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Kato - New Releases

Darren Jeffries

By Darren Jeffries
in New Releases & Product Announcements

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Pauljag900

Pauljag900

Posted
Posted

Fantastic news especially if they produce a range of BRITISH trains.

The 800 looks awesome,at last I can run an English train that does nt have a motor that would nt pull your socks off let alone six carriages!

and one that does nt have a body wobble!😂😂

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Welshbloke

Welshbloke

Posted
Posted

Frankly there is a wide open market for them, if they can get closer to their Japanese prices than Farish/Dapol ones. Dapol quality control is patchy and customer service pretty terrible, according to a couple of traders I've chatted to in recent years. Neither seem to have fully grasped ideas like close couplers either, failing to offer a coupler which locks together as a rigid bar, which is the literal missing link for a swing arm-based setup.

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Welshbloke

Welshbloke

Posted
Posted

The history of modelling has far too many attempts to introduce new scales to markets (thinking about British Lima HO, also Rivarossi and Trix both adopting the very peculiar 3.8mm scale). Make it to 1:148 and it'll satisfy the target audience, but without being so spectacularly different to 1:150 as to preclude sales to the Japanese market. I'd imagine there's a fair bit of pride in selling trains to the country you bought your first from.

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railsquid

railsquid

Posted
Posted

Indeed... Observe this mural in the new history section of the Omiya Railway museum showing key events in Japanese railway history:

 

48394453081_572cfee5ca_z.jpg

omiya-railway-museum-japanese-railway-history_mural_01 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

On the left we have the arrival of the first locomotive from Britain (evidently "some self-assembly required", hope they remembered to include the Allen key in the package)

 

48394591627_c24e8dd779_z.jpg

omiya-railway-museum-japanese-railway-history_mural_02 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

On the right:

 

48394591682_f12ab871c0_z.jpg

omiya-railway-museum-japanese-railway-history_mural_03 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

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serotta1972

serotta1972

Posted
Posted

Looks like my Kato collection will continue to expand and now with British trains.  It's only because of Kato USA that I have North American trains and it's what brought me back to model trains and N scale because back in the early 90's, the N scale offering from Bachmann and Life Like were not very good.

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multivac

multivac

Posted
Posted

Continuing the tie-up with the British company PECO it looks like Kato are producing two types of locos from the Welsh narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway in 009.

Any news of the renewal 11-103 and 11-104 chassis yet?

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cteno4

cteno4

Posted
Posted

Squid, does the touch screen in front allow you to select graphic images from the mural and get more info on each? It’s a nice graphic for a timeline, live the illustrative approach, timeline graphics tend to get too serious and there is so many layers of info on them it usually overloads the brain. We’ve pitched a few that would use a touch screen to carry the detailed content and the graphic a more of a General interesting thing to look at but in the old days folks wanted murals and thought computers couldn’t do the job and these days it’s then reverse, they want to do it all in a mongo surface screen! I still think the hybrid works best and you can have a number of touch screens to allow more to access at once. Also let’s you do multiple languages easily and no issues with lots of text on a mural that one screw up on or change means a big cost to fix...

 

jeff

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Kiha66

Kiha66

Posted
Posted

This photo has been bouncing around Twitter and Facebook, can anyone confirm?  Its looking like 2020 is going to be a year of HO from Kato and tomix.

FB_IMG_1564342407453.thumb.jpg.538966fd95cdb388dc4fd43f322a9bbd.jpg

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railsquid

railsquid

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Squid, does the touch screen in front allow you to select graphic images from the mural and get more info on each? It’s a nice graphic for a timeline, live the illustrative approach, timeline graphics tend to get too serious and there is so many layers of info on them it usually overloads the brain. We’ve pitched a few that would use a touch screen to carry the detailed content and the graphic a more of a General interesting thing to look at but in the old days folks wanted murals and thought computers couldn’t do the job and these days it’s then reverse, they want to do it all in a mongo surface screen! I still think the hybrid works best and you can have a number of touch screens to allow more to access at once. Also let’s you do multiple languages easily and no issues with lots of text on a mural that one screw up on or change means a big cost to fix...

