That's an amazing video Bernard, I'd already watched it on his website but when you posted it I had to look at it again, it's as if you're standing beside the Tokkaido Main Line. I think a great majority of model railroaders stray away from what they primarily model occasionally, I'm sure Kato's GG1 didn't just sell to 1950's PRR modellers, and the lack of N scale catenary didn't hurt sales either. It's all about having fun, it's just up to you whether that means running whatever takes your fancy or turning your back on everything that didn't run on the Santa Fe's Slaton division on the 12th May 1953. At the last club meeting I bought a Fleischman German railcar from a member that had some stuff from a deceased estate just because I liked it, and I've got a Graham Farish British Railways class 04 diesel switcher coming because another member was running his and I liked the look of them and it'll keep my Dapol Terrier company. If anyone asks what I model though, I still say Santa Fe in Texas during the 1950's and 60's.
I can't take credit for finding the video, Bill was the one who pointed it out to me. I just used it as an example of great Japanese modeling. I agree.... it what gets you interested in modeling. I've collected a variety of model trains through the years based on I found interesting (even steam) but the Japanese RR is my favorite and that's the theme of my layout.
There is very little switching in Japan. This was deliberately phased out as inefficient by JNR (now JRF) in the late 80s . Freight trains are largely containers which are smaller than North America and off loaded on sidings by front end loaders without breaking up the train. Freights run as often as once an hour. Where there is switching it is on industrial railways or small private railways. Industrial plant operation (now abandoned) [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y7FnQtEjFU&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - 本巣セメント専用線[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6YbmwN0IZ8&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - 本巣セメント専用線　最終出è·[/ame] Another industrial switching operation. The first car is a battery car. In the second video the loco runs on the batteries. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAW1ee_mVtk&feature=PlayList&"]YouTube - 三井化å¦å°‚用鉄é“　宮浦ヤード入æ›ãˆ[/ame] p=00F05E1EB16DA2DA [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1owiv4_gXw&feature=PlayList&p=00F05E1EB16DA2DA"]YouTube - 三井化å¦å°‚用鉄é“　宮浦　éžé›»åŒ–å´ç·šï¼’[/ame] Small private railway operation. This is Gakunan Railway which is owned by an industrial company and handles many newsprint cars. Its the only operation of this type that I know of in Japan. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeomNWUVxs&feature=PlayList&p=3B2F79227AA5A7C9"]YouTube - å…¥æ›[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMcaJyOdsNU&feature=PlayList&p=3B2F79227AA5A7C9"]YouTube - コã‚çªæ”¾[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQaiu5Opj2E&feature=PlayList&p=3B2F79227AA5A7C9"]YouTube - å…¥æ›ã¨æŠ¼ã—è¾¼ã¿[/ame]
There's no taboo. You can't be sensitive when it comes to trains you want to run, girls you want to marry, girls you don't want to marry, girls or trains or trains you want to marry. I think of the Bullet Trains as I do with my love of the NE Corridor and electric trains. I grew up in Philadelphia so catenary along the rails thru Manayunk are a natural draw for electric trains. Then we moved outside philly not too far from the NE Corridor. I already loved GG-1s but standing on a platform and having those behemoths zing by- WOW (as in piss muh 14 year old pants WOW!). There were Metroliners too, clocking 125 MPH as the brochures would tell you. It may be that others aren't/haven't been exposed to the excitement that they create in you. I am turned on by the Bullet Train because of my fascination with my GG-1/Metroliner experience, the excitement they create in me. I love freight and heavy haul and locals and all...but, I will have a G and a Metroliner slicing down the corridor and wizzing past the RDC and occasional local switching job. Theres nothing better than shear speed to excite the senses. The raw power we model "dragging" countless freight cars with "pure, brute muscle" is cute but nothing beats the dust off the blinds than a serious surge of speed- the kind of speed dedicated to moving the most valuable freight- people. Places to go- people to meet- to make deals, do business, etc. I think too many modelers think of passenger traffic as social expenditures. My dad road the NE Corridor for many years with businessmen, captains of industry when as a KATO ad reads- the Broadway Limited was the Concord of its day- for 40 years. Run 'em fast- run 'em hard. There's a need to move those people to their destination quickly. Business is business. Mark
Years ago, the N-Trak group in Burbank Calif used to run bullet trains on thier layout at shows in SoCal. It was always wild to watch a 130 car coal train get overtaken by a high speed bullet train! They usually had enough room for the coal train to stretch out and that E-Max screaming along side of it would really surprise people. I've got an HHP-8 I like to run with a brace of single level Amtrak cars. :tb-biggrin: It does make some freight guys go nuts, but I like it. Art
How old is Gakunan 501? It looks a lot like old Baldwin-Westinghouse electrics. I'm wondering if it might actually be one, since I know Japan had some.
