 consecutively as trains pass over a switch on the incoming track. Great for multiple train management. I gave my kids a crash course (pun intended) in effective signalling and train control for a 3 platform station and a passing loop. Think we had up to 5 trains running, all of which converged onto a single track section. The groove that flicks the switch is under the motor car, on SLs this is usually under the tender so the loco goes one way and the tender another. Lots of fun-filled stress and inevitable collisions. The station we have is a city station from a few years ago with working safety gates and station announcements which was awesome. Had one shinkansen elevated platform, 2 regular platforms and room for a passing in track under the elevated section. One word of caution with using Shinkalion toys on Pura-rail, some of the earlier versions used standard sized pura-rail wheels, ideal. We also had some of the later ones (Whichever the series where when they combined with other passenger trains - something “liner”) Some of these used smaller removable bogie wheels which would not run on the track quite as well. Not sure what the newer ones are like as my kids have grown out of the series, although they won’t part with the toys. Must be the 4th generation or so by now. 1 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted June 22 Share Posted June 22 I was going to get 2 train/track sets and one or two track only sets, but from what I could easily dig up for reasonable prices shipped to the us the third train/track set was a better deal and some extra scenery pieces. I figure between the three sets they should have plenty to play with. If they find the kids going nutz with it I’ll research more sets out. I did notice what was available changed since early in the year when I began talking to the center to when I went ahead with the purchases. I probably should have just gotten 1 train/track set to test it out, but the staff thought it would be a hit, so I splerged. jeff Link to comment
Kamome Posted June 23 Share Posted June 23 (edited) As a product, it is an amazing toy and no surprise it’s been around for many years and is still as popular as ever with preschoolers as well as adults alike. There are a number of “gimmick” sets which add further enjoyment. We have an Enoden set with a sound unit, chuffing Thomas with a water vapour unit (now been adopted by manufacturers like Hornby) and an E5 which switches between fast and slow modes thanks to a special track. Wish I had this when I was a kid, but thanks to having 2 sons, was happy to introduce it and obviously showed them how to play with it properly 😂 Track info is here. So many options. Most displays are screwed down as things like bridge piers can shift quite easily. https://www.takaratomy.co.jp/products/plarail/tettei/set/100dreamlayout/ For me, wish there’d been the new S rail a long time ago. Edited June 23 by Kamome 1 Link to comment
Zeether Posted June 23 Share Posted June 23 Talking about the track, there's an art collaborative called Paramodel that does installations with it: 1 Link to comment
ao924 Posted June 25 Share Posted June 25 I picked up some plarail with my last suruga ya order for my kids to mess around with but I find myself playing with it more.... 1 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted June 25 Share Posted June 25 Parent: “Where’s your other parental unit?” Kid: (rolling their eyes) “Playing with my plarail again…” jeff Link to comment
Kamome Posted June 26 Share Posted June 26 9 hours ago, ao924 said: I picked up some plarail with my last suruga ya order for my kids to mess around with but I find myself playing with it more.... Sorry this is not Pura-rail Annoymous. You won’t find any help with recovery here. 1 Link to comment
TimWay4 Posted July 23 Share Posted July 23 Yeah I now have two 180 degree turns linked by two straights and a C11 pulling two Takis on my desk when I get bored or need to calm down, they get a run around Link to comment
Nanahyaku Posted August 14 Share Posted August 14 I've just ordered a really old set of 700 intermediates and a tail car for my even older 700 set, hopefully my package won't get stuck in customs purgatory 😱 Link to comment
Nanahyaku Posted September 3 Share Posted September 3 weeks after owning it, I dig the little opening cars quite a lot, and plan to get a matching Hikari set for my Rail Star 🚄 Link to comment
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