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The Introduction Thread...


Darren Jeffries

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Greetings,

 

Hi everyone!

 

My name is Ricky and I have been in N scale since the early days(1970).I am a QC engineer in the oil and gas industry.Currently I live in southern California.I model Midwestern and western railroads and the current layout is based a portion of the Santa Fe Chicago-LA mainline on the Kansas City to Albuquerque section from the 1950's to date.Major RR"s that connected with the Santa Fe (Mopac,TP,Frisco,KCS,Wabash,CB&Q,UP,SP,DRGW,Cotton Belt,WP) are also represented.I also collect N scale from European and Japanese railroads,especially high speed trains like the ICE,TGV etc.Most of my locomotives are from Kato,Tomix,Atlas,Proto,Spectrum,Intermountain and the majority of rolling stock is Microtrains. My layout is only about 20% complete as I am travelling quite a bit so progress is slow. I'm looking forward to sharing N scale railroading information on this forum.

 

I will be travelling to the Osaka/Wakayama area in a couple of weeks. Can anyone provide names and addresses of some good train shops?

 

Thanks,

 

Ricky

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CaptOblivious

Greetings,

 

Hi everyone!

 

My name is Ricky and I have been in N scale since the early days(1970).I am a QC engineer in the oil and gas industry.Currently I live in southern California.I model Midwestern and western railroads and the current layout is based a portion of the Santa Fe Chicago-LA mainline on the Kansas City to Albuquerque section from the 1950's to date.Major RR"s that connected with the Santa Fe (Mopac,TP,Frisco,KCS,Wabash,CB&Q,UP,SP,DRGW,Cotton Belt,WP) are also represented.I also collect N scale from European and Japanese railroads,especially high speed trains like the ICE,TGV etc.Most of my locomotives are from Kato,Tomix,Atlas,Proto,Spectrum,Intermountain and the majority of rolling stock is Microtrains. My layout is only about 20% complete as I am travelling quite a bit so progress is slow. I'm looking forward to sharing N scale railroading information on this forum.

 

I will be travelling to the Osaka/Wakayama area in a couple of weeks. Can anyone provide names and addresses of some good train shops?

 

Thanks,

 

Ricky

 

Welcome! We've got a thread around here somewhere by Disturbman with information on the shops in Osaka; I used it myself, and can vouch for it. Basically, find Den-Den Town near Namba Station, and go nuts ;D Look for Poppondetta (huge!), Hobbyland Pochi (lots of high-quality used stuff), and there's one other one that had some very good sales on certain items. Here's the link, I found it:

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,2658.msg33764.html#msg33764

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Hey all -- great to find this!

 

I've been mildly obsessed with trains since I lived in Tokyo 20+ years ago but have only recently started scratching the modeling itch.

Right now I just have a couple of N-Scale starter kits and am still contemplating what "layout" means to me.

True story. My last trip to Tokyo, the return to Narita took me six trains. This was neither optimal nor planned, but it was slightly amusing. Starting in Roppongi, I took the Hibiya line, transferred to the Tozai line, and took that to Funabashi.  If you want to see a busy suburban station, Funabashi gets a ton of traffic and is fairly amusing.  From there, took the Sobu line to Nishi-funabashi where I had breakfast with some friends, then boarded the Keisei to Narita. Well, it was towards Narita, but stopped at Sogosando. Then I changed to a train that took me to Narita--the stop, not the airport.  Hilariously, the friend I met in Nishi-funabashi came up to me on this train and said, "Reid, you got on the wrong train!!". Switch over to yet another train, and boom, there it was.  Good times. 

 

Cheers

Reid

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CaptOblivious

Reid, welcome to our little nerd haven. You'll find some people here who would deliberatly choose to disease many trains as feasible :)

 

Don

 

 

Hey all -- great to find this!

 

I've been mildly obsessed with trains since I lived in Tokyo 20+ years ago but have only recently started scratching the modeling itch.

Right now I just have a couple of N-Scale starter kits and am still contemplating what "layout" means to me.

