linkey Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Shake it and itll choose for you. Yay! Why did I just get an image of Ash (from Pokemon) stuck in my head when you said that. lol Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted September 24, 2011 Share Posted September 24, 2011 The new Kato Unitram expansion plates have been delayed till October. Finally a break in the home receiving department. 8-) Link to comment
linkey Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 just recently KATO has released their projected productions for Jan 2012. Not bad, as they are catering both N scale and HO scale this time. http://www.katomodels.com/distribution/poster/poster2012_1a.jpg and http://www.katomodels.com/distribution/poster/poster2012_1b.jpg Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 The Kato 20-172 and 20-174 and cv1 set will work great for Christmas Trolley displays. Link to comment
westfalen Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 Looks like they are trying to compete with Tomix mini curved track. I wonder if there are turnouts in the works? The stainless steel kiha 35-900 looks interesting, something different. Link to comment
keitaro Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 hey all jus thought i'd mention the ginza subway is drop in decoder dcc compatable Link to comment
clem24 Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 hey all jus thought i'd mention the ginza subway is drop in decoder dcc compatable I can't think of any single recent Kato tooling that isn't... Link to comment
The_Ghan Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 hey all jus thought i'd mention the ginza subway is drop in decoder dcc compatable I can't think of any single recent Kato tooling that isn't... Agree clem, but I'm sure I read another thread that claimed ginza wasn't because it was too narrow. I'm glad keitaro checked it out. I've got two ginzas still boxed in the office. I'm holidaying in Thailand for a couple of weeks with Mrs Ghan. Almost makes me want to come home early ... almost ... Cheers The_Ghan Link to comment
westfalen Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 hey all jus thought i'd mention the ginza subway is drop in decoder dcc compatable I can't think of any single recent Kato tooling that isn't... Ain't necessarily so. I got my ED16's today and while the circuit board is the same design and shape as most recent electric and diesel locos it's different enough that no drop-in decoders appear to fit, the NGDCC decoders for the DE10 and later EF65 are close but not close enough as are other decoders pictured on the NGDCC website. It looks like my options are to hard wire a decoder or wait a while and see if NGDCC comes up with one. Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 Kato V51-V52 Unitram sets in stock. V53 should be here shortly. V16 curves and various double straights now available. Link to comment
keitaro Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 hey all a quick vid of the ginza's running You can watch in 1080 p sorry but the video was done on my 7d and i was a bit lazy in manual focusing, however it displays the awesome new LED kit in action. It's not really as bright as it looks in video and would look epicly awesome decked out in a subway full of passengers. Link to comment
clem24 Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 Holy crap that is way too bright.. I do like that it doesn't flicker. On a related note, I honestly think those bright white/blue "HID" LED headlights they used (like in the Sonic, Super Oozora, etc..) was a huge mistake. The only way to make them realistic was to paint the headlight lenses. Link to comment
cteno4 Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 They do seem awfully bright. Scaling lighting is really tough, one of those things that changes in the minds eye. Actually at the scale distance we usually look at our model trains you would see very little light from houses, trains and cars in real life, but in modeling it usually looks like you want more light than that. The issue usually is that in the model you don't have all the light sources you usually do in a real life scene, so folks tend to turn up the fre light sources they do have. Then there is the fact that light intensity drops at the inverse square of the distance from the source.this means that an led will look a lot brighter at one foot on a layout than 150 LEDs at 150 feet in real life. Light does not scale linearly. I've done some exhibit model lighting for photography and was always surprised what lighting that made a great photo did not look great to the naked eye or that realistic. So it's one of those odd things in modeling that is a bit of a real odd mix... Jeff Ps curt's layout has quite nice night lighting as he has most of the usual city and town light sources at lower levels. Link to comment
linkey Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 The brighter the lights are the harder for passengers to fall asleep inside them. lol Link to comment
KenS Posted October 8, 2011 Share Posted October 8, 2011 Even the old lights were "too bright", although if you paint the interior darker colors (I used gray floors and dark blue seats on the one commuter train I did, to match a prototype photo) and add figures, the light doesn't look quite as bright any more. It can be really hard to judge lighting intensity in a video, so I wouldn't read too much into this one; compare how bright the building lighting was in comparison. The camera is probably exagerating things here. The thing that impresses me about the video, aside from the lack of any flicker at all, is how even the light is. With the old kits you get a bright spot at the end where the LED is, and it gets much darker by the far end. I don't see that here. Link to comment
The_Ghan Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 They might not be so bright. Keitaro's video camera might be compensating for low light. Cheers The_Ghan Link to comment
keitaro Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 The thing that impresses me about the video, aside from the lack of any flicker at all, is how even the light is. With the old kits you get a bright spot at the end where the LED is, and it gets much darker by the far end. I don't see that here. in the longer size cars it does a bit still and you need to make sure you get the led right infront of the plastic. It looks better in the ginza cause they shorties Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 the longer size cars it does a bit still and you need to make sure you get the led right infront of the plastic. I used scrap foil tape to secure the lens to the decoder holder and got the lighting I wanted and it held the lens in place. Just don't use colored tape like capstan. it'll color the interior. Still interested in smoothing out the gazillion older FL11 I have in all the bullets. Link to comment
clem24 Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Anyone know what was actually improved upon from the original release? http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10144224 This is regarding the newest release of the EF63. Link to comment
angusmclean Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Anyone know what was actually improved upon from the original release? http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10144224 This is regarding the newest release of the EF63. It might be possible that the 'improved' wording refers to the actual changes to the production locos. Some sites referred to that wording when describing changes to the different sub-types. As far as I can see, the only improvements mentioned for Type 1 and Type 2 are a slightly changed position for the lightning arrestor, and tail-light mountings being re-designed. However looking at Kato's illustrations of both sub-types in their Japanese page, the tail-light mountings appear to be similar. Confused? Angus Link to comment
keitaro Posted November 11, 2011 Share Posted November 11, 2011 kato are doing the video train again http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10167763 NOT DCC COMPATABLE!!! Link to comment
Guest Closed Account 1 Posted November 11, 2011 Share Posted November 11, 2011 kato is doing the video train again NOT DCC COMPATABLE!!! Meaning it won't run on 00? Well, we'll just going to disconnect the DCC booster and slip in a DC power pack for that track line. Maybe, just maybe we can change the body shell to go with our layouts. https://www.e-katomodels2.com/img/goods/1/camera%20okyakusama.pdf I reserved one anyway. KatoCameraOkyakusama.pdf Link to comment
KenS Posted November 12, 2011 Share Posted November 12, 2011 The camera looks like a wireless minicamera from the photo with HS's listing (like this one; it even has the "Type S" on the receiver), which means all it takes from the rails is power. You could probably do a DCC conversion to run the train, and put in a simple rectifier/capacitor to turn track power into filtered DC for the camera itself. Or buy one of these (no idea if that store's any good, just found it via google). Link to comment
clem24 Posted November 12, 2011 Share Posted November 12, 2011 I love how they have a pic of a CRT. Seriously, I wonder how many households in Japan still uses a CRT. Link to comment
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