I’ve written about my model freight trains before, but that was nearly two years ago, and I think it’s time for an update. This time I’m going to talk about the trains, as well as the locomotives. As usual, the focus of my collecting is the area around Tōkyō, and thus the trains found there are what I am writing about.

Freight locomotives in the Tōkyō area tend to be electric. There are exceptions: in addition to switching duties, the diesel-hydraulic DE10 can sometimes be found moving short trains. One example of this is the coal train I’ll describe further down below. But for the most part these trains are operating over lines already electrified for passenger trains, and so it makes more sense to use electric locomotives. Read More...

Tags: Kato, Tomix, Kawai, Freight, EH200, EH500, EF210, M250, EF65, EF66, DE10

My latest Kato model is another subway train, the Tōkyō Metro 10000. I already have a model of this train made by Greenmax, which I have mentioned briefly a few times (it featured in the “first run” video of the subway, see my Subway First Run musing for more on that). It’s not a bad model, but it lacks an interior and requires wire-in decoders for conversion to DCC. And while I’ll eventually get around to that, it’s not high on my priority list. So trains that are easier to convert to DCC, and that means Kato, are at the top of my list for actual operations once I finish up installing all the DCC electronics for the Commuter and Subway loops.

For the above-ground Commuter loop, I have lots of Kato’s commuter EMUs, but trains for the underground Subway loop are another matter. As mentioned back in October I’d hoped to have the Kato Ginza Series 01 be one of those, but it ended up not supporting the EM13 motor decoder (probably due to the narrower width of the cars).

The Kato 10000 had been on my must-buy list anyway, but with fingers crossed that this one would be “DCC Friendly”, I eagerly awaited its arrival. Kato hadn’t actually said it would be DCC Friendly (meaning compatible with their Digitrax-made proprietary decoders) although they rarely do, and there was a cryptic reference to some issue with the interior lighting that had me worried it was some kind of one-off design. I’d previously bought several of Kato’s new “version 2” LED light sets (which I describe more on my new Kato Interior Lighting page) planning to install them in the Ginza train, but hadn’t gotten around to that after it turned out not to support the DCC motor decoder. So my plan was to use them, if I could.
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Tags: Kato, Greenmax, Lighting, Subway Train, Administrivia

As any regular reader knows, the JR East E231 is the train the sparked my interest in Japanese trains, and in particular in the commuter trains of Tōkyō. I’m not really clear why myself. Objectively they’re simply boxes engineered to move large numbers of people rapidly. Perhaps it’s the simple functionalism of the design, coupled with the fact that it represents the culmination of fifteen years of re-engineering the commuter train, begun by the Japanese National Railway in the 80’s, and leading through several intermediate designs to one that now numbers over 2,700 cars. The E231 is hardly the end; evolved designs are already out there in the E233 and the prototype E331 (Japanese Wikipedia). But with the E231, JR East reached a point where the design achieved the original goal of “half the cost, half the life”, meaning a reduction in both initial cost and maintenance, at the expense of a reduced lifespan (15 years versus 30).

The E231 has been produced in many variants, but one of the most interesting lacked a model until now, the E231-800. This train, of which only seven 10-car trains were made, was produced to provide run-through service from JR East’s Chūō-Sōbu Line to the Tōkyō Metro Tōzai subway line. These replaced older 301 and 103 series trains dating from the 1960’s. For this use, the standard E231 body was reduced from 2.95m to 2.80m, giving the front a more squared-off appearance. Also, end doors were added to the cabs for in-tunnel emergency exits.
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Tags: E231, Micro Ace, Subway

’tis the season...to buy toys. And when I stumbled across this one, I had to restrain myself from buying a set “to play with”. It’s a model of the JR East East-i E train. It’s part of Tomica’s “Hypercity” line of toy buildings and vehicles. Even more impressive, Toys R Us was selling it for US$129, considerably less than the $190 it’s going for on Amazon right now. And some of the other models were showing for half the current Amazon rate. It’s not clear if it’s a sale, or just their usual pricing (I didn’t see any sale signs). If you’re interested you should be able to find them; I found a large stock of these, apparently of little interest to most people, around the corner from the stuffed animals in my local store. I expect yours will be similar.
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Tags: Tomica, Holiday

Recently I’ve picked up a couple of new Greenmax trains, the Tōkyō Metro Tōzai Line Series 05 and Tōkyū Corporation Series 6000. The models are very similar in a sense, although the prototype trains are different in a number of ways. Both operate well, and look good from a distance, although not quite as good close-up in some ways.

