J-Scale.com - European Importer of East Asian Model Trains in all Scales

[Wolf]

Hello Everyone!

As many know, I am happy and glad to run my own Webshop, and I want to use this space here for some explanations of what we do and how we deal with stuff.

You can find our shop at www.j-scale.com

Initially J-Scale was meant for people as a means to be able to pre-order stuff, when they are not confident to do so themselves (something I believe most at the JNS Forum are though). Over the course of the past half year, we quickly grew in "stocked" items, and as of the date of this post we already have a (for me) whooping 500+ items permanently in stock, something I am pretty proud of. We also added more than "just" N-Scale items to our stock, so ppl looking for H0 or some funny gift in the form of a wooden toy train will find something as well, at least being able to pre-order.

During the course of running this show, we also by now are able to remove the need for people to pay their pre-orders in advance, but instead get a payment request the moment the items are actually released, as well as granting a 10% discount on pre-orders in general.

We are happy that we were allowed to even serve a few customers from the JNS Forum by now, and are thankful to everyone who made this venture a possibility.

If anyone has any questions, requests or just feels like having a chat about the shop, hit me up with a PN. Otherwise, you can usually find me hanging out on the JNS Discord as well.

Cheers,

Stephan


[Initial old post below, for historical value XD]

Hello Everyone!

I am happy to announce that I started a small webshop, offering pre-ordering and the dealings with customs and taxes for those who do not want to deal with all that stuff.

You can find the shop at www.j-scale.com

Whilst I know a huge percentage of the members of JNS know how to import themselves, I still don't want to keep it a secret, and who knows, maybe someone does want to run stuff through me for various reasons.

The idea behind the shop is literally what the title says: To enable people that are too afraid or don't know how to pre-order trains in Japan for various reasons, some being language barrier, not sure which shop to use or simply being not versed or don't want to do any online payments. We also ship from within the EU (Germany), so all customs and taxation are already been done for EU customers on each item being shipped.

For the future, I hope to be able to start keeping some stock on items too, but for now it is mainly just pre-orders.

We also offer services to sell pre-owned stuff (fitting the theme) on ebay, so checking on our eBay listings might be worthwhile too!

You can find them here: https://www.ebay.de/str/jscale

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to take this step!

Cheers

Stephan

Edited February 25 by disturbman
Updated information

[disturbman]

Great, and good for you. Hope it works out 🙂

[cteno4]

Great to hear. The fear and/or hassles of importing from overseas has always been an impediment for some here to get into the hobby.

 

best wishes for the business!

 

jeff

[Wolf]

Heya,

just wanted to announce that after some internal processing, I am finally able to offer manual payments as well on my webshop, removing the annoying need to pay for any order at the moment of placing it. Instead, you can select "manual payment" now and just receive a payment link via email once your desired items are en'route to us.

Cheers

Stephan

[Wolf]

Heya,

 

thanks to everyone who supported me on my journey so far! I am happy that by now we were able to generate a decent stock of trains and other items.

 

Today I want to announce that we finally managed all the behind-the-scenes stuff to be able to sell the moku TRAIN series by Popondetta, wooden trains for kids, on our webshop. So if you look for a gift for your Japan Train Enthusiast friend that is about to get a kid, we might have your gift covered.

 

You can find the category about the series here: https://www.j-scale.com/moku

 

An additional announcement I wanted to make is that we are able to remove the German VAT to customers within our area of shipping that are not part of the EU in terms of taxations. This means anyone from Switzerland, the UK or Andorra may send me a PN and I set you up for tax free ordering.

 

Sorry, still no ordering to overseas, sorry folks 😕

 

Cheers

 

Stephan

Edited September 14, 2023 by Wolf

[Wolf]

Heya,

again some nice news (I hope).

As of today, we are able to grant a 10% discount on all pre-orders.

Yay!

