Christmas is coming...

For about the equivalent of £5?

Guess that means I got myself one now lol, it doesn't add any more to the shipping cost of my newly acquired Super Hikari and it's in pretty excellent shape, so now i've got both the UK and Japanese 'Tomy/Tomica Express' 485 units lol, nice to have the set I suppose

....., so now i've got both the UK and Japanese 'Tomy/Tomica Express' 485 units....

This is the basis of the Tomica World Tomy Express version:


and there's a bunch of other 485 Series variations with subtle mould differences:. L Express, L Limited Express Azusa, Red Express Nichirin, Kirishima & Hyuga (also in JR Kyushu Special Set 2, but with different engine numbers), etc.

[Super]

@P-Man
Nice pick up. The red and green makes for a better under tree train in my opinion.

@Dr Chris
The Red Express is my favorite as I was attracted to its all painted graphics and wonderful details on the front of both the lead and trailing engines. Much better that the other versions imo. It took me a while to get a hold of one new in the box as I believe it was a limited edition. Just look at that great box 😃

Trains all lit up for Christmas too? Check ✅

(I'll do a separate post on how I achieved this conversion for the princely sum of about £2.50)

And since I was on a roll with the 485 on top of the Super Hikari, I added a singular JNR blue passenger coach to my Jauce order, this one being one of the rear cab-car types with 'Fuji' boards.






Reason for that single coach was a seller here in the UK was selling a lot of 5 Plarail wagons which I also snapped up, and they're definitely Plarail and not Tomica World as all seem to be Japanese exclusives (although I think the black guards van may have been released here too? Idk 😐)



These included an older design of container wagon with JNR decals, the original car-carrier wagon (prior to the designs that could carry Tomica vehicles) and another JNR blue coach, this one being a middle coach rather than a cab car.

Well, this is good news for me, as I've wanted a pair of JNR blue coaches for ages to hook up to my Tomica World EF65, from the Mega Set. 



Anyone who owns one may have noticed, the loco in the Mega Set is actually a 'Fuji' branded EF65 that in Japan was sold originally with JNR blue coaches including the Fuji cab-car I have bought, whereas the version we got came with a container wagon and car-carrier in the set (either formation works as the EF65 Series was mixed-traffic anyway).



Pretty glad I have the matching coaches now though as I've wanted a set of JNR blue coaches for ages, not just for the EF65 but any of my JNR/JR loco fleet including my EF66 and some of the steam engines (Think ive seen images of C12 and D51s hauling rakes of JNR blue coaches around anyway )

[Super]

Hard to find the little cars for that Car Hauler as they are mostly lost or at the bottom of a toy box because they are so small and light weight. Nice scores P-Man. Look forward to seeing how you did the lights on the 300x (Class 955???)

Well, now I am impressed  I had no idea the cars were uncommon, moreso considering the set was only £10 from an eBay seller located here in my city no less [couldn't go and collect them in-person alas so I have to wait for postage].


Honestly, I might go do some digging about the Palitoy releases of 'Playrail' here on BPT just in case some of these might have come from one of those sets [age-wise I'm pretty sure these are pre-Tomica World, and the only other release of standard Plarail here before Tomica World was the 'Playrail' release], but IIRC those releases mostly had just freight wagons, and certainly not the JNR blue coaches I don't think, so I'm leaning towards this just being a lucky find of the leftovers from someone's collection of Japanese gear.

[EDIT - Nah, definitely not Palitoy. As I thought, those sets only had freight wagons, and a pretty limited selection at that, none of which are the ones seen here. This stuff is just some mystery Japanese imports that by weird coincidence, ended up in my neck of the woods lol ]

Reason for that single coach was a seller here in the UK was selling a lot of 5 Plarail wagons which I also snapped up, and they're definitely Plarail and not Tomica World as all seem to be Japanese exclusives.

Yes they are all Plarail, and old too. I got a bunch of good stuff from that same seller ( bu-659801 ) earlier this year, here are a few of them.....

     

I had a conversation with the seller who didn't know a whole lot about them, they said they were clearing out their late father's attic collection. I also got the 1988 Plarail catalogue that I posted here: https://www.blueplastictracks.org/thread-5385.html. You can see all the items you just bought in it (page 7).

---

The Red Express is my favorite as I was attracted to its all painted graphics and wonderful details on the front of both the lead and trailing engines. Much better that the other versions imo. It took me a while to get a hold of one new in the box as I believe it was a limited edition. Just look at that great box 😃

The Red Express was one of the 2011 Plarail Expo exclusives.

Wow I clearly missed those lol 

interesting to know all them were indeed part of a collection though  

Assuming this was collected in 1988 this person must have actually been to Japan and bought them out there, I'd say it's unlikely there was anyone in the UK actually selling imported Plarail back then, certainly not in the way we see now, so that's kinda cool

Also curious to see that they still had JNR branded container wagons in '88 even though JR had come into being in 1987, although I suppose even in real life there was probably a transitional period where JNR logos on equipment must have still been commonplace under JR, so it's neat to see even TOMY had the same transition within Plarail lol




Also seems this is the container type the old Plarail wagons are supposed to be representing - JNR C12 types (and no, not to be confused with the JNR C12 engines obvs )

No indication that I can find about these still being in use, and any that were still in use after '87 apparently just remained in JNR livery until they were gradually replaced with newer types in JR livery, as there's no pictures of any in anything other than JNR livery.

[Super]

The Red Express was one of the 2011 Plarail Expo exclusives.

Many thanks Dr Chris. I miss all the Plarail Expo Exclusives 😒

...seems this is the container type the old Plarail wagons are supposed to be representing - JNR C12 types.

C10, C11 & C12 all look pretty much the same.  The text on the side:
国鉄コンテナ
 戸口から戸口へ

Simply says
JNR Container
Door-to-Door

 

First photo Type C10/C11 photo 21-Mar-1972, second photo 18-Jan-1981