Greetings from a Japanese train lover in Canada

[Lessigen]

Hi!

 

I'm Lessigen and I'm from Canada. I've been lurking for quite a while but now that I've been getting into the hobby in earnest it's time to introduce myself! 😄

 

A little about myself: I've always been interested in trains since I was a young child, and I'm sure like many of you here the magic of watching Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends on TV or VHS really awoke my passion for train stuff in general. Model railroading has always been an interest of mine as I grew up, but only until recently have I had the disposable income and the pride of showing my interest in the hobby to really get into it. I lurked various forums/social media for a couple years until my best friend bought me a KATO ALC-42 Starter Set earlier last year, of which I set up in December.

 

That said, just this last week I finally got my first Japanese trains from RG-ROKKO and I deemed myself worthy enough to finally join in the discussions here 😊

I got a KATO 16-car N700S Shinkansen, KATO 7-car Series 923 Doctor Yellow - I hope to see the last set before that one also retires, and a TOMIX 0 Series Shinkansen; specifically the 16-car Kodama with the wide windows. The last one means quite a bit to me personally because the 0 Series Shinkansen is what really fascinated and influenced me as a child to see the wonderful world of real-life trains. Many trips to the library to rent out VHS' and DVDs about trains were had.

 

When it comes to the hobby, I'm very interested in the passenger side of trains, and it's what I am intending to focus on with my layout. I would say I focus about the actual layout of the track than one that makes sense. Maybe it's the conditioning of playing with TOMY Plarail or Wooden Railway as a kid lol. I'm also not too invested in prototypical accuracy. Of course, since I'm on JNS Forum I love Japanese trains by far, but I am also interested in other Asian and European passenger locomotives; it's whatever catches my eyes and makes me think "this looks really cool, I would love to have it in my layout and collection!"

 

Personally, I would also like to visit Japan some time in the near future. With Expo 2025 around the corner I've been heavily debating going but I am unsure if I'll be able to go.

 

Finally, as my introduction tax I attached some pictures of the trains I got while testing them. My layout is really simple, just being a viaduct loop with a small yard spur sitting on a folding table. Ironically only my ALC-42 set fits on that yard spur. 😝

 

 

 

BTW: Does anyone have any insight or tips as to how I could get Chinese (both mainland and Taiwanese) trains ordered to Canada? I've struggled a bit with the Japanese trains but thankful that Masaharu-san/RG-ROKKO, PlazaJapan and 1999 exist however I'm even more lost when it comes to ordering for Chinese ones. Lurking the forum and searching online revealed the existence of GOODTOY (for Taiwanese) and J-Scale (for mainland), though the latter seems to be more focused around the EU market.

[cteno4]

Welcome Lessigen, glad you found us and came out of lurking! Everyone is worthy to participate here! We love the full mix of folks just starting to veterans, it’s what this forum is all about.

 

Glad you got some track and trains and are getting into the hobby. With Unitrak you can just play with track setups and do bits of more perceived scenery very quickly and always be evolving. No rule out there you have to nail it all down or get perfect or exact, that’s the fun of a hobby to do it the way that brings you the most joy! Our club did temporary layouts at shows for the first 5 years and folks loved them. Amazing what you can get away with when you chose the right bits to add in to create perceived scenery and trigger the viewer’s mind into filling in a lot of the details without realizing it. Modeling Japan gives you the widest range of passenger trains to choose from, it can dispose of a lot of your money!

 

Please start a topic on your adventures. And ask away on questions. For the Chinese and Taiwanese trians there has been a little discussion on dealers in Taiwan and China to try direct importing from. Yes J-scale is focused on the European market, but does have a good selection of the Chinese trains and is very active with the manufactures and importing the trains and a good shop, shipping is what can raise the price a lot.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Lessigen]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Welcome Lessigen, glad you found us and came out of lurking! Everyone is worthy to participate here! We love the full mix of folks just starting to veterans, it’s what this forum is all about.

 

Glad you got some track and trains and are getting into the hobby. With Unitrak you can just play with track setups and do bits of more perceived scenery very quickly and always be evolving. No rule out there you have to nail it all down or get perfect or exact, that’s the fun of a hobby to do it the way that brings you the most joy! Our club did temporary layouts at shows for the first 5 years and folks loved them. Amazing what you can get away with when you chose the right bits to add in to create perceived scenery and trigger the viewer’s mind into filling in a lot of the details without realizing it. Modeling Japan gives you the widest range of passenger trains to choose from, it can dispose of a lot of your money!

 

Please start a topic on your adventures. And ask away on questions. For the Chinese and Taiwanese trians there has been a little discussion on dealers in Taiwan and China to try direct importing from. Yes J-scale is focused on the European market, but does have a good selection of the Chinese trains and is very active with the manufactures and importing the trains and a good shop, shipping is what can raise the price a lot.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

Thanks Jeff! You're definitely right about it voiding a lot of my wallet, I initially only expected to spend about $300-350 CAD max on a N700S set for my first order then as I got more into it waiting for the release, it ballooned into a $1000+ CAD order 😅

 

I did dig into the J-Scale website and noticed there was discount code for non-VAT customers which definitely softens the blow to at least North American trainset prices, though I guess such is the nature of a supply-restricted market like mainland China at the moment...

 

I will definitely get something documenting my hobby journey. For now I just have my small semi-temporary layout but I hope to move to something a bit more permanent once I find and allocate more space. Glad to know I can rely on everyone here for helping me along my journey!

[miyakoji]

Hi @Lessigen welcome to the forum!

[cteno4]

Yes sadly the hobby can make money go poof fast as there are too many damn nice trains to catch your eye!

 

Give j-scale folks an email and see what they can do with shipping and all and what might be most economical for you. Friendly and helpful guys!

 

Cool to document your play, always good to see others messing with ideas and such. Good inspiration for all and a great iterative process with track planning software.

 

Enjoy!

 

jeff