People’s Republic of China N Scale trains

[Lessigen]

For anyone who's curious about the process of ordering from CHANGMING's Taobao storefront for the upcoming CR200J, it's a bit involved but this is how I understood it (with a bit of DeepL/Google Translate). Of course, if you want to avoid this hassle you have wonderful people like Stephan and Vincent at J-Scale (link | link) or Jacky from CNRailModel (link | link) to basically make this like any other online purchase, which is my recommendation. Khaho is another option but I have no personal experience from them yet. Anyways, I mainly did this because I already had a Taobao account set up and verified.

 

Here are the steps:

1. You need a Taobao account. Getting one ranges from moderately to very annoying depending on your luck with account verification as you may need anything between your phone number to your passport and support is useless for most account suspension/locking issues
2. Go to the CR200J page and select your flavour of green: link
3. Click "add to cart" (the lighter orange button)
4. Go to your cart (the link with the small cart icon in the header) and select checkout (the orange button underneath the ¥200)
5. Under 跨境段物流方式 (cross-border logistics), select 跨境段物流方式 (contact seller for overseas shipping) - if you select the other options you'll pay for overseas shipping which will not apply on a reservation, so you'll be wasting your money 
6. In the right box, select either AliPay (the top one) or Credit Card (in my case it said CAD as part of the text) depending on which one you have available
7. Enter in your credit card details, optionally save it using the checkbox. I chose not to. There's a small fee associated with using a CC, something like 0.6% but it does convert directly into your currency
8. After payment, CHANGMING will "ship" the reservation item to you. You have to accept this shipment for your non-refundable reservation to be locked in, it'll do so automatically after like 50 days I believe
9. When it's time to pay for the remainder, CHANGMING will post a Taobao link on their Wechat where you can pay for it. Be sure to select the same car variant as you reserved. This time, ensure you're paying for overseas shipping (跨境段物流方式 section, select whichever one you prefer)
10. CHANGMING will ship you the actual train and eventually, with a bit of luck, you'll receive it in a timely manner

Edited April 20 by Lessigen

[Nozomi329]

On 4/20/2025 at 4:47 AM, Lessigen said:

kind of reminds me of the EMD F59PHI

China actually had a few double decker E/DMUs in the early 2000s with double deck height power cars that's even closer match:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/神州號NZJ2型柴油動車組
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/新曙光號NZJ1型柴油動車組
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/金輪號NZJ2型柴油動車組

[disturbman]

@Lessigen Yes, dealing with TB is not for our simple Western minds 😄

Joking aside, that's about the process. This is how it was done for the CR400AF, the DF4D-3 and DF4D-4.

Beside the language barrier, if things haven't changed, the big problem with TB is that they offer international shipping to only a limited selection of countries. Which then limit the use of TB to proxy services, who works well but don't offer many cheap international shipping options and often skimmed about 10% of the item price as hidden conversion fees. Customer support will also be extremely limited if anything is wrong with a model.

That's the other big reason why J-scale set up a direct relationship with CM: we can offer full support without much language barrier (at least if you speak German, English or French). And though it might take some time due to shipping, we always get parts, replacements and guidance from Liuzhou. I believe that Jacky and CNRailModels would too, but my experience with Khaho is rather that they might not.

[Section31]

@Lessigen Hopefully works out for both of us. Taobao is great for other things. I use it for bulk of my keyboard stuff (the keycaps, cables, switches) and model cars stuff mainly dioramas that i can combine with the trains.

 

Though i mostly tokyostation for cars since its comparable prices to it hk/china/japan source with 5% gst only and 100cad is free shipping. Just learning process. 

 

@disturbman Khaho is something else for sure. It’s website been down for week. Though that is good for the wallet there. There restock notices are sometimes hard to resist. My thoughts are if shipping prices continue to rise in Asia, even europe with its flat rate shipping will be better option.