 

 

Not sure to be honest, I went there last year when I had some surplus holiday days to burn through, and as my job involves pretty much sitting in front of a computer all day, I tend to avoid anything which involves interacting with a screen. I can look out for it next time I go there.

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Kamome

Kamome

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, Welshbloke said:

Frankly there is a wide open market for them, if they can get closer to their Japanese prices than Farish/Dapol ones. Dapol quality control is patchy and customer service pretty terrible, according to a couple of traders I've chatted to in recent years. Neither seem to have fully grasped ideas like close couplers either, failing to offer a coupler which locks together as a rigid bar, which is the literal missing link for a swing arm-based setup.

Imagine British steam engines with a non jumpy Japanese smooth running chassis.

I hope they extend this British trains line, even if it’s just the most marketable releases such as Mallard, Flying Scotsman etc..

 

I know they work closely with Gaugemaster as they are the main distributor in the UK and as Unitrack is relatively well-known now, I would expect this class 800 release to put Kato firmly on the British map.

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serotta1972

serotta1972

Posted
Posted

I will patiently wait for the Inter-City 125 HST to be released, I knew there was a reason my 2 attempts to order the Dapol models from 2 vendors fell through.  I wouldn't say it was devine intervention but maybe the model train gods were looking out for me. 🙂

 

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Pauljag900

Pauljag900

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Kamome said:

Imagine British steam engines with a non jumpy Japanese smooth running chassis.

I hope they extend this British trains line, even if it’s just the most marketable releases such as Mallard, Flying Scotsman etc..

 

I know they work closely with Gaugemaster as they are the main distributor in the UK and as Unitrack is relatively well-known now, I would expect this class 800 release to put Kato firmly on the British map.

Just to confirm what welsh bloke has said,I sent two trams off for service and to have the Dcc chip removed as it was causing problems running,at the time I was looking for a mallard to run on my layout for no reason other than it was my first ever train set as a child,I got talking to the shop owner and the only new model I could buy was a Dapol one at approx £130,he confirmed everything welshbloke has just said,poor quality and after sales service is rubbish at best.

in the end my daughter bought me a second had graham farish one but even that has a body wobble and any more than 3 coaches and it starts to labour even on the flat.

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JR 500系

JR 500系

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, MichiK said:

 

KATO FIGU-ANIMAL

 

Nice!!! Seems like a N-scale zoo is no longer a dream!  🙂

 

Love the cats and dogs! Nothing like a little more micro-detail on the street with some strays around, or some pets in the park!  🙂

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Kamome

Kamome

Posted
Posted (edited)

The HO EF81s were announced in the 2019 catalogue, but like most things, have slipped down the schedule a little. I’m certainly considering the rose coloured one. It would be nice for Kato to produce a few other older wagons in HO such as those included in the basic n freight set. The choice for these things seems to be left to smaller manufacturers or kits.

 

Good to see the new releases for December include the 651 Super Hitachi. I’m hoping to upgrade both the cab ends and interior lights which both use filament bulbs on the older version. This means you need to run it fast to get a decent light out of either.

I was planning on trying to make my own interior LEDs so this is welcome news.

 

The animal models are a strange addition but I guess no one else makes them. Kato certainly seem to be branching out into small diorama ideas, which don’t always have to be Railway related. Nice way to find new markets for their products. And no mountain or temple will be complete without the odd tanuki.

Edited by Kamome
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Welshbloke

Welshbloke

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, multivac said:

 

The Queen appears to be wearing a orange Hi-Viz jacket and hat!  

 

She's prone to wearing vivid colours, I suspect a bit of "I'm Queen, so if I want to wear bright orange to a formal occasion I will"!

 

On a vaguely related note, if you want British steam which just runs then see if you can find any of the old Minitrix range 2nd hand. They're a bit crude by modern standards as the tooling is now between thirty and fifty years old (or possibly more), but when clean and properly lubricated they run very sweetly. I'll admit my Minitrix Flying Scotsman needs a bit of attention to stop the wobble, but the Britannia looks great at a scale 80mph with a rake of BR crimson coaches behind. The 9fs are great heavy haulers too, even if they're an odd combination of a Britannia bodyshell and a Br.52 chassis.

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