Akihabara Station » Tohoku Line

Shogatsu: Festive Foam is Go!

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:41:56 +0000

White and red are the colors of the Japanese New Year, Shōgatsu, and (for now) our layout reflects those colors in white and pink foam. Amy and I have decided to name it simply “Shōgatsu”. Anyway, this weekend we have significant real construction!

I’ve always been rather intimidated by those 8′x4′ sheets of [...]

Shogatsu Layout (正月のレイアウト)

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:10:06 +0000

Last year, my wife Amy made a Christmas layout around our Christmas tree. It was made from a cheap second-hand H0 set, and lots of fake snow sheets and batting, and some terribly out-of-scale dollar-store Christmas village houses. It was terrific. We both loved it. In fact, it was that project that got me [...]

Review: Tomix 92950 "Yumekukan" (夢空間)

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:12:03 +0000

Happy birthday to me! This set was a gift from my wonderful wife. Actually, we kinda picked it out together, for reasons I won’t yet reveal.

The box reads “J.R. Limited Express Sleeping Cars Series 24 Type 25 ‘Yumekukan’ with Electric Locomotive Type EF81″ (which is far more terse in the original Japanese: [...]

EF66

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:22:50 +0000

Here is the most recent addition to my freight stable: A Kato EF66 in JNR colors (seen here pulling HOKI 800 ballast cars down the Ikea Line). It cuts quite a striking silhouette, doesn’t it? I bought this one used on eBay, and it’s a good runner, although the lighting board burned out [...]

EF65-1000

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:37:52 +0000

I just recently purchased Kato’s EF65-1000 in JR Freight (early) colors. Isn’t it cute? It’s a great runner, and an interesting prototype. Finding information on the prototype on the Internet, especially if you can only read about a dozen kanji, is surprisingly hard, however, and I welcome suggestions for addenda in the comments.

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