Dining Car - Japan National Railways - N scale/1:160 - Greenmax

[bianfuxia]

I just found this on my bench so I will build it during this GB.

 

As a sideline I have a little train set-up made of stuff I randomly bought on various trips to Japan. Usually these were family trips (my aunt has a place near Sapporo) so they weren't really for shopping. Usually I would ditch the wife and toddler at the station while we transferred between the rural train from my aunt's and the airport train from Sapporo and I would sprint the 500m or so to Yodabashi at the station, buy everything in sight that was on special or under a certain threshold, bundle it all up and sprint back in time to not miss the train. 

 

Some of it also came from a similar exercise in Osaka when we all went for my brother-in-law's wedding to a Japanese-Australian - one of the innumerable benefits of Australia's multicultural society!

 

Anyway since coming back to Australia I actually have a little more room after two decades in small apartments and so I have build a modest train layout and I picked this up from 1999.co.jp to add to my blue passenger train.

 

 

It's a dining car. 

 

 

You have to order the right wheels for it, but the 1999.co.jp website makes it relatively easy because it says which ones to get for this carriage and provides a link.

 

This kit is pre-coloured, although they also have blank ones. It includes a metal weight for ballast and a big sheet of clear plastic to make the windows.

 

I have four of these blue wagons already, so this dining car will make up the fifth car in my blue passenger train.

 

 

This will be the first train carriage I've ever made, but I can't imagine it's any harder (or even as hard) as a plane or a ship. After all, it's just bits of plastic to glue together!

[Brad]

Cool, always good to see train stuff.

[Mjwomack]

1 hour ago, bianfuxia said:

After all, it's just bits of plastic to glue together!

And with your building skills, none of it is going to be the slightest problem. As you probably know the only  real  'bonus' feature is getting the wheels to run freely and truly but as the bogies appear to come ready formed and likewise the wheel sets that should be a doddle. Also form working with Japanese material (I use Kato track) the engineering is always spot on.

[bianfuxia]

Haha thanks for the compliment! We'll see - but you're right, with the bogies being "store-bought" I think this is a pretty straightforward kit. 

 

I have the Kato track on my set-up and it is worlds away from the Hornby train I had in the 70s/80s when I was a kid. I honestly don't really think that thing even made it around the loop reliably. My Kato one works across points, drives slowly, and is dead easy to set up. Such a change for the better (or as I put it recently, finally I can get the toys that should have existed when I was a child).

[bianfuxia]

Well, I built this tonight. Started here:

 

First steps were to insert the plastic for the windows. I used the frosted one for the smaller windows in the middle, which I figure are the kitchen area, and the clear ones for the dining areas at each end. And I painted the big silver metal weight so that it wasn't too obvious looking through the windows.

 

The kit doesn't come with an interior, but I also didn't want to paint too much on this because I want it to fit in with the existing carriages.

 

The bogies popped in very easily:

 

It took very little time or effort to get the four sides together and the roof on. Fit was excellent.

 

 

 

Then it was time to add all the stuff that goes on the underside.

 

That took about ten minutes!

 

It's a slightly different style of carriage to the other ones in my "blue train" but it looks near enough in terms of build quality - that is, it doesn't seem too far out of place.

 

 

 

As you can see my mini railway world is something of a work in progress...

 

Anyway, two thumbs up to this Greenmax kit. It had excellent, I would say almost perfect, fit. Easy to build even with the instructions only in Japanese. 

 

Tomorrow I will take a few shots or maybe even a video of the carriage in a train.

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

4 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

my mini railway world is something of a work in progress...

Keep it coming. Interesting stuff.

[Brad]

Damn that was fast. Well done it looks great.

[PeterB]

Nice looking carriage.

 

Not a subject I know anything about so is this carriage a part of the same rake of stock as the other in your pic as it seems to be a different shade of blue at the moment? When you first mentioned "Blue train" I was thinking of the South African one!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[bianfuxia]

Yes the blue is a little different, but that's ok for me. The train thing is more of a "toy" for me, whereas my models are Very. Serious. Grown-up. Models.

 

There are other carriages available that match this blue and also are closer in design or style to this one so I might get some of those in due course.