Cheers

Stephan

Edited November 14, 2023 by disturbman

[Wolf]

Heya,

short newsflash! We were able to get in touch with the Japanese manufacturer TDF - Tokyo Diorama Factory (https://tokyodioramafactory.stores.jp/) and are now proud that we are able to offer their selection of paperkits in our little store!

You can find our listings here: https://www.j-scale.com/tdf

Cheers

Stephan

Edited December 6, 2023 by disturbman
typos :)

[disturbman]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know that I had started helping Stephan with J-Scale and was working on expanding the scope of the shop beyond Japan's border so J-Scale could offer models from Taiwan and China that are hard to come by if you don't know your ways around.

We have now started to offer models from Sanying Heavy Industry, a Taiwanese manufacturer, and have put up pre-orders for their upcoming EMU800 releases. The train will be released in two different versions, with a blue and a yellow nose. The blue-nose versions should become available mid-March 2024 and the yellow-nose versions in April 2024. Each version is available in a 8-car set or a 4-car base set plus 4-car add-on set. All sets model a different formation.

https://www.j-scale.com/sanying

Pre-order prices come naturally with a 10% reduction off the listed price. If you are interested, please note that reservations with Sanying will have to be placed until the end of the month, and after that, only limited amounts of sets will be available for sale. For pre-orders, full advance payment is not necessary but is only possible if one chooses "manual payment" as a payment option.

We are very excited about this development, we will list their other models as soon as we receive them, and hope to be able to announce more thrilling news in the coming weeks.

Cheers,
Vincent

Edited December 9, 2023 by disturbman

[Wolf]

Hello!

 

It was a very exciting year! When we were finally able to start J-Scale in March, none of us expected to be overwhelmed with such a response by the end of the year. So at this point we would like to thank everyone who accompanied us on this journey! Thanks to our customers, thanks to our suppliers and thanks to the friends and colleagues who made the idea possible. None of us would have expected that after less than a year our small warehouse would be too small already and that we would have to move to a new, larger warehouse in the same building in December, which was my personal highlight in 2023.

 

Unfortunately, the sudden success did not only have positive sides. We are roughly 2 months behind in getting pre-order items into the shop (don't worry, we have most of them pre-ordered ourselves as stock, so no one should miss anything), and there are probably a good 300 items in the shop without item description or product photos. However, we are very pleased that our suppliers were able to cope with the increase in our order quantities without any problems, so on that end apart from the usual and expected delivery chaos in December, everything went smoothly with our suppliers.

 

But positive developments are also emerging. We are pleased to be able to start 2024 with 2 new faces in the office who will strengthen our team. We hope this can get us back to our usual speed quickly. There will also be a lot happening with our range of products! Right at the beginning of the year we are happy to finally be able to include products from Chinese manufacturer “Changming” in our shop. Our first large shipment finally arrived between the holidays and we're looking forward to being able to check them all and add them to the shop right after the New Year. Of course, this will be announced again in a separate newsletter so no one will miss out!

 

There is also a lot to happen beyond N Scale. We are starting to continually increase rolling stock in H0 gauge, and in January we will receive our first delivery of Z gauge material from Rokuhan. Thanks to the many customers who encouraged us to take this step!

 

Hopefully in the first quarter we also will permanently add Kato and Tomix track systems to the shop as planned (and as announced in numerous individual discussions). Hopefully the first sets will reach us already at the end of January.

 

In November we visited our first local “model railway fair”, which we think to have been successful for us. We also want to expand this commitment, albeit initially on a small level. So if anyone would like to visit us, we will be in DRESDEN at the Rudolf Harbig Stadium on Sunday, January 14th, 2024, and in BERLIN at the Marzahn Freizeitforum on Sunday, January 21st, 2024 as participants in the Modellbahnbörse there. Anyone who would like to exchange a word with us away from the stress of sales can also do so at the 18th EXPERIENCE MODELLBAHN 2024 in DRESDEN from February 9th to 11th 2024. Although we will NOT be represented there as a dealer, but we will help out at the Interessengemeinschaft Nippon (IG Nippon) display of their portable japanese layout, so you can definitely talk to us there. Otherwise, we are of course happy to welcome anyone interested in visiting our offices in Berlin Spandau. A short headsup is requested here, we are really just an office and not an actual store, so we want to make sure that we are really “there”.

