Japanese DMU in Southern England!

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Attended a local show on Saturday helping out a friend on his small 00 layout. Plenty of units and 'modern' (i.e. stuff running today) locomotives was just my thing, however even the excellent can do with improvement. Cue the arrival in the fictional Dorset (South Coast of England) town of West Bay of a Prius Endo Kiha 110.

 

Modern UK outline is very impressive, looks good and runs well. Then this came out to play and blew the lot away!

 

A beautiful little piece of kit....

[CaptOblivious]

:D delightful

[Bernard]

Great diorama! Lots of details.

[stevenh]

Those KIHA110s are hideous in real life... but look great there :)

I really do love the detail!

 

This came from my latest Japan Gallery

 

[Welshbloke]

Is that final photo a hybrid unit of some sort? Only the centre car has a different body profile to the two end cars.

 

What always amazes me is how Japanese manufacturers manage to make their models with a higher specification and at the same time cheaper than the rest of the world. I'd put my Tomix EF66 up against any other N scale manufacturer as I simply don't believe it's possible to make a sweeter-running loco. That thing will drag a stalled Fleischmann loco without a trace of wheelspin, has amazing slow speed control, and is pretty much silent at scale line speed. But it cost about half the price of a comparable Fleischmann loco and came in a pack including a couple of coaches, one of which has working tail lights.

[CaptOblivious]

That's JRE's new KIHA E120, a diesel-hybrid (not sure how this is different from the usual diesel-electrics) designed as the successor to the KIHA 110. Mixed consists of the two are apparently common. Same with the KIHA E130 on during the transition away from 110's on the Suigun Line

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiHa_E120

[Guest ___]

Hey Don, we actually have this page in our own JNS Wiki.

[EWS60008]

I have to say, even though the unit is Japanese. It looks pretty much at home parked next to the class 158.

[harukablue]

If you look at the web cam :-  http://www.nttfukushima.com/live/jr_aizu/Default.html    you can often see this formation on the left "diesel" platform.

 

Lew

[harukablue]

Is that final photo a hybrid unit of some sort? Only the centre car has a different body profile to the two end cars.

 

What always amazes me is how Japanese manufacturers manage to make their models with a higher specification and at the same time cheaper than the rest of the world. I'd put my Tomix EF66 up against any other N scale manufacturer as I simply don't believe it's possible to make a sweeter-running loco. That thing will drag a stalled Fleischmann loco without a trace of wheelspin, has amazing slow speed control, and is pretty much silent at scale line speed. But it cost about half the price of a comparable Fleischmann loco and came in a pack including a couple of coaches, one of which has working tail lights.

 

HO is much more expensive than European or USA models, the ENDO 110 retails at over ,,,are you ready,,,,,£300 for the 2 car unit and £180 for the single car, even the unpowered trailer car is over £100, my HO Tomix and Kato locos have running qualaties on par with a roco and cost anything between £100 and EH500 £200.

[bikkuri bahn]

HO is much more expensive than European or USA models, the ENDO 110 retails at over ,,,are you ready,,,,,£300 for the 2 car unit and £180 for the single car, even the unpowered trailer car is over £100, my HO Tomix and Kato locos have running qualaties on par with a roco and cost anything between £100 and EH500 £200.

 

Tell me about it.  Since N scale is the dominant scale in Japan, HO is low volume, hence the high prices.  Also, I surmise most HO modelers are collectors rather than layout builders, so detail and quality are important.  However, I think there may be more HO offerings in the future( I hope), with more well-monied and/or free-time rich baby boomers being attracted to the hobby, where HO scale's larger size and less toylike appearance may appeal.

[harukablue]

I hope so, it would be nice to see a modern interurban unit like a 221/223 unit,

[Welshbloke]

That's approaching Marklin prices...

 

I get flamed on other forums for saying that €500 for two nondescript HO electric locos is stupid money.  I guess the N scale must bring in enough profit that Kato et al don't have to sell vast quantities of HO/OO.

 

My other scale is Marklin HO, where I have an eclectic fleet as I tend to buy what I like and can afford. At the moment a combination of a 50% off sale at one retailer and a lucky ebay find is building a Swiss push-pull passenger train. As a sample, the driving trailer RRP was £80. I looked at them then, but considered it far too much for a single unpowered vehicle. When they were cut to £39 I snapped the last one up!

[harukablue]

Marklin always suprises me, when ever i am in Germany in every model shop not at least a single shelf in a toy shop is marklin marklin and marklin lol,,, i can understand the price for locos as dont they have diecast metal bodies, bogie sides etc?, i have seen on you tube a Japanese KiHa 58 HO on  a marklin layout

 

Dont know of a special product or a convert anyone help?

 

Locos off Yahoo Japan can be as cheap as £120 a piece not too bad as a Hornby class 60 rrp is about £100 ish.

 

Lew

[Martijn Meerts]

Not all Marklin have metal bodies, and some of those with plastic bodies are just as expensive as their metal versions...

 

Marklin's does have some amazing locomotives, but overal they're just too expensive, and often they have some very questionable manufacturing decisions, such as clearly visibly screws in the roof to hold the metal body onto the frame...

 

However, their Big Boy is an amazing machine... And amazingly expensive too =)

[harukablue]

I remember that their passenger cars were always pretty on the short side, but i think they have a huge collector following, that might explain why the US outline is very limited, i know of very little USA three rail HO.