True story. My last trip to Tokyo, the return to Narita took me six trains. This was neither optimal nor planned, but it was slightly amusing. Starting in Roppongi, I took the Hibiya line, transferred to the Tozai line, and took that to Funabashi.  If you want to see a busy suburban station, Funabashi gets a ton of traffic and is fairly amusing.  From there, took the Sobu line to Nishi-funabashi where I had breakfast with some friends, then boarded the Keisei to Narita. Well, it was towards Narita, but stopped at Sogosando. Then I changed to a train that took me to Narita--the stop, not the airport.  Hilariously, the friend I met in Nishi-funabashi came up to me on this train and said, "Reid, you got on the wrong train!!". Switch over to yet another train, and boom, there it was.  Good times. 

 

Cheers

Reid

 

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Hi everyone, introducing myself.

My name is ISO8, I'm Japanese and working in Tokyo.

Sometimes posting train movies on YouTube, as same name ISO8.

I found this forum on my posting video's analysis of embedded website.

and I have N gauge train , amount of 30 bookcases or over.

I'm very glad to find how many people love Japanese train.

 

Although I don't know in many cases for my nationality.

and I'm not good at English,as same as almost of Japanese,

but I make efforts to post useful for someone.

 

Thanks

 

ISO8

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Martijn Meerts

Welcome ISO8!

 

I'm sure you'll get a lot of questions since you mentioned that you're Japanese ;)

 

As for English, we're an international forum, and we definitely don't expect everyone to speak perfect English. Besides, I'm certain your English is better than our Japanese!

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Welcome to the forum ISO8 - I would be interested in your thoughts on the worldwide interest there is to your countries railroads. As you can see we have over 700 members and growing. Were you surprised to find that a forum like this existed that specialized in modeling the Japanese RR and how international diverse it is?

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Evening all...

 

Name of Darren. Being stuck out in the sticks of Akita, I have to model in order to get my train fixations - though we do have the rather singular honour of having our Shinkansens parked next to our local services at the station (though the speed at which the Komachi has to travel up from Morioka, you might as well not call it a Bullet Train...). We do have some nice prototypes though - like the Oni train - and I do think that all the stock coming to the end of the line get's moved out to us, so we see some very old stuff as well.

 

When I relocated to Japan, I switched from HO to (Japanese outline) N and recently, when the missus vetoed a new N layout I have taken up JZ Gauge as well (because I like a challenge).*

 

Please to meet you all.

 

D.

 

* Edit: This moved to Classified Ads/Wanted.  

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Welcome Darren - another member living in Japan. Real Estate is one of the biggest problems with building a layout and the landlord (aka wife) usually has final say. I would image that living in Japan, there is very little space to build a layout. Where are you originally from?

Glad to have you aboard.

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worldrailboy

had to throw this in here...this forum is really nice to talk on and its not too slow nor busy (you know how it goes, either only two posts in a week or more than a hundred per day)

 

I'll be honest about something, I'm pretty much looking at only modelling japan and certain parts of europe alone at this point. still have to sell off more of these old trains here even that HO hersey boxcar too

 

other countries even north america just aren't interesting me much anymore for so many different reasons that I don't know about going into now here :-)

 

would anyone think it'll be weird for someone to want both Microace N and a little bit of used Bemo trains in the same house? hehe :grin

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welcome is08, worldrailboy, five sticks and iron horse.

 

 

 

Iso8 don't suppose you are on mixi ? if so are you in the nscale group i am interested to know i some times post questions but my japanese is terrible  :laugh:

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would anyone think it'll be weird for someone to want both Microace N and a little bit of used Bemo trains in the same house? hehe :grin

 

I don't think so: I have some Portrams at home plus a nice collection of British N Gauge models and a few years ago I sold my Hungarian train collection.  :grin

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would anyone think it'll be weird for someone to want both Microace N and a little bit of used Bemo trains in the same house? hehe :grin

 

I don't think so: I have some Portrams at home plus a nice collection of British N Gauge models and a few years ago I sold my Hungarian train collection.  :grin

 

The same here: Japanese N scale (growing), South American On30 (stagnant), Mexican HO/HOn30 (starting slowly, plans for a possible dual-gauge sugar mill), US HO (stagnant, to be incorporated into previous entry).

