Hello from Maryland!

[defor]

I'm from Baltimore - Always been a little bit of a casual railfan, but haven't done any actual model railroading since my childhood, and in HO scale. I've done a number of Japanese mecha models over the years, and have been tinkering around with the idea of smaller scale railroading, specifically N scale, something close to the 1/144 scale.

Last year, made two trips to Japan, and was completely in awe of the various rail systems encountered. Decided to hop into the hobby this year.

My main area of interest is in modeling JRF container freight lines and yard automation.

With this in mind, I've started pretty simple, at least get started and have purchased:

- Kato EF210 + Container Train Starter Set (10-010) (not exactly what I'm looking for, but a good deal to get started at least)

- Kato Diesel Locomotive DE10 for cold regions (7011-1)

- Kato Freight Car KOKI106+107 without container 10-Car Set (10-1432)

- Kato Freight Car KOKI 50000 without container 2-Car Set (10-1393) (2)

 

Inspiration for a lot of my ideas is coming some first-hand experience as for two weeks I stayed in Minami-Senju, and every day, walking to and from the JR and Tokyo Metro station, I would walk past Sumidagawa Freight Station ( https://goo.gl/maps/eKdprpzB4LC2 ), which has an awesome amount of 12ft container traffic to and from truck. My rough measurements on the yard alone scales to 17x9 feet, so clearly I'm not building a scale representation in my apartment, but I can definitely use it as a basis for a smaller depot.

 

Clearly I'm going to be going slowly with this, and I'll be limiting my designs to 3' deep layout designs, but hoping to build modularly.

 

Does anyone know if the anyone's released an HD300 model? It appears that World Kougei at least planned one ( http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10139117 ), but I can't find many details on it, and I'd be perfectly happy with a more normal plastic shell engine.

Also I'm currently looking for a decently priced EH500 (3037-1) for the near future, and curious about opinions on TOMIX/Micro Ace loco build and detail quality.

 

Thanks!

 

[cteno4]

Hey defor, Welcome!

 

Glad you found us and Japanese trains! Visits to Japan definitely wet the appetite for Japanese trains and train modeling!

 

Dont know if you are aware of our club in the DC area, Japan Rail Modelers of Washington dc (http://japanrailmodelers.org). Maybe you can get over to see us at the Sakrua Matsuri in april or at the next Timonium show we make (probably october). Give a yell if you want to get on our mailing list with update stuff.

 

look forward to your layout coming together, start a thread on it, its always great to watch them form!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Kiha66]

Welcome to the forum defor!  Those koki are addicting, I somehow ended up acquiring a lot more than I was planning to.  The model of the HD300 released by world kougei is of the prototype (you can tell by any car # starting with 9).  Hopefully kato or tomix will release a production.model, but they have not announced any plans in this years catalog.  I cant wait to see what you come up with, selective compression and modules seem like a good way to go for modeling JR's container freight. 

-Sam

 

[defor]

19 minutes ago, Kiha66 said:

The model of the HD300 released by world kougei is of the prototype (you can tell by any car # starting with 9).

Gotcha- I somewhat had assumed such, given the date on the release of the model...

The engine I had seen in person was HD300-4 which is admittedly from the first delivery batch, but was in gorgeous running shape: 

 

And I decided I definitely had to get one, as I'm going for current equipment.

[Kiha66]

Nice photo!  They definitely look modern and well made, I'm surprised that there are no models yet.  I suppose if the fleet remains at only about 30 units it may take a while for the demand to grow.  I'm glad JRF kept the classic red and white color scheme for the new locomotives.

[Sascha]

Hello and welcome to the Forum!

[miyakoji]

Hi Defor, welcome to the forum!