The Tōkyū Railway Series 6000 is a relatively recent (2008) train, formed of six-car sets, operating on the surface Tōkyū Ōimachi Line on the south side of Tōkyō. The Tōkyō Metro Series 05, on the other hand, is a subway train dating from 1988 (but still in service), operating on an east-west axis underground route through the center of the city (it goes above ground away from the center). Both trains operate on narrow gauge track, from overhead 1500 Volt DC catenary, and are 2.8m wide, 20m long. The one difference is height, but not in the way you might expect: the subway train is actually 4.0m high, while the 6000 is 3.6m.
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Tags: Greenmax, Subway Train

When my Ginza 01 series train (Kato 10-864) arrived last month I put it on the track to break it in, then took it off and separated the cars as I usually do with commuter cars, levering them up until the couplers are nearly at a 90-degree angle, just as it says to in the brochure that comes with the train. This time, to my surprise, instead of uncoupling, one coupler assembly exploded into three parts (coupler, bracket, and spring). Attempting to re-install the spring led to it departing over the horizon (or at least into the depths of the basement), never to be seen again. A quick look at the brochure, and it was clear Kato had changed something. It showed the cars being separated by pulling apart rather than the levering up procedure I was used to from earlier commuter models.

This was a bit of a surprise, because the coupler looked just like the usual commuter coupler, with a square, pyramid-tipped spike and a matching socket, with a hook underneath, all designed to mimic the standard Japanese coupler used on many narrow-gauge trains, a type of multi-function close coupler known as a Shibata coupler after its developer, Mamoru Shibata, although often called more generically a “Scharfenberg” coupler, after the original European close-coupler it was modeled on. I decided it must be a new type of coupler developed for the new subway trains (which the Ginza is assumed to be the first of) and ordered a replacement. That turned out to be an incorrect assumption.
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Tags: Kato, E233, Shinkansen, Commuter, Administrivia, BDL168, Subway Train

In some ways there isn’t a whole lot of difference between Tōkyō’s urban and suburban commuter trains and its subway trains. Both are electric multiple-unit (EMU) sets, running on narrow-gauge track and typically using 1500V DC power from overhead (catenary) wires. Some commuter trains even run through into the subway tunnels to reach more central stations.

But there are differences. First, subway trains (and commuter trains designed for subway use) will have emergency exit doors on the ends, to facilitate evacuations in a tunnel. Second they are often shorter, to allow for tighter curves. And some are also narrower, although this seems less common.
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Tags: Administrivia, Kato, Greenmax, Subway, Subway Train

I haven’t been working on my tram layout all summer. I’ve run the tram around a bit, but the bus roadway had a gap in it as I’d run out of parts before finishing the loop, and I didn’t have a commuter car for the outer loop of track, which was a lack I keenly felt. I also had only one power pack to move between the two tracks (unless I wanted to cut up one of my Tomix feeders and connect it to a Kato pack, which I didn’t). So all I could do with it was run one of my Modemo Setagaya line trams at a time. Which was nice, but a bit less than what I wanted. That’s all changed recently (or will shortly). Read More...

Tags: Greenmax, Modemo, Tram, Tomix, Tram Layout, Bus System

Freight trains aren’t a major part of the Japanese railroading scene. With most of its industry on the coast, bulk freight largely travels by ship. And with the improved highways of the 1960’s and later, smaller freight had almost all moved to truck. Before its breakup, the Japan National Railway had already closed the bulk of its freight yards in 1985, leaving only a small quantity of mixed trains operating, in addition to unit trains of containers, oil, limestone and other bulk products. And most of those trains ran between port facilities or private sidings although there remain to this day a small number of freight yards (which are somehow different from the “freight marshaling yards” that were closed). Read More...

