How can one know what all's been made?

[Pashina12]

Does a database exist of the various items (specifically locomotives and cars) that have been released in N scale?

 

Would make it easier, avoid hunting for things that don't exist...

[ToniBabelony]

A good method is to search in Google images for the model in Japanese and add "nゲージ" or "鉄道模型" in the search. If no big brands appear in the results, good chance it hasn't been made. Lots of people here use the Hobby Search database (http://www.1999.co.jp/rail) for that purpose as well.

[westfalen]

Yes, Hobby Search list items that have been out of stock for many years, if it has ever been made it is likely they still have it listed even if they don't have any.

 

Assuming you primarily are interested in Japanese N scale but Spookshow, http://www.spookshow.net/index.html, is the definitive source for such information on North American N scale. Perhaps some Japanese modeller out there has done something like this but we haven't stumbled across it yet.

[Pashina12]

Thanks! I'll be taking a look through those then. And yes as far as N scale goes I'm only interested in Japanese proto.

[bill937ca]

At one time Kato's catalog carried a far greater percentage of out of production models than it does now.  In 2007 a catalog style book, Kato N Gauge Archives, was published and the current catalog became more an indication of what could be available.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10064677

Edited March 8, 2017 by bill937ca

[Gary121]

I want to know that too,

Edited September 22, 2017 by Gary121

[Welshbloke]

Thread necromancy, but another good trick is to look for gaps in number sequences. This works especially well with long-lived items which haven't changed their item number during a long production run, as they may have had relations which were discontinued for whatever reason.

 

Sometimes numbers were just left out of a sequence but often you get a series of consecutive models. If, say, you know 4100 was a Kato KuMoHa 115 then it's worth trying Kato 4101/2/3/etc as search terms. I'm doing this at the moment to see if there were any other Kato versions of the KuMoNi 143 apart from 4021, no success yet.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Welshbloke
Wrong number!