On Friday in Osaka, I had some time to kill before catching my flight back to Hokkaido, so I went to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living to see a special exhibition of noted modeler (and multilingual world railfan) Nobutaro Hara's collection of large scale model trains. Almost all models were handbuilt by Mr. Hara in 1/30 to 1/45 scale (a few he contracted out body construction to Korean firms, though the electricals are his own). They are all exquisite, and some are absolute masterpieces, such as his model of an Italian FS E626 locomotive in 1/32 45mm scale. He uses coreless motors for his rolling stock where all motor bogies axles have a motor, which for the EMUs, makes for quite convincing realism, as the side profiles of the bogies have the right "look" to them, not to mention the appearance when the bogies are detached from the bodies. The E626 bogies even have miniature builders plates on them! He apparently exhibited his work in his home in Kansai on his "Shangri-La Railway", but his collection will be moved to the planned "World Model Railway Museum" at the currently under construction Yokohama Mitsui Building near Yokohama Station (and next to Nissan Motor's corporate headquarters).
This video has a short part covering the exhibition (starts at 1:44):
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/gjXBSlSujFk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/gjXBSlSujFk</a>]]>Image of proposed main layout in #1 gauge, featuring Hara's work:
http://www.hamakei.com/photoflash/525/Yokohama Mitsui Building site, with details of the proposed museum (Japanese):
http://yokohamamitsui.com/globalhub/museum/index.html*there will also be an HO scale layout with both modern and old Yokohama settings.
*the pictured loco is FS E626, which is made completely of German silver.