Tags: Kawai, Freight

You’d think someone who’s built a Tōkyō-inspired model railroad with a subway on it would know a bit about the subways of Tōkyō. But in fact when I started construction I knew next to nothing, and I’ve only recently begun to rectify that. Part of the reason is that I’ve been focused on the commuter trains of JR East, and JR doesn’t operate any subway lines (although they do operate a couple of subway trains, as we’ll see in a bit). And part of it was that models of subway trains weren’t all that common, and I hadn’t collected any.
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Tags: Greenmax, Subway, Micro Ace, Kato, E231, Subway Train

Back in October when I wrote about Joyful Trains I mentioned Micro Ace was coming out with models of three of them, and I’d placed reservations. Well, they finally arrived, and that’s given me reason to write about them. As I write this, Hobby Search still has two of these in stock, although the Hana has already sold out.
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Tags: 48x Series, Joyful Train, Micro Ace, Kato

Passenger trains are boarded from areas alongside the track called “platforms”. As the name implies, these are often elevated structures at the height of the interior of the passenger car. Although “ground level” platforms, usually roughly level with the top of the rail, are fairly common on light-rail systems and North American commuter and rural stations, in Japan the “high level” platforms at car-floor height are nearly universal.

Kato makes a number of high-level platform elements that go along with their Unitrack and various station models. These are broadly divided into side platforms, where the platform is beside one track, and island platforms, where the platform is sandwiched between two tracks. These are all based around the standard Unitrack length of 248mm (9 3/4 inches), although the ends come in varying length. And the width of 41mm is designed to allow the island platforms to work with either Kato’s #4 or #6 switches, which widen track out to a 66mm center-to-center spacing between main line and siding when used with the correct track. For a list of all of these platform elements, diagrams of the track configurations used with them, and photographs of the platform types, see my Passenger Platforms page.
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Tags: Kato, Unitrack

My newest train is the new Kato model of the E5 “Hyabusa” Shinkansen (bullet train). This is, or more accurately will be, Japan’s fastest train. It began operating in March of 2011 on the Tōhoku Shinkansen line in northern Japan at speeds up to 300 kph (186 mph), and has a top speed of 320 kph (199 mph), which it will start using in 2013. The train operates a limited-stop service under the name Hyabusa (which means Perigrine Falcon), linking Tōkyō to the very northern tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, a distance of 675 km (419 miles) in just 3 hours and ten minutes. That’s an average speed of 213 km/hr (132 mph) including station stops.
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Tags: Shinkansen, JR East, DCC

So, what is a “5 pole” motor, and why should I care if my models have one? And do they? That question occurred to me a few weeks back, and I’ve been doing a bit of reading since then. What I discovered was a mixture of fact and Internet lore of uncertain origin. I also discovered that some models do have “5 pole” motors, while others have “3 pole” ones. But oddly, at least in the case of Kato (and possibly also Micro Ace), the “3 pole” motors are the better ones. Or at least the newer ones, although I think they’re better too.
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Tags: DC, DCC, Kato, Micro Ace, E231, DE10

The train that got me started in Japanese modeling was the JR East E231, and specifically a Kato model of the Yamanote line version. The E231 is a workhorse of the Tōkyō scene, with over 2,600 cars built since its introduction in 1998, gradually displacing many older commuter and suburban trains to secondary uses or the scrap pile. The train itself is a DC design, typically used in 10-car trains, although the Yamanote line uses 11-car trains and some suburban lines use 10+5 sets that split into 10-car and 5-car trains away from the city. Internal seating is along-the-wall in commuter models, and a mix of that and transverse “booth” seats in suburban ones. In both applications, this is a no-frills train designed to move masses of people efficiently. The Chūō line commuter trains (which use the later E233 variant on Rapids and the Chūō-Sōbu E231 on Locals) carry over 90,000 people per hour at peak hours, in standing-so-close-you-can’t-move crowds.

