Nankai 50000 series DARTH VADER

[Sir Handy Booboo]

Hi

 

I am from Vancouver Canada and I was looking for some Japanese train guys or anyone else that could help me with pics and more importantly specifications for the Nankai 500000 series light rail trains.

Commonly known as the Darth Vader train.

 

I model in "O" scale and as far as I know they only make this train in "N" gauge, so I was going to scratch build it but I don't have any specs on it and I can't understand Japanese either.

 

I can understand a hair of Chinese but that is not going to do it in this case.

 

If you can connect me to any other Japanese resources for this train or If there is anyone out there that can lend me a hand please let me know in here or email me at rfeb14@gmail.com.

 

Thanks   Sir Handy Booboo

 

 

 

 

Nankai 50000 series

[bikkuri bahn]

Not "light rail", it's a proper full size train.

 

You can find HO scale (1/80) plans in Japan Railfan Magazine (Tetsudo Fan) April 1994 (Issue 396).

http://www.rail-way.com/railfan_magazine/railfan-301~400/railfan_magazine-396.html

[Sir Handy Booboo]

Thanks for the link.

 

I would still call it a light trail as there are only a few cars in the consist.

Being from north america a hundred cars would be more like what I call a full sized train.

 

The elevated passenger lines here we call light rail and I just continued doing so.

 

I am still wanting any specs on this train so i can scratch build it to as near the right size as possible instead of guessing.

 

Thanks rob    aka Sir Handy Booboo

 

Look at youtube under "tagena6" for some vids of my grand kids first Handy Booboo Railway.

 

A shelf railway through the walls of their house.

 

[katoftw]

I would still call it a light trail as there are only a few cars in the consist.

Being from north america a hundred cars would be more like what I call a full sized train.

Name one train that is a few hundred cars in North America that carries passengers.

[Bernard]

Wow...lucky grandkids to have a such a railroad!! Thanks for posting the video I enjoyed watching it!

[spacecadet]

Name one train that is a few hundred cars in North America that carries passengers.

Closest anyone's gonna come: https://youtu.be/UarUc39_P_U?t=27s

[JR 500系]

Closest anyone's gonna come: https://youtu.be/UarUc39_P_U?t=27s

 

Yap, and I counted, it's not even 50!

 

* Side note, what are those white carriages behind the 18 passenger carriages? They don't look like passenger carriages, more like cargo ones, so technically speaking you have to deduct those ~  :P

[ozman2009]

As it's the Auto Train, they might well be carrying the autos. Just a guess...

[NuclearErick]

Yes Auto-Train,

basically is a Amtrak service to Norton, VA (Washington, DC) - Sanford, FL (Orlando) no stops between those stations only a sevice stop for fuel and water, maybe food, to ride that train u need to have a car or any other vehicle to board (ah sucks)

But u can take another service like a Silver Meteor/Star almost the same route

 

ah N gauge anyone ? :D

[JR 500系]

That's interesting!

 

So technically the auto carriages cannot be counted as passenger carriages.  :P

[Melandir]

I can still count only 18 passenger cars, the cars carriages are only added weight that does not add capacity to the train :)

[spacecadet]

That's interesting!

 

So technically the auto carriages cannot be counted as passenger carriages.  :P

No one said they had to be. OP just said a real train is "hundreds of cars" (which I know this isn't), and katoftw just wanted a train with hundreds of cars that "carries passengers". Well, this train is the closest thing we have to a train with a few hundred cars that carries passengers. Its normal consist is 44 cars and it does carry passengers.

[katoftw]

Its normal consist is 44 cars and it does carry passengers.

It is only light rail then. hahahahahaha

[Densha]

If we're going to talk about record length passenger trains, this is the official Guinness World Record: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-passenger-train/

 

Before 1989: Australian record with 42 carriages (according to the following Dutch documentary)

1989: Dutch record with 60 carriages (https://youtu.be/kLcx9H4oPv4)

1991: Belgian record with 70 carriages (https://youtu.be/BP3dBorMfQY)

[Kabutoni]

Last time I checked the term light rail and related terminology was defined by local legal ordinance, rather than personal opinion and heritage.

 

If I can, I might have a chance to make copies of the 1/80 scale plans from Tetsudo Fan magazine bikkuri bahn mentioned. The data on them are real, so you might consider them to be blueprints as well. It will take a while before I have opportunity though.

[Sir Handy Booboo]

Some how this request for some specs has gotten off to a weird tangent.