Edited April 21 by Section31

[Lessigen]

According to their latest wechat post, Changming announced that they officially closed reservations for the CR200J as of Apr 21 13:00 China Standard Time, which made the reservation window less than 10 days. Apparently they have received over 2000 orders. That's a crazy short period of time. Hopefully everyone got their reservations in!

  

11 hours ago, disturbman said:

@Lessigen Yes, dealing with TB is not for our simple Western minds 😄

Joking aside, that's about the process. This is how it was done for the CR400AF, the DF4D-3 and DF4D-4.

Beside the language barrier, if things haven't changed, the big problem with TB is that they offer international shipping to only a limited selection of countries. Which then limit the use of TB to proxy services, who works well but don't offer many cheap international shipping options and often skimmed about 10% of the item price as hidden conversion fees. Customer support will also be extremely limited if anything is wrong with a model.

That's the other big reason why J-scale set up a direct relationship with CM: we can offer full support without much language barrier (at least if you speak German, English or French). And though it might take some time due to shipping, we always get parts, replacements and guidance from Liuzhou. I believe that Jacky and CNRailModels would too, but my experience with Khaho is rather that they might not.

  For sure, I'm grateful that J-Scale was set up. I don't know what kind of black magic you guys do to find some really rare limited train sets especially brand-new or get export-limited items but it's awesome you managed to figure out something.

 

 

5 hours ago, Section31 said:

@Lessigen Hopefully works out for both of us. Taobao is great for other things. I use it for bulk of my keyboard stuff (the keycaps, cables, switches) and model cars stuff mainly dioramas that i can combine with the trains.

 

Though i mostly tokyostation for cars since its comparable prices to it hk/china/japan source with 5% gst only and 100cad is free shipping. Just learning process. 

 

@disturbman Khaho is something else for sure. It’s website been down for week. Though that is good for the wallet there. There restock notices are sometimes hard to resist. My thoughts are if shipping prices continue to rise in Asia, even europe with its flat rate shipping will be better option.

Before the proliferation of some of the more niche items on Aliexpress and Temu I used Taobao a lot. A pain to navigate due to the language barrier/translation issues and supremely annoying to register as my phone wouldn't receive the SMS text for some reason back in the day, but they do offer great prices. I got some 2.5Gbe PoE switches and portable USB-C monitors from some vendors back then, though it's so much easier to get it from Aliexpress nowadays.

Edited April 21 by Lessigen

[Section31]

@Lessigen I got around it (even though i can ask people around me to help translate) by just using google lens or wechat translate. For most items, its good enough to get basic understanding and figure out rest. What i notice on Ali is sometimes the pricing is different from Taobao but its per item. It's something to do with the exchange rate they use to convert to Canadian Dollars i guess.

 

It is great to have J-Scale and i can see myself using it time to time depending on the shipping rates of Asia. That and the rising YEN to Cad (almost PAR again) is really limiting where we can buy the stuff. 

Edited April 21 by Section31

[Section31]

@Lessigen I also ended up ordering the recent changming freight train carriage from there taobao front (instock). Lets see how the shipping process goes for that. 

[Section31]

That was unexpected another run of Changming CR400. Picked up the Asian game livery myself.

[jingpeng]

Since Taobao purchases are closed for France, I had no choice but to place my first order through a Taobao proxy for a few Minicity products that couldn't be found elsewhere. The contract is clear for the first part: 10% commission. I'm now waiting for the second part of the payment, which includes shipping and probably some import taxes.

[disturbman]

Which proxy did you use?

In my experience, the international shipping options can be relatively expensive and might force you to under declare, which is always a bit risky. I'm personally glad not to have to deal with them anymore, they are not as seamlessly easy to use as their Japanese counterparts.

If in France, you can always contact J-scale for specific models or check if shipments are en route. There is a big one full of Minicity trucks and vans that will leave China in a few days. For buildings, it's so far only on request as the market is not there and they are relatively bulky. And in general, due to the value of Minicity models, shipments are only once every few months.

[Section31]

@disturbman Its going to be interesting timeline for that changming cr400 bf-z. Already 2000+ orders on taobao store front.