Kato, Tomix and Micro Ace all make models of these, but not all of them model every variant. Kato tends to model the “current” consists in use on major lines, but they have some gaps. One significant one is that Kato has no model of the Sōbu Local (aka., Chūō-Sōbu) E231-0 version. Tomix has modeled many of the standard versions as well as a couple of specialized ones. And Micro Ace has modeled several specialized variants.
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Tags: Kato, Micro Ace, E231

As I’ve mentioned before, Japanese trains are often visually quite distinctive. The Nankai Railway’s 50000 series rapi:t is one of the most distinctive, and evokes images of Victorian engineering and Jules Verne science fiction novels. It operates as an airport shuttle service between Osaka and Kansai International airport (about a 30-minute trip). According to wikipedia it was designed by an architect working with the theme of “outdated future”, which suggests that he was trying to create the “futuristic” look found in early twentieth-century works such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Whatever the intent, the result is distinctive and unique, and very far from the utilitarian design that characterizes most western trains (or other machinery).
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Tags: Limited Express, Joyful Train, Freight, JR East, Mecha, Shinkansen, Shuttle, Commuter

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about light. First it was the layout lighting, then it was the flickering interior lights, which annoyed me when I detailed my first commuter EMU, and which I wrote about nearly two months ago when I did the original planning for a flicker-prevention circuit. Now I’m back, having built several prototypes and refined my design. I think I have a winning solution.
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Tags: DCC, Lighting, Video

Not much got done on the layout itself in October, mostly I’ve been running trains (as documented in an earlier post with a video) and doing a bit of electrical work (mostly the previously noted update to the power panel). I’ve spent a good bit of time on a couple of other things though.
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Tags: DC, DCC, Freight, Electrical

One of the defining characteristics of Japanese Trains, and of Japan in general, is a mania for newness. When Japan National Railways was broken up, one of the first actions of the newly-formed Japan Rail East was to begin planning a new model of commuter/suburban train with a design lifespan of just 15 years, quite short for an electric train. The reason was to lower construction and operations costs, compared with the existing trains that were due for replacement and very labor-intensive to operate and maintain. But it also had a PR dimension, in that JRE needed to shake off the public perception that JNR had as being out-of-touch with its passengers, and a new fleet of trains without the two or three decades of wear their then-current trains had was a good way to do that, by catering to the perception that “new” equated to “improved”. That effort was successful, and while most of that first generation of “15 year” trains (the 209 Series) are still in service, they’re gradually being replaced by the new generation of E231/E233/E531 commuter and suburban trains which form the bulk of my collection (and which, to be fair, do represent a substantial improvement over the 1960’s technology JNR had been using, in both comfort and economy).
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Tags: E655, Imperial Train, Kato, JNR, Joyful Train, 48x Series, JR East

It was a busy day in the village overlooking the Sumida River. A steady parade of trains rolled by on the embankment: commuter trains bringing workers to the city, resort trains taking vacationers away, and freights carrying commodities to and from the ports on Tōkyō Bay. But then, all days are busy on the railroads of Tōkyō.
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Tags: Video, Micro Ace, Kato, Operation, Freight

There isn’t much status to give for this month, as the only major layout event was finally completing the Rapid/Shinkansen loop and running DCC trains (a major milestone, but one I’ve already covered). But this month also marks the one-year anniversary of when I first started keeping this record (I didn’t actually get it online until November, but I was making offline entries and writing down design information from September 2009), and it’s worth a short look back on the year.
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Tags: Kato, Lighting, E231, DCC

I haven’t done much work on the layout recently. Aside from having fun running trains, I’ve been working on finishing up my first DCC train. I started added DCC decoders (motor and cab) to this train last October.
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Tags: DCC, Video, E231, Kato, Lighting

