Sunday, September 21, 2008

OUCH!

That was the T gauge bug biting me...
Eishindo don't just make the trains and track. They also have a large range of accessories to enable the T gauge modeller to build a Japanese outline layout. Buildings, people, cars, boats, road signs, etc. Knowing nothing about Japan or its railways I took the plunge and bought one each of the three building sets A, B and (not unsurprisingly) C. Each set contains two or three buildings of various sizes from small houses to large apartment buildings. Some even with detailed interiors! 
Getting the buildings will help to give me an appreciation of what a T gauge layout could feel like. I'll be able to gauge what I'm getting myself into when I build some T gauge houses myself. I've built some trees, so it will be nice to get some buildings to stand alongside them. I ordered these from Hobby World in Japan. 
Also through the "talking T gauge" forum I got wind of the fact that PlazaJapan was selling T gauge track. I decided to get some so that my little train would get to stretch its legs a bit instead of just chasing its tail around the oval of track I bought. I placed an order for three packs of three straights. Each straight section is only 60mm long. So that's only 180mm (7 inches) of track. It doesn't sound much but when you think that each car of the EMU is only 45mm (less than 2 inches) long. Relative to the car length it's a nice stretch of track. The three pack of track is about as long as the 4 car EMU. So that means that I'll be able to watch the entire train on a straight section of track rather than a part of the train always being on a curve. But I'm getting off the point here.
I hopped over to PlazaJapan's ebay store. There they were, 18 packs for sale. The temptation to buy quite a lot of them was strong. I could get a really good start on a layout then. But good sense prevailed and in the end I settled for three packs. So that some other T gaugers could buy some. I went back to the store the next day and the remaining packs of straight track were all gone! 
T gauge is hot stuff at the moment...
So there we are. I've got buildings on the way. I've got some track on the way. I really should start thinking about what sort of layout I'm going to build.

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