Hello From Tel-Aviv

[Oren]

Greetings, 

 

My name is Oren from Tel-Aviv, Israel, and I am happy I found this forum.

 

I have been into trains in the last 2 years with focus on N scale and Japan. 

 

Unfortunately, there is only very small club in Israel as far as I know, and it is focused on German and American trains. I will be happy to try and make a local club with focus on Japanese/N scale.  

 

If there are any local train fans from Israel please ping me. 

 

Happy to join. 

 

Oren 

Edited March 9 by Oren

[cteno4]

@Oren,

 

Welcome, glad you found us! Not sure if we have had anyone pop up from Israel before but hopefully there are some lurkers that may popup!

 

Have you interacted with the club much at all and asked them if they would be open to some japanese trains? German and American are pretty different already so they may be fine with some differences. Small clubs especially have to be a bit more flexible as if too niche they will end up with one or two members! They also may not have had a lot of exposure to japanese trains as well and you may surprise them! Ive see this happen at larger clubs here in the us that are all us and someone brings in a shinkansen or other cool japanese trains and there are snorts of derision as it being just strange, but then others end up getting a japanese trains or two! Japanese train modeling is sort of an infection with no cure and many have no natural defenses to it!

 

also think about just getting some track and some cool trains out and running at any little local event that my have interested type folks there, any japanese cultural events there? Long shot i know. We get great reception at anime cons as well and events with kids at them. The nice thing with japanese sectional track and the value of japanese trains you find folks saying hmmm i could do that!

 

Hope you find others to play with, always fun! Keep us posted on it and what you are doing!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[miyakoji]

Hi @Oren welcome to the forum!

[JR East]

Hi 

 

Welcome on JNS Forum. I've been to Israel once, long time ago, at the time Alstom was implementing the first Citadis rolling stock IT support unit. I've handed over to another project manager who has family in Israel to allow him to be closer to them the time of the project. Great souvenirs of Jerusalem ... under the snow !

 

 

[chadbag]

Welcome! Oren!   Hide your wallet, as I'm sure you've found out.

 

[Oren]

@JR East, while traveling in Japan one can enjoy so many trains form factors and type. In Israel, Alstom locomotives, and mainly those red double decker have been the definition of what a "train" is here for many years now. Ask a 5 year old Israeli child to draw you a train, and he will draw a red Alstom double decker. 

 

 

Edited March 17 by Oren

[lighthouse]

Welcome to the forum 😃

 

I also saw the double-decker cars in Germany a few years ago, before they were shipped to Israel. At first glance, I was a little confused as to why Deutsche Bahn AG was now adding such a bold white line to the car walls, until I later found out who the cars were intended for... I didn't see the generator car or control car.

 

Regards,

 

Ulli

[Oren]

@chadbag - nice collection of trains on your instagram page. Some are on my wish list as well ... 

 

I find looking at peopl's collection very inspiring, as it is a great way to make discoveries of stuff you want. I wish there was something like this here as they have in photogrpahy forums where one can share his gear not for the sake of showing off but rather good optical combination. I do ask myself why people buy the specific trains they buy and not others. 

 

 

 

Edited March 17 by Oren

[chadbag]

There are a lot of reasons for the ones I have.  
 

My wife is from the Osaka area so we have been there a lot and ridden all sorts of trains there. Locals, express, JR, Hankyu, Nankai, etc.  so I tend to have a lot of Kansai based trains.  
 

we’ve been in Tokyo a ton and have ridden many different trains there so I have a few from that area. 
 

if I’ve ridden a specific train I often will buy that one.  Like the Norokko DE15 and the special tourist cars on Hokkaido. New ride that and I sought that model out.  
 

Shinkansens. Because.  (though to be honest I have more Shinkansen from JR Central and JR West than I do JR East)

 

special livery trains.  Special livery trains I buy when they’re cool looking. Doesn’t matter where they are from.  
 