 

Cheers NB

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Martijn Meerts

Hmm.. Swiss Z-scale, German 0-scale, German/Swiss H0-scale (and a Big Boy), and in N-scale, Japanese, German, Dutch, French, American :)

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martijn any chance that involves Lenz locomotives for O scale? hehe

 

I'm still trying to figure out an online arnold product list tho but if anyone know of any good one feel free to message it to me

 

NB interesting, first time I have actually heard of someone going after modelling mexico

 

iso8, 30 bookcases??!! is that all just about trains or are there actually other subjects too? :grin

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Hi everyone,

 

Ian from Huntingdon in the U.K. here. Thought I'd say "hello" having just registered today.

 

I'm probably something of an imposter at the moment having no Japanese trains at all, though my Kato unitrack M2 and V3 track sets should arrive tomorrow. If only the hobby shop had kept their website up to date I'd have had something to run on it too! But it may be blessing. I was thinking of doing Model Railroader's 2010 project layout, the Salt Lake Route, but having had a phone call to say the Kato BNSF C44-9W and ADM tanker weren't in stock, I found this site and a photo of the beautiful DF200 and am suddenly thinking Japanese. Not the Salt Lake Route obviously!

 

So, having been into British N (35 years ago, hopeless), British OO (30 years ago, equally hopeless), US HO (6 years ago, nice but a real space hog) and On30 (1 year ago, was seduced by the idea of a logging empire), can anyone tell me why I should want to go Japanese N scale?

 

Best

 

Ian

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welcome ian!  we can convert you here im sure!

 

the alure of japanese rr modeling is all about richness! there is the largest variety of trains to choose from in both prototypes and models in production. The quality and pricing is also an amazing bang for the buck even with the weak dollar right now. Also if you like interesting looking trains japan has them in spades from the classic looking, to futuristic looking, to painted trains with lots of fun stuff on them. the scenes are fantastic as well as trains are everywhere in japan so you can find prototypes for just about anything you can imagine! trains running under high rises, very rapid scene transitions, trams in many cities, etc.

 

take a look at our club website to see a few more reasons why we do japanese trains!

 

http://japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan.html

http://japanrailmodelers.org/pages/faqs.html

 

and a few different layouts hilighted that show the variety of what you can do

 

http://japanrailmodelers.org/pages/otherlayouts.html

 

im sure you will get an earful fast to convert you!

 

again welcome and i hope you like what you find!

 

cheers

 

jeff

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Thanks for the warm welcome Jeff.

 

Time's getting on here, so forgive me if I don't get to review all the links tonight.

 

I've the day off work tomorrow so will have more time to spend soaking it all in then. And no doubt formulating a million questions to ask!

 

Regards,

 

Ian

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Ian - welcome to the forum.....members here are going to give you hundred of reasons to switch to modeling the Japanese RR. For me personally, the vast variety of trains designed for the Japanese Rails is unique with a flare for design. The Japanese are always "pushing the envelope" when it comes to design and/or speed.

As I said, this is just one reason and there are many, many more.......Also the members here are very friendly, eager to help one another and are just plain fun to interact with......I look forward to you posts.

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can anyone tell me why I should want to go Japanese N scale?

 

Why shouldn't you?!  :grin

 

But, really, I think my colleagues kind of nicely summarized it. Japanese RR goes from the crowded and chaotic cityscape to the most lush mountain roads with a few DMU actions. The variety of rolling stock available in N scale is important and in general quite cheap compared to its European counterpart. But, most of all, I think most of us are here for its unique flavor and exoticism. And some of those trains, like the painted trains, are simply enticing.

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Martijn Meerts

Worldrailboy:

 

I have the v100 and KöFII starter set by Lenz. Still planning on some sort of modular layout at some point, with all hand laid track and everything. It's even slower than the Japanese N-scale though, just don't have enough time =)

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martijn when you mentioned 'german' and 'O-scale' I had to first think of lenz since I know lionel is too american hehe

 

ia909...exoticism? you mean the unusual romancecar dome cockpit, the 'darth vader' navy blue train, KIHAs and emus in art/manga paintjobs, series 0 bullet, and a hundred more other example of looking quite different from each others? had to say that :grin

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