One hundred cars of solitude PDF Print E-mail
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
 
It's easy to find rolling stock and locomotives for an N-scale layout. Tomy makes a fine line of buses and trucks, which, although not cheap, look outstanding. There's a large variety of older (30s - 50s) style cars available. For a modern Japanese layout, there's one thing missing -- modern cars.

For an urban layout, you need a lot of cars. Not just the cars on the road, but the cars parked on the road and stacked up in lots. It's possible to get by with only a few trucks, but for realism quantity is key. Unfortunately, I'd never  found a supplier for bulk cars, until now.

While reading www.jnsforum.com, I came across a post about an e-bay store selling model railroad accessories in bulk . Going by the name "everydaygoodz " (opens in new window), it's nothing like an everyday model store, offering massive quantities of model railroad material at very low prices.

By low prices, I mean 100 cars for about 12 dollars (or 1200 yen). The item includes photographs of the cars, and while picture shows they're not of the same quality as the Tomy trucks, they certainly looked acceptable. Figuring that I had not much to lose, I ordered a 100, which I hope will be enough for a 4x2 layout.

As stated, shipping took a couple of weeks from Hong Kong, but my mailbox eventually had a cardboard box with two ziplock bags with 50 cars each. Actually, I didn't count, but there's about 50. Once you get past about 10, it's more like "lots!"

A yakuza driven black Lexus guns down a minivan
A yakuza driven black Lexus guns down a minivan


Let's start with the negative aspects. All the cars are of the same style, and generic, kind of like a Camry, generic Lexus or Mercedes. They're a bit like those architect's renderings of cars rather than being a specific model. There's only four or five styles, sedans and a mini-van. The wheels are integrated with the chassis, so they don't roll. There's an occasional mold mark on the bumperand some models have excess flash. The headlights are painted with silver or yellow paint rather than being plastic lenses. The same applies to the taillights. The windows appear slightly too recessed on some models. Out of a hundred cars, I didn't get a green one, which is sad, because my real car is green.

You can see the flash on the window from 2 cm away
You can see the flash on the window from 2 cm away

That seems like a laundry list of faults. But I'm really reaching here. Including shipping from Hong Kong, these cars cost me $20, the price of a couple of lattes at Starbucks. And Starbuck's lattes are terrible. Here are the good points:

  • The wheels are integrated with the chassis, so they don't roll. Yes, that's listed as a fault, but only because real cars roll. I'm not anticipating putting DCC in these things, and when I park them on a hill I don't want them to come rolling down. And I don't necessarily want to glue them on the layout.
  • The windows are tinted. They're nearly black, but a lot of cars these days have stupidly dark windows. While I think that's asinine in real life, it works well for these, because you can't see inside the car, so you don't have to slice it apart to put a driver in.
  • They're cheap like borscht -- These run about 20 cents each, whereas getting an imported Tomy truck or bus will cost 5-10 dollars.
  • They're generic. Nothing says "commuter traffic jam" like rows of more-or-less identical cars crammed together bumper to bumper. They look like the Toyota, Honda and Mazda sedans or other common conservative vehicles that line the streets of Japan.
  • The painting is quite well done. Although almost certainly done by machine, the detail is crisp and there are no grotesque painting blunders. Having a plastic lens on a headlight rather than paint is irrelevant if you're more than 30 cm away from it.


The conclusion

I thought this was one of those deals that was too good to be true. Shockingly, I was completely wrong. I'm a little sad that there's no green car, but taking a few apart and spray painting them green is not exactly a big effort. Custom painting them and detailing is always an option, and if you like the stock colours you won't need to basecoat. The faults of the models are quite minor and easily repaired if they really bother you. The slightly recessed windows occur on only a minority of the models and are invisible at a distance of 15cm or more.

Everydaygoodz offers a selection of prepainted people as well. Tokyo is nothing if not crowded, especially in rush hour. Painting 500 people would be a hideous chore, so I'm going to cram my station with prepainted people, and maybe stuff a few of them into the rolling stock or into the mouth of the attacking Godzilla. I'll let you know how they look a few weeks from now when they arrive.

Japanese side streets really are this narrow
Japanese side streets really are this narrow


 

 

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