[disturbman]

They probably will close their TB pre-order in a few days if the slots are selling that fast. The European vendor will still have until May 29 to send their reservations.

I'm interested to see how they deal with the very real possibility that the 0524 will out sell their planned capacity for that running number.

[Section31]

@disturbman That is what i suspect too. That 0524 got lot of people to buy in. I know i wouldn't have with an AF-Z coming in next year if it was the regular version. In the span of 3 Months, I have ordered CR400 AF-Z, CR200J3C, HD3CA and now this lol.

Edited 21 hours ago by Section31

[jingpeng]

5 hours ago, disturbman said:

Which proxy did you use?

In my experience, the international shipping options can be relatively expensive and might force you to under declare, which is always a bit risky. I'm personally glad not to have to deal with them anymore, they are not as seamlessly easy to use as their Japanese counterparts.

If in France, you can always contact J-scale for specific models or check if shipments are en route. There is a big one full of Minicity trucks and vans that will leave China in a few days. For buildings, it's so far only on request as the market is not there and they are relatively bulky. And in general, due to the value of Minicity models, shipments are only once every few months.

I'm already a j-scale shop customer, but didn't know it  was possible to order or asking for non catalog parts

 

I've made my Taobao order from Parcel Up. It has the most Taobao's system comprehensive interface

[Lessigen]

Yep, like most hobby shops in my experience you can directly ask them via contact form or email for any inquiries or special orders. In my experience, it's always worth inquiring about something you are looking for even if it's not listed because they may still have stock of it or can get it ordered. 

 

In J-Scale's case you can use the contact form then work through email when they get back to you, but it might change as part of the upcoming site redesign. Instagram DMs may be another option, or even DMing them on here may work. I'll let @disturbman or @Wolf confirm on these ones though.

 

 

@disturbman It's definitely possible. The reservation wechat has been blowing up my phone the past couple days with all of the new people joining, much more than the CR200J preorder. I thought the 10-day or so window for the CR200J was nuts, but seeing it potentially in less than a week for the CR400BF-Z would be impressive. At least you get a better chance this way than buying a DF4 or something on Taobao during their "Crazy Thursdays," lol

Edited 19 hours ago by Lessigen

[disturbman]

Afair, the reservations for the CR400AF and the DF4Ds closed after three days. The BF-Z seems to be going the same way, with the slots being picked up very quickly. The CR200J has been definitely in less demand. Which is not entirely surprising, it's a less sexy design and more expensive model. Though I personally like it more over the sleek CR400s, it has more personality.

I should probably move the next part to the J-scale thread, but I'm kind of hoping my answer is just the end of this off-topic.
 

13 hours ago, Lessigen said:

In J-Scale's case you can use the contact form then work through email when they get back to you, but it might change as part of the upcoming site redesign. Instagram DMs may be another option, or even DMing them on here may work. I'll let @disturbman or @Wolf confirm on these ones though.

Yes, contact form or email. The email is on the site, and I'm not sure how the redesign will affect the form as Wolf has been in charge of that aspect. My role is mostly taking care of China and finding unobtainiums. DMing here or on the discord is also possible. We haven't gotten requests on Insta yet, so can't vouch for that.

I'm personally always happy to answer requests as I know how hard it can be to find things and import them, and we cannot stock large quantities of everything. Even more since interests in China Railway models is still very much just in its infancy compared to people modelling Japan. So stock doesn't represent the full amount of what we can get. I personally approach this as an extension of my involvement in the hobby. Wolf only asked me to partner up as I was getting frustrated with the difficulty of sourcing Chinese models as a private person.

Edited 6 hours ago by disturbman

[Section31]

@disturbman i actually like China brands like changming after getting one just unfortunate rest are on preorder. Definitely looking to pickup more of their stuff versus the Japanese.  I see lot of options but so many alike shape wise with minor differences that picking one model type is enough.

 

European are european trains, pricy but amount you pickup is generally low due to its high individual costs per unit. That and they take long to reach model form it seems.