 

I would think that light rail might be associated with the weight of the required rail to support a train passenger or other.

 

I built 2 of the 3 LRTs here in Vancouver and they seem about the same size as the Darth Vader train.

 

So we call them light rail here and I just continued it.

 

As for heavy, I like to think of the Erie triplex quoted from here.

 

http://mthtrains.com/20-3069-1

 

The Erie Triplex was engineered to haul 640 fifty-ton cars in a train almost five miles long

 

I use this engine along with the Erie 0-8-8-0 double headed with a couple hundred freight car consist.

 

​That alone should stir up too much controversy, however I have many irons in the fire and if you build some redwood trees in "O" scale they can easily reach past 7' so I have found some bird and cricket sound chips to install in the trunk.

Some fibre optics poking out of the ground for the magic glow in the dark mushroom should be a sight like no other.  :-)

[serotta1972]

In high school I worked at a gas station and one night this guy in full motorcycle gear on a souped up Vespa with lots of chrome stops to get some gas and I thought I was complimenting him saying "nice scooter", and he looked at me and said "it's a motorcycle", in his deepest voice.  I didn't realize I had uttered some fighting words.  Calling the  Nankai 5000 Series a light rail train, them are fighting words!  Sorry making light of the matter and not trying to instigate.  Haha!  :)

[velotrain]

Nothing really related to these discussions, but my opinion is that this train should be known as the Jules Verne.

 

To me it looks more (electric-powered) Steampunk than Star Wars.

[Sir Handy Booboo]

Well the guy on the scooter was just big.

He obviously wasn't the brightest hammer in the bag.

To help him out I might have tried to install some diesel in his tank to make the scooter smell bigger than it actually was.

 

I don't think I would have been an instigater either.

 

I would be just an ordinary teacher as I tried to learn him something.  ;-)

 

I am not sure who coined it the Darth Vader train but jules verne has a good ring to it too.

 

It was just different enough looking to make me want it as it would be the only one on this side of the pond.

 

Maybe make it On3 for tighter turns in the cliff side.

 

As for subject matter I was looking for specs on this unit to scratch build it as I have only found it in "N" scale for sale. 

[cteno4]

Yes very close to some of the original 10000 leagues under the sea illustrations (not the Disney stuff!). Interior wood work also just screams marine, not star Wars!

 

To say darth vader its actually closer to lord dark helmet...

 

These and most all Japanese trains like it are not really within the loose us terminology of light rail, the are regular passenger rail as I've seen it used by municipalities.

 

Jeff

[Jcarlton]

Here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76fOkB9VEpU

 

And another:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0GMdJRei5E

 

Edited May 15, 2015 by Jcarlton

[Sir Handy Booboo]

Thanks guys

 

I did find out that there is a 115-50000 unit which is a 4 unit version instead of the 6 unit version that you see on these vids.

 

I needed proper specifications so that I can scratch build this train as they don't sell it except in N scale.

 

If anyone can send me a link or ideas where to find some more info or a model train guy who is japanese but can write in english that would be great.

 

Thanks Sir Handy Booboo

[Mudkip Orange]

This "I'd call it light rail" conversation is fun, because for the Japanese private railways, that actually *is* what's going on.

 

The best way to understand this is to rewind the clock about 80 years. Circa 1935, Japanese commuter interurbans are almost identical to Midwestern US interurbans. You have single-track working, one-to-two car operation, electrification at 600 or 750 VDC. From this point the two countries' systems diverge.

 

In the US, we pass the Wheeler-Rayburn act which means the electric company can no longer maintain money-losing rural interurbans as a tax strategy. By and large, they fold. In several instances, the rural/intercity interurbans get cut back to more streetcar operation. Cleveland's Shaker Heights line is curtailed from Gates Mills to Green Road; Philly loses the 103/104 to West Chester, but retains the 101/102 through Upper Darby. The PE to LBC and the remaining portions of the Key System fold in 1958; the Skokie Valley line is out in 1964. Aside from the US Standard LRV (which doesn't work and which only two cities buy), the feds spend the next 20 years pushing express metro, giving us systems like BART, MARTA, and the architectural-significant deathtrap that forms the backbone of DC. Since the Boeing-Vertol LRV sucks so bad, American and Canadian transit agencies import German-spec trams, kicking off a still-ongoing era of restoring old interurban lines to all-stops LRT.