 

I hope that we can continue to serve and inspire a large fan base in 2024 with new suppliers and the H0 and Z track systems added to our portfolio, and we look forward to being able to continue to pursue the hobby of “Japanese model railways” with enthusiasm.

 

At the end I would especially like to thank my wife and my daughter for all their understanding for all my overtime. My personal thanks also to my friend V., many things would not have been possible without you. Thanks to the two communities IG-Nippon (ig-nippon.org) and JNS (jnsforum.com), which I would like to recommend to anyone who is interested.

 

The whole J-Scale team wishes everyone a happy new year 2024! We look forward to another great year with you!

 

Yours

 

Stephan 

[cteno4]

So glad to hear the business is taking off! Wonderful news and best wishes for 2024.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[disturbman]

Hi everyone,

After a few months of preparations and some unexpected hurdles, we are happy to finally be able to announce that we have become the first (to our knowledge) official Changming importer in the EU.

https://www.j-scale.com/changming

That first shipment and its 80 kgs of goodies from Luizhou City arrived on December 27 as a belated Christmas present and contains a wide range of Changming products: diesel and electric locomotives, passenger coaches, freight cars, containers and more.

Mostly N scale, but we will list a couple of HO products in the very near future.

Edited January 10 by disturbman

[disturbman]

Hi everyone,

We finally received our first shipment from Taiwan with a few N scale goodies from Sanying Heavy Industry and Memories & Impression.

We are now stocking TRA EMU600 sets and DR1000 from Sanying, as well as a beautiful painted EMU600 by Memories & Impressions. As always, the M&I set was produced in collaboration with another manufacturer, in this case, with Sanying.

 

You can find the models here:
- https://www.j-scale.com/sanying
- https://www.j-scale.com/memories

The EMU600 in Shalun Line livery is from an extremely small limited edition and comes with a serial number. You can see pictures of the prototype here, https://www.travel-taiwan-rail.idv.tw/scenery_htm/Shalun/SL01.html, and here, https://www.travel-taiwan-rail.idv.tw/scenery_htm/Shalun/SL02.html

[Wolf]

Hello Everyone,

a short update here, although I was not even sure to announce it at all to be really honest.

As many people literally begged me to consider shipping outside the EU even tho I explained it would be excessively expensive for us, we decided to add the worldwide shipping opton to the store.

You can now select "worldwide" as an shipping option wich should allow you to enter any country you want

BUT: sadly, as I explained before, we have no decent conditions for worldwide shipping at all, so we actually have charge 61,50€ for this service to be possible.

Please keep in mind that we DO remove the VAT for customers outside the EU, but it can only be done on request BEFORE you order. Maybe this makes it a little bit more doable.

Cheers

[Wolf]

Hey,

 

Wow, 2 3 updates in one month. Busy times.

 

Just wanted to drop that we received the first shipment of items made by YFS Figures and have just put them up on our webshop. (Darn, I should retake these pictures)

 

You can find the (still small) range we received here: https://www.j-scale.com/yfs

 

Yours

 

Stephan

Edited February 16 by disturbman
2 into 3

[disturbman]

Hi everyone,

Fourth announcement this month, February keeps on giving and has been quite busy for us.

While also have been steadily increasing the amount of Japanese Z and Japanese H0 scale rolling-stock we are offering, we just received our second shipment from Luizhou City packed with new China Railway N scale DF4B and SS8 locomotives, and various passenger coaches and freight cars.

 

   
We have also started stocking Changming H0 DC and H0 DCC+Sound+Smoke locomotives, and will receive more with the next shipment end of March/beginning of April.