[Martijn Meerts]

Almost all their passenger cars are a bit shorter yes, to be able to fit through the sharpest curves. Europeans don't seem to mind much, but most Americans go ballistic about it =)

[Bernard]

Almost all their passenger cars are a bit shorter yes, to be able to fit through the sharpest curves. Europeans don't seem to mind much, but most Americans go ballistic about it =)

 

Marti - How true! On my daily commute, you don't want to cram into a NYC subway car and you especially don't want to shove/push a fellow commuter.

 

Ooops My mistake I mixed up the threads. Don't go off topic.

[disturbman]

Bernard, I do think the above conversation was about not-completely-to-scale-Marklins-railroad-models. But it's interresting to know that NYers are sensible about their private space even during the rush hours.

[bikkuri bahn]

Marklin's does have some amazing locomotives, but overal they're just too expensive, and often they have some very questionable manufacturing decisions, such as clearly visibly screws in the roof to hold the metal body onto the frame...

 

Perhaps one of the reasons why they went bankrupt in this recession?? :icon_scratch:

[to2leo]

Marklin's does have some amazing locomotives, but overal they're just too expensive, and often they have some very questionable manufacturing decisions, such as clearly visibly screws in the roof to hold the metal body onto the frame...

 

Perhaps one of the reasons why they went bankrupt in this recession?? :icon_scratch:

 

Ohh, you are lucky there's no Marklin fanatic here!

 

Learning from my own experience, other than Fleischmann and Hobbytrain, I will never buy from another European brand again. High in price, medicore in quality.

[disturbman]

I would more bet on the price of their models. They are really expensive and when someone has money problem he is not going to buy a several hundred euro worth toy. This high price politic also cripples their ability to get in touch with a newer public. I think they rely to heavily on the babyboomers and should take a closer a look on the younger people. If they can touch the children and the teenagers they will hit the jackpot. But as the hobby exists today in Europe he is more or less dead in twenty years. It's stupid cycle because if you sell less you are going to have a sell it at a higher price.

 

Saddly allmost no one has the space and money to get involved in the hobby. I think one of the answers should be to have something equivalent to a motorized B-train to get people started. It would be cheap and then easily buyable as a gift.

[harukablue]

Here in the UK its only during the past four years we have had models on par with detail and running quality as the European HO manufacturers, and when Hornby did release their first high quality-detail diesel model it was more advanced than some HO European models on detail like opening cab doors, fine side louvres etc. And then one of the main stream magazines had a ping-pong month of letters, mostly about the price and that modellers liked to detail models there own way, thus why have one all done for you.

 

I have a friend who buys a cheap Athearn US loco for about £40 then spends over £50 on detailing parts it takes him hours and days to complete but he says he could spend £5O on two good nights out with nothing to show but hangovers lol, but he would rather do this than buy the Kato or Broadway equivalent model thats already super detailed for a little more.

 

Even TOMIX HO in Japan is the same you either buy the EF210 for about Y20,000 or the all singing an dancing detailed model for Y35,000 thats a big difference.

[Welshbloke]

Boy are you chaps lucky that you're not on a Marklin forum - they seem to attract a similar mindset to the hardline Mac users (can be distilled to "everything else is junk, especially if made in China")! They do not react well to suggestions that Marklin should adopt Hornby's approaches with a view to turning a profit...

 

Yes they make the coaches under scale length. It doesn't really bother me too much as they look a good deal better on sharper than scale curves than full length ones would, and I just don't have the space for larger curves. As they're 3 rail AC you can sometimes find cheap models that a shop hasn't been able to test. I've bought a 4-6-4 tank loco for £30 "sold as seen" before now, all it needed was a good service and it turned out to have had a digital decoder fitted by the previous owner.

 

Disturbman, spot on. That's what I've been saying for ages. Marklin aren't doing enough to attract newbies, and the rich old men they mostly market to are fading away. The only new items that I have bought have been starter sets (where the contents are always worth more than the set price) and a few reduced coaches. I simply couldn't part with £200 for a fairly nondescript four axle diesel loco, knowing that many people have less than that to spend on food in a month. They need to drop the €500 special editions and make more of the €100 starter sets (which are pretty good value for the contents).

 

Sadly, there are enough yes-men out there that they don't have to face reality and accept that "German Build Quality" is meaningless now and no excuse for stupid prices. They've had well-documented problems with their "Central Station" digital controller, along with loco decoders and "zinkpest", a fault in metal castings that causes them to disintegrate. Thankfully my stock is mostly from the 1980s, so I don't seem to have anything like as much trouble.

 

Due to their ongoing financial problems (and my strong suspicion that they won't learn from previous mistakes) I am mostly snapping up bargain lots of track on ebay. C track is much the same as Unitrack in terms of function and is a lot easier than hand-ballasting. Again, as it's no use to the majority you can often buy complete boxes of unused track for a fraction of the list price.

[Martijn Meerts]

I used to be on a Marklin forum, but stopped visiting it because it started getting quite elitist and most of it was just bashing anyone even remotely suggesting there were other brands other than Marklin =)

 

They do have a lot of great models, but they're just too expensive.. I've been saying for a long time that making expensive and overly detailed models isn't going to get them anywhere, because that won't get young people into the hobby. And that's exactly what model railroading in general needs.

 

I do think the CS, and especially the new CS2 and MS2 are good devices, and they appeal to youngsters (the CS2 looks like a small computer, the MS2 looks like a handheld console), but unfortunately they're just too slow with updates, and the devices are too expensive...