Because.  Some trains I just like the looks of or they’re from a place I’d like to visit.   So they get added.  
 

JR103.  Even though I don’t remember ever actually riding one (though I may have when we first started going to Japan) I really like the looks of them.  So I have a bunch, no matter where they’re from. 
 

And again, because.  I have the seaside liner from Shikoku even though I’ve never ridden on it and only been to Shikoku on a train once.  
 

when it comes to European trains it’s mostly German and Austria men and Swiss with a few Dutch thrown in.  I’d have some Scandinavian as well but they’re harder to find.  I lived in Germany in the 80s for two years and ride trains regularly.  I also lived in Germany for 18 months 91-93 but had a car so didn’t ride.  So I like trains from that era and have a much.  But I never lived in Austria and have only spent a few days there.  Same with Switzerland.  But I have a bunch of trains from each place.  More the modern ones.  And I also have a ton of modern German stuff.  Stuff I’ve never ridden on.  Mainly because I’d like to ride them.  They represent my aspirations for traveling back to Europe.  Kind of various living.   And because a lot of them are just cool.  
 

with US trains I have almost nothing.  I have 4 Union Pacific modern locomotives because that is what we see here locally.   And I only have intermodal cars or flat cars.  I would 

like to get the KATO MP36H in UTA Frontrunner colors but it was a KATO KOBO custom done in limited release like 10 years ago.  And Athearn did the UTA double decker wagons.  I’ve never ridden it but it’s the heavy rail commuter train we have here that runs from Ogden to Provo or further south.  So we see it when in the part of the valley the tracks run in.    In general, like most Americans, I have no real personal connection to trains in the U.S. so have very little interest in them.  My interest is all in places I’ve ridden a lot of trains in and that also represent an emotional attachment or an aspiration for vacation travel.  

[Oren]

@chadbag thanks for the detailed description. I have been in Japan only 3 times till now, so very quickly exhausted the "I rode that train" rational. I quickly moved on to "because.". As long as there is reason to buy a model train, we are good (-:

 

Was a bit surprised from "In general, like most Americans, I have no real personal connection to trains in the U.S. so have very little interest in them.". Can't disagree as I am not American, but how would you explain the business interest KATO has with KATO USA and the wealth of American locomotives they produce ? I guess their DCC products are also mainly targeting the USA market. I do concur that Japanese trains win the wealth of form factors and variety any other system, we are not here in vain...  

[chadbag]

6 hours ago, Oren said:

@chadbag thanks for the detailed description. I have been in Japan only 3 times till now, so very quickly exhausted the "I rode that train" rational. I quickly moved on to "because.". As long as there is reason to buy a model train, we are good (-:

 

Was a bit surprised from "In general, like most Americans, I have no real personal connection to trains in the U.S. so have very little interest in them.". Can't disagree as I am not American, but how would you explain the business interest KATO has with KATO USA and the wealth of American locomotives they produce ? I guess their DCC products are also mainly targeting the USA market. I do concur that Japanese trains win the wealth of form factors and variety any other system, we are not here in vain...  

 

So, I did not say others had no interest in US trains.  What I said is, that I have little interest in US trains because I, like most Americans, don't have much contact with trains like we used to in the past.  Hardly anyone rides longer distance trains.  It's mostly commuter level or light rail.  There are exceptions in California and the N East.  We occasionally see freight trains but they don't have the presence in society like they used to.   The "most Americans" was the "regular contact with trains" bit.  For me that means I have little interest in them as models.  Other folks find the models nostalgic, or they have interest in big equipment, or, at least for one model railroad forum I am on, they work or used to work for a railroad in many cases.  There are lots of reasons.  Model railroads don't have the presence they used to but they do get enough business to maintain the business.  As a kid you could find Tyco H0 models in toy shops and any hobby shop had a huge model train section.  Now you have to look hard to find the shops that sell model trains. They're there.

