YA 500 Tank Car (Tomix 8721)

[chadbag]

I've been trying to find information about the prototype for the Tomix 8721 YA 500 tank wagon from JNR.  It does not fall in the normal TA line (TAKI etc) of tank cars and my Google fu is weak and did not turn up anything.   I ordered 3 of them to add to my TAKI collection since I had a lone locomotive from Hobby Search in the basket and did not want to waste all that S&H on one locomotive, so I added a few items to the basket to keep the DD16 from being lonely on the long journey over the ocean to me.

 

HobbySearch:  https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10442526

 

It's machine translation says it was a car for herbicides in the early 70s based on the "Tam 500 type".

 

I am trying to see how this fits historically in the scheme of Japanese tank cars and where it would fit in a train, more or less.   It looks similar to the TAKI 5450 and TAKI 7750 cars.   Any further info or links to such appreciated.

 

 

[Kiha66]

Looks like the actual car had a lot more piping, it appears it was used as a railway service train to apply weedkiller to the right of way.  The yellow stripe means it was limited to speeds of under 65km/hr.  Not too many pictures, but searching 除草薬散布車 brings up some more modern pictures that show a locomotive pulling the spraying car as a short work train as workers spray the right of way with the week killer from the tank.  Seems it could be transported in a regular train to the site, then Loco+tank car+gondola for the workers to stand on as they spray the line.

http://cortina.hakuba.ne.jp/~natsume/kamotsu/fcjigyo/ya.htm

http://www.geocities.co.jp/MotorCity-Rally/3264/ryuti_junkasha03.html

http://hosenwiki.com/index.php?title=除草薬散布車

Edited April 8, 2018 by Kiha66

[chadbag]

Cool, thanks!  Gives me some ideas.