The LNER Encyclopedia

Anyone else come across the quality of the Japanese Tomy Tomix range?
Not really researched it, but don't think they do much british, but I bought the obligatry Thomas, with Annie and Clarabel, from a certain auction site, and for 49.49 to the door, they are cheep, but of quality.
Ok, so they are higher than standard N, but the finish wins hands down.
Even the wheels are spoked, with no pick ups showing, and when it's running, the only sound seems to be the wheels going round on the track, you don't seem to be able to hear the motor at all, but the best bit has to be the realism. Behind the couplings, it has on the back of Thomas, and both ends of the stock, the hooks, so you could relistically chain them!

Tomix sell some Japanese stuff, and I've heard some good things about their working semaphore signals when they started shipping recently - I don't know anyone who has used them "in anger" yet
They're pricey, but should be easily adaptable for British use (Japanese signalling was based on UK practice. In some cases all you'll have to do is file the arms down so they have parallel sides)

I have the Thomas set which I purchased just over a year ago - mainly for the George Bush show last May.
I find him very popular at shows where we're the only railway. Conventional exhibitions have Thomas at every corner and over saturation occurs. However, he is very popular at shows like the George Bush Library and Wills Point (2 weeks ago) where we're the only layout.

In practice Thomas runs well - no problems with less-than-perfect joining tracks, electrical pickup, or couplings. At Wills Point I ran him continuously for two days, and the only maintenance was a wheel cleaning on Sunday morning. No other maintenance. The only problem involved my radio throttle!

Richard

I've had him running for over 30 mins now, no trouble, and you can hardly hear it, so you forget hes going round, with also a new Farish Pullman on the back, which looks smaller due to the scale difference.
Only thing I have of note is the flanges on the wheels might be slightly bigger as on one of my angled points, there is a slight wobble more noticable on the lighter stock.

Might get Percy and the Sodor Mail too now, which is cheeper, and comes with 4 different interchangable faces for different expressions...it's new!!

Just out of question, roughly what size is the chassis/wheel spacing? Could the 0-6-0 chassis be useful for use with any tank locomotive kits?

Thomas does look very good though and I'm tempted to get one just because I can!

From end to end excluding couplings he is 54mm
The wheels are 10mm across, and apporx 3mm apart.
And sat here with it at my computer, and nothing to compare it to, the wheels look narrower.

And a dooby dooby on the old spiders web, finds I need a Japanese translator, but apart from that, they might do a Eurostar.
The box holds nothing apart from the Copyrighting/Licenceing!

I have to work for a bit of today (Rood Ashton Hall is due in at 12:34), then out at 16:04in the meantime, I need to post a couple of items I sold on ebay. But after that, I'll take the screw driver to the bottom, hoping I take out the right screws!

I haven't taken mine apart yet! I suspect the mechanism is quite large for a true-scale 0-6-0 model.

I also have the S.C.Ruffey wagon which I converted into a coupling converter - ie. it allows me to haul my track cleaner (US gondola body with body mount MT couplers) behind a locomotive with Rapido couplers. S.C.Ruffey/Scruffy/track cleaner, geddit?

It has standard coupler pockets, so it is a very easy conversion.

Richard

No screws, it clips off in 2 bits, the body (easy) and the frames (very hard) I then leaves a Thomas shaped motor!

Got Henry now, which is far superior than any Farish, one thing I didn't mention properly were the wheels.
Instead of the one piece Farish metal wheels, they are a metal wheel with a pin in the middlle, and set in to the wheel, it the coloured spoked section, so it truly is see through (as far as the silver backing)

Anyway, on to Henry.
He has tender pickups, and has the most odd way of passing the power, of which I'll take a photo soon.
and the tender is on a 3 piece piviot, and so Henry can jack knife, if there ever were a piece of track where it could happen!
Oh and is rear wheel drive, as the tyres are on the back axle, so the motor is in the cab!

Finally, show accurate RTR models of Thomas locos! (even though I don't model N guage )

any idea which locos are in the full range? Including the narrow guage locos would be quite an achievement even for the Japanese!

At the moment there's Thomas, Henry James, and the latest Percy with 4 interchangable faces, plus other bits of stock which I don't seem able to get over here, and buildings like Stations and windmills.

I read on an Autrailan site that sells them, that Gordon is up next.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought I'd seen Gordon on sale over here in the US. Stock definitely seems to be batch produced, so items will be out of stock for long periods of time. 12 months ago, all the US suppliers were out of Thomas so I had to buy one in Japanese packaging via a supplier in the UK (is that double-grey market?? )


Richard

As far as I know, there's a 10 year catalouge, and things come and go, so it might be out, or it might have been!

So, Percy's the only one with interchangable faces?

A great shame that the others don't