It's Here!

Yes!

I arrived home from work today and there was a big white box stood on the doorstep. From Japan no less.

I was almost trembling with anticipation as I opened the box up to find two smaller boxes inside. The larger of the two contained the oval of track, controller, wiring and wheel cleaner. The smaller box contained the 4 car EMU. I knew it was going to be small. But nothing, nothing in the world can prepare you for just how small it is. It is scarily (yet in some strange way amusingly) small. I barely wanted to touch the cars but my wife and I couldn't resist smiling as we looked at them.

It seems to be a quickly developing tradition amongst T gaugers to post some photos illustrating the small size. I'll post some of mine later but I had to take the batteries out of my camera to use the power pack to run the trains. There is a mains power transformer option for the controller but that is a separate item.

The oval of track comes ready assembled (thank goodness) and all you have to do is hook the power supply to the track and you're good to go. The track is incredibly well detailed and moulded. You can easily make out the sleepers and stones in the moulded ballast base.

You'd think that putting such a tiny thing as this on the rails would be nigh on impossible. But to be honest I found it easier than N gauge. The key I think was the magnetic wheelsets that grab the track for improved adhesion and pulling power. You can definitely feel the magnetic attraction as the wheels touch the rails. If you can't feel the attraction then the wheels aren't on the rails. Its as simple as that really. The oval of track does come with a railing tool if you need help getting the vehicles on the rails.

I've heard that coupling the cars together can be a problem with these miniscule couplers but once again I had no real problems there.

So I got the 4 cars on the rails turned the power on and off it went. OK. So I just had to give it the tiniest initial nudge to get it going a couple of times. I think it starts of better when both power cars are on the straight track rather than having one on the curve. Nonetheless it is amazing to see something as tiny as this going around this tiny track. The speed initially was rather fast but after 15-20 minutes of running in I could get it down to something approaching acceptable. There was at times, a bit of wheel spin on the curves from the power cars. But its early days yet. We'll see how the cars behave after some serious running in. One of the two power cars does seem to run better than the other one at the moment. Perhaps some longer running sessions will sort that out too. Also its worth mentioning that these tiny motors exhibited no external signs of heat. The motors sound to be spinning like crazy and after 15 minutes running I was expecting to feel some heat in the body shell but no, it felt fine. 

Something else to mention is that the driving cars have running lights that change with the direction of travel. One white light at the front, two red lights at the rear. That's amazing on something so small. 

Everything comes very well packed and presented. In fact I ran the trains on the track without removing the track from the plastic tray it came in.

When I think that I paid less for this set than I paid for my last HO scale locomotive. Well the quality and value for money for this is just incredible. I don't know what else I can say about it. I'm in awe at the moment. I'm rapidly running out of superlatives. I just had to write about it straight away.