Now that I have some real working track, I’m even more motivated to get some of my trains converted to DCC (so far there’s just one, the Jōban E231 described on my Adding DCC and Lights page). So, back I go to the hell that is Kato “DCC Friendly” decoder installation. Really, the marketing person who thought that phrase up was truly evil. There’s nothing friendly about this process. DCC doesn’t have to be hard, but with Kato it all too often is.
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Tags: Kato, DCC

The Internet is a wonderful invention. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to order trains from halfway around the globe and have them delivered in under a week, nor would I have any idea of the difference between an E233-1000 and an E233-2000 (both are commuter trains, but the 2000 is a narrow-bodied variant with a end door for emergency exits; this model runs through onto the Chiyoda subway and nobody makes a model of it yet, but I want one). I hear that some people have more serious uses for the Internet, as well.
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Tags: Kato, DCC, DC, Electrical

Whether you are interested in high-speed rail (bullet trains), short rural passenger trains rumbling through the woods, action-packed multi-track commuter trains, small trams slipping behind buildings or running down a busy street, or semi-rural passenger/freight railroading, there’s a prototype in Japan to draw inspiration from. And thanks to the Internet, you can get photos (on flickr, search on “Japan Railway”, with over 13,000 images to start), maps (maps.google.com or Google Earth), video (on YouTube, search for “Japan Train” or similar phrases), and a fair amount of data (wikipedia), without ever leaving your chair.

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Tags: Kato, Greenmax, Tomix, Modemo, M250

Kato’s DE10 freight locomotive isn’t new; they came out a year ago. But they promptly sold out, and I hadn’t been able to get one until just recently. There are two versions, a “warm region” model and a “cold region” model that adds circular windshield wipers and a small snowplow. Both versions operate in the Tōkyō region.
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Tags: Kato, DE10, Freight, DCC, Digitrax, MoW

My model railroad is primarily a passenger railroad. That’s not because there is no freight in Japan, or even in Tōkyō, but freight is definitely second to passenger service in a nation where most of the population lives close to ports, and trains have to compete with both trucks and ships. As a result, freight in Japan largely means containerized cargo and bulk products such as petroleum, although boxcars and other general-freight cars are still in use. Freight trains in Japan tend to be relatively short, often just a dozen or two cars, or even just a few.
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Tags: Kato, Freight, DE10, EF210, EH200, M250

It occurs to me that I’ve been writing about my layout for over six months, and haven’t really mentioned the central reason for it: to run Japanese trains in a setting that evokes their natural urban landscape. In particular, I’m focused on contemporary Japanese passenger trains operated by JR East in and around Tōkyō. That may seem rather narrowly specialized, but Japan has such a variety of passenger trains that it really isn’t.
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Tags: Kato, E231, Tram, Shinkansen, Limited Express

Sunday, 13 June 2010 was an historic day for Sumida Crossing. After the track was all cleaned and re-installed, and the wiring completed, it was time for the trains to take a run. The actual first loop was done by a “maintenance of way” train (actually an old Atlas B23 I was willing to sacrifice if I’d made some horrible wiring error). That done, I broke out the East-i E Inspection Train, and had it take a run to check out the pantograph clearance and general track usability. And I recorded it and made a short video.
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Tags: Kato, Riverside, Subway, MoW, Operation, Video, Subway Train

One of the reasons I like to collect Japanese trains is that they have such a variety of forms. Although a few models, such as the E231 commuter trains, are commonplace, a plethora of different-looking trains can be seen in and around Tōkyō on a daily basis.

One of the more distinctive trains out there is known as “Doctor Yellow”, a bright-yellow Shinkansen (bullet train) used to inspect the high-speed lines. There are actually two Doctor Yellows in existence at present. These could be seen in Tōkyō, inspecting the Tōkaidō Shinkansen line. JR East also has it’s own inspection train, (although it is white rather than yellow, and is called “East-i”), which is used on the lines running north and north-west from Tōkyō. JR East’s train is based on the E3 Mini-Shinkansen, allowing it to inspect both Shinkansen and conventional lines converted to standard-gauge.
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Tags: Kato, MoW