[cteno4]

We see a lot of the public at the events that are not train shows that our club does and we see few people that have ridden trains other than a subway/light rail or commuter line much at all and those are in a small number of larger metro areas. Most have never traveled by train for any real trip and maybe just some short ride on a small restoration line. So interest in model trains is not very high. But its a big country so just small percentage makes a good sized market for kato and the likes, but its dwarfed by the market and train exposure in japan. Kato Japan is like 4x the size of Katousa and tomix is like 2-3x the size of Kato japan, so you see there is a much bigger market there than in the us.

 

as you noted the variation in models is immense in japan, in the us the variation is usually small differences, road names, and car numbers, little differences in form factors, especially in passenger stocks. Gets boring fast.

 

The culture here is not super favorable to hobbies as well so that also erodes folks playing with model trains some until retired when having a hobby is deemed ok by that point. We see so many families where the adults have no time for hobbies so the kids are not exposed to adults having a hobby. Makes me sad. 

 

Jeff

[chadbag]

I do think that when people get exposed to them at events and stuff the interest level goes up,  And my next door neighbors are big model train folks and their young boy is the most avid of them all. And one of the young framers who worked on our house has an interest as his father is an avid train guy.

 

They exist.  But it's not as pervasive as it used to be and I think part of that is that the level of exposure to life size trains has gone down.

 

[cteno4]

This is why i love doing the cultural, non train events over the train shows. At train shows we are preaching to the choir about the hobby and maybe only showing the diversity of japanese rail to us modelers. But many seem to think us just odd. At the public, non train events we get may very excited non modelers. Most all of these usually had exposure by a relative when young with model trains and they get very nostalgic. We always use this as an excuse to say hey you can get that fun back again! It is fun to watch the wheels starting turning in some as you talk about the hobby and encourage their interest. Ttrak helps to show you can start smaller. Ive been developing my mini oneTrak system as a simple and affordable approach for a beginner than Ttrak, which has gotten pretty expensive and requires a fair amount of storage space many younger folks just dont have. Now doing the anime cons has open up a new audience that have creative hobbies and lots of imagination  and creativity and seem to be a very rich crowd for new modeler.

 

I do think our modern culture has been part of the decline of model railroading. I talk to a lot of folks at events about the hobby and ask them about their hobbies and non work interests and shocking number just dont have anything close to a hobby in their life. Many will say that they remember a parent having an avid hobby but they dont have one. I have folks actually say to me at time “Why do you spend [even waste] your time on this?” The first time it hit me like a punch in the face, but over time I have figured out ways to respond that turn the tables to show not having a hobby is the problem, not having one.

 

jeff

[JJ1892]

The challenge I have with this hobby branding wise, is not having a hobby but rather having this hobby. People are not surprised when you tell them that as an adult you like astronomy or Macro photography. Even complex LEGO models go OK.  Model railroading on the otherhand and I get "you mean like those trains kids have ?". My wife freaks out when she hears the price of these "toys" not to mention the real estate price of the hobby.

 

JJ1892 

Edited March 20 by JJ1892

[cteno4]

Yes unfortunately toys and child’s play is what leaps into most folks heads when you say model trains to them. At the shows at least that doesn’t happen with most folks as they see ok this is delicate work and a lot of work and most say I couldnt do that. There are still a few that will give you that wasting your time sort of sideways [sometimes head on] comment. 

 

Another way i help deflect those that still have the wasting time with toys attitude is to talk about al the different things you have to figure out from mechanical, to woodworking, to electrical, to crafting, to planning and design, to electronics and computers. This usually sinks in then that its not just playing with trains.

 

when the cost comes up and folks give any negative comment that way, i usually politely reply that many folks spend that and way more on clothes, cars, travel, entertainment, big kid toys, etc.

 

Its interesting dealing with the general public as you see a great cross section of our culture and people compared to the model train shows where its a very focused audience and while conversations may be very specific on modeling, they are not very diverse in nature.

 

jeff