  

https://www.j-scale.com/changming & https://www.j-scale.com/h0china

 

(pictures shared with Changming's approval)

[disturbman]

After a long hiatus, we are back with a new Changming shipment and the status of exclusive EU importeur for the Chinese brand.

Amongst others, we brought back from Liuzhou the last 8K double traction locomotives, the last DF4D-0 and the last 8-car sets of the CRH5A/G; as well as a plethora of new H0 DC and DCC+Sound+Smoke locomotives, some of Changming first H0 gondolas and a few railcars.

 

Edited July 4 by disturbman

[Wolf]

Hello everyone,

just a short update, I am very proud that we managed to get some relations with "pro-hobby" going (some know them as Micro-Life), and as such have now added a variety of their items to our shop. I am not sure if this actually makes us the largest seller of pro-hobby outside of japan, as I never seen that anywhere except there haha.

 

You can find our pro-hobby stuff here:

https://www.j-scale.com/prohobby

Cheers

Stephan

Edited July 24 by disturbman

[cteno4]

It’s so nice to see pro hobby coming back to life! Great stuff and great you could become a retailer for them! Their etched metal bits are also nice.

 

jeff

[Wolf]

Hello everyone,

Just a couple of news after I just came back from meeting our suppliers in Tokyo.

First, we launched our first sales after almost a year and a half of operations:

https://www.j-scale.com/sale

Second, we put in place a universal VAT exemption coupon for customers that do not reside within the European Union. The coupon is "ex_VAT" and will grant you an exemption from the 19% German VAT upon entering at checkout. It's obviously only valid for shipping addresses outside of the EU. On top of that, now that we started to ship our first international orders, DHL granted us a more "favorable" rate within our contract, so shipping worldwide came down to 37,00 €. Still a lot, we know, but considering it was over 60€ before, we are happy to see progress.

Third, we received the last batch of EMU800 coming from Taiwan and have now a wide variety of TRA models in our program. The end of the year should see the release of the awaited EMU800 formation in JR Kyushu 8000 livery as well as some very cute painted DR1000.

Last, but not least, we got a lot of people asking about DCC and Japanese trains. Whilst I am confident in my ability to solder a decoder inside a loco, it is far from any professional level. This said we are happy to say that we teamed up with LOKwerkstatt-Wien and will soon be able to offer to convert any train or loco to DCC, if desired. More Details about this service will be announced soon.

Stay tuned and have a lovely weekend!

Stephan

[cteno4]

Stephan,

 

great to hear the business is doing well and you got to JAM! Tell us of your experience there when you get a chance. Would be interesting to hear what it was like as an importer going to the convention! Also glad to hear the DHL rate has been negotiated to a better spot, seems like that is an ongoing task with shippers.

 

Cheers,

 

jeff

[disturbman]

As the Japanese arrivals have started coming in every other day, the uncommon has become the other side of the business. Yesterday, we started processing the newest shipment from Liuzhou. Due to the pace of the deliveries, this shipment almost entirely consists of models that are already unavailable anywhere else.

We received Changming's H0 HXN5, a mainline locomotive that will look familiar to North American forumers.

 

 

We also received Changming latest DF4D-7, a diesel freight locomotive developed for mountainous lines with tight curves from around Liuzhou, Changming's hometown. Some models were weathered by Changming (7004, 7008 and 7017)

 

 

We also received our allocation of SS7D, the last Chinese locomotives to showcase a Bo-Bo-Bo wheel arrangement inspired by the 6K build by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Electric.

 

Last but not least, this shipment also contained a few unusual DF4Bs, amongst which the first N Scale model of a Korean State Railway locomotive.

 

 

 

As always, these and others can be found at https://www.j-scale.com/changming

[Lazertron]

Ordered. Anxious. 🙂

[Steve]

Would be nice, when you could add the Passenger Car Kits from Kings Hobby (Brass) and Iori Koubou (Lasercut) to the Range.

 

Nice would be also to add Kato 11-702 Knuggle Couplers.

Edited Tuesday at 05:47 AM by Steve