 

Meanwhile, in Japan, the interurbans remain profitable, and can compete with the steam railroads favorably on speed. As a result, they continue investment in their physical plant - Kintetsu's system-wide regauging in the 1950s is one prominent example - and as part of this, platforms are extended to allow longer and higher-capacity trains. Electrical systems are also upgraded, generally to 1500VDC. The speed and capacity upgrades, with longer trains, bring the Densha interurbans into the same league with most of the rest of the world's commuter rail systems, which are EMU services that evolved from steam. These include ex-Pennsy systems in the US, like SEPTA or the LIRR, the entirety of the London suburban network, the French RER, and the German S-Bahn.

 

If you have to pick one category, major-city Japanese rail operations are clearly commuter rail. With one exception, no US LRT operator runs trains longer than 75m, while the standard big-city Jtrain is 120/160/200m, with some Tokyo services extending to 320. However, the interurban descent of the Japanese commuter services is still reflected in usage of the word Densha rather than Ressha. And residual bits of old-style interurban running - some street trackage here, a flange-squealing corner there - can still be found across the systems. That's part of what makes them so charming.

[kvp]

I think the key difference was that american interurbans were mostly kept for the tax break (and not improved), the japanese interurbans were profitable and got improved to improve the profits as well. The key difference is urban density, which makes japan an ideal place for commuter trains and north america the worst possible, thanks to large sparsely populated sleeping towns. In New York, where urban density was high enough, the interurbans became the basis of the current urban heavy rail system. In that case, the evolution lead to the same network we see in Tokyo.

 

Let me bring an example from Budapest, Hungary. After the end of WW2 the old electric interurban systems (HEV) were split between two groups. Ones that got improved (like grade separated) to became heavy rail commuter lines and are still called HEV and using at least 6 car heavy rail trains (HEV = Helyi Erdeku Vasut = Local Interest Railway), while the rest (with too much street running) got included into the tram network and nowdays run with 2 or 3 car light rail trains (mostly tatra pcc-s) and are treated as simple tram lines. The country HEV-s (the 'intervillage' lines) by then have already became heavy rail branchlines operated with early dmu-s for passengers and steam for freight. Later the smallest streetcar lines that ran in narrow downtown streets that couldn't fit large tram cars (pcc sized ones) were switched over to trolleybuses. The grand boulvard lines (part of it is one of the first electric street running tram lines in the world from 1887) are nowdays run with 6 car low floor trams providing light metro capacity on 100% street running trackage. This leaves most old interurban lines as either heavy metro, heavy commuter, normal heavy rail or tram lines.

 

So it wasn't the tax breaks, wasn't any competition with steam railroads, but the population density that could support an electric system or not. In the US, if the electric interurbans tried in time to switch to oil (internal combustion) operation with longer trains then most of them could have survived long enough to be wiped out by the automobiles and the large scale suburbanisation after WW2 that could no longer be served by any form of public transportation. This was the time when the old streetcar neighbourhoods were replaced by suburbia. In Japan however, the streetcar neighbourhood is the default form of residential architecture even today and even so called 'new town'-s follow this old pattern, keeping rail transit viable. (aided by that the developers are usually the rail operators themselves)

 

ps: The hungarian word for 'tram' is 'villamos', wich means 'electric' (like densha), showing that mostly the electric traction directly replaced the horse cars (just 8 years after the invention of the electric train by Siemens) so steam trams (mostly steam railmotor cars) were very rare and already looked upon as ancient technology by 1900. The first Budapest tram line ran with a control motor car-control trailer configuration and used one of the first (if not first) emu-s i know of. (it was an experimental technology, very much like the electric underground in 1896 with the first 100% low floor electric multiple unit trains, the electro mechanical ATC and using one man operation from the start)

[katoftw]

Too much interurban this, interurban that.  I don't think that has anything to do with it.

 

For me light rail is just a smaller version of rail vehicles.  It has nothing to do with lengths of consists or running/route distance.

 

Light rail generally had shorter individual car lengths and narrower loading gauge.  These light rail vehicles tend not to have the capacity of the larger rail vehicles.

 

I don't think consist number had anything to do with it.  2 cars or 100 cars.  If the cars are designed smaller than regular rail vehicles, then it is light rail.  Which is why I questioned originally why the 50000 series was classed as LRT vehicle by said poster.

 

Is Kumamoto Denki Tetsudo light rail, 2 car consists?

Is Keihan Sakamoto-Ishiyama Line light rail, 2 car consists?

Is Kiha 220 light rail, they run as 1 and 2 car consists only?

Is Toei Arakawa Line light rail, 1 car consist?

Edited June 20, 2015 by katoftw