It was built in 1928, but Japanese Wikipedia doesn't say who built it. You can read this page with Google translate. å²³å—鉄é“ED50形電気機関車 - Wikipedia
Interesting discussion! Actually, the Japanese Bullet Trains are large even by US standards. Not so much in overall height... but in width. Most of them are over 11ft in width (11' 1" in fact)... so they'd quite likely demolish many of the high level platforms on the NE Corridor route.
A model bullet train has two strikes against it: they are electric (as far as I know) requiring an overhead wire and running them at appropriate high speed would really emphasize our compressed layouts. My opinion.
All over Japan, especially when I first visited in 1990, you can see evidence of this in the large, abandoned freight yards everywhere that have been replaced by smaller container handling facilities. In 1994, I was staying in a town called Uozu near Toyama and my hotel room overlooked the station, in the morning a container freight would stop in the station's through track and cut off the last half dozen cars or so, after it departed a small 4 wheel diesel switcher from a freight yard about a quarter mile north would come down and drag the cars back to the yard. I presume the procedure was reversed in the evening for outbound freight and may be/have been common for smaller towns that didn't generate a full trainload.
Dayliner - First off welcome to Trainboard and yes it is an interesting discussion because members are expressing their opinions and insights. Ray & Dayliner, Bullet trains like the 500 Nozomi or the 700 are longer in length even in the model world. If you are designing a layout and plan to run these 2 trains you have to plan for a large radii, but wouldn't you have to do the same if you were planning on running a Big Boy or Challenger? I took this in account in my layout and have a min. radii of 17.5" with a max of 22". You can run Bullet trains on a 4x8 layout providing you take in consideration the radius you will need. As for catenary poles, in my opinion, you can put them on or not. I go by the basic rule of modeling: the only one you have to please is yourself and it's your layout so do what you want to do. Here are 3 photos I'm attaching, the 1st one shows the 4 radius on my layout and a the 700 Bullet train on it. The next shows an area of the layout I'm experimenting on using catenary poles (it's a work in progress), this will decide if I want to go ahead an put them throughout the layout. But the biggest benefit of having a Japanese Bullet train layout is that you can have Godzilla attack your city, it just doesn't work on a North American layout.
They're not taboo - it's just that very few of us have ever seen one in person. You'd be welcome to run it at one of my club's setups. I've run some English trains. And Thomas is always popular at shows, too. Another club member runs an ICE train once in a while. We're pretty easy-going about it, as long as it runs well, stays together, and doesn't derail, we'll send it out. I can see how some clubs might not be so laid-back, if they have decided to model the 1950s. They probably wouldn't welcome any Amtrak stock, either. I've been to an open house of a huge HO layout here in LA. They had a camera in a bullet train and ran it the whole distance with the television on so we could see the layout from the cab. And that thing moved! You'd follow it on the tracks, glance at the TV, then have to hunt for the train on the layout.
OK, I ll try to Understood! (i m from Russia) and ll try to explain: I have ICE 1 (the oldest of europian high velocity generation trains) train at N-Scale And this train has scale speed gear. So, even at 1/10 speed on trottle this train can fly avay even from room... Very large speed! But how about AGV - ICE "4" which have 560 km per hour speed as usual ??? In this case we neel very large layouts for reaching such speeds at our layouts. May be this space ship-like trains not a taboo at all , (i dont understood why a taboo?) but it is difficult for using this trains at small layouts, an i can understand emotions of mostly n-scallers about it.
Hi Vadimav - let me try to bridge our language barrier with my definition of "Taboo". I use it in the context as "not acceptable" or "looked down upon" in Russian it would be "не приемлемо or свысока". (Boy I hope my translation is right.) More important than speed, as I said in my post right before this one, you do need a large radius, but it can be done on an 4'x8' layout. But as I also said, you would need a large radius if you ran some of the North American trains like a Big Boy. You don't have to go by the speed charts to run a model Bullet train if you don't want to, that's an individual decision. Here is a video of my 800 Bullet train running on my layout. I'm not going by any speed chart but I am having fun. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKt7GallWu4"]YouTube - 800 Kato[/ame]
That is an ED501. It was built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries but that doesn't mean it wasn't produced under licence.
At the risk of stealing Bernard's thunder, it looks like the Narita Express (Series 253) Kato 10-408. If it is the Narita Express, it is a nice model with factory interior lighting. http://www.katomodels.com/product/nmi/253kei_e.shtml
Ah, thanks, Tetsu. You're right, that's a nice model. This is SO not making it easy to choose my first Japanese train model! lol
