Daiso Petit Trains

Ok, so the Daiso voyage continues, seeing as these trains are so cheap and more importantly the cars are sold seperately I wanted to get hold of more centre cars so I could run longer than three car units for things like the shinkansen's etc...

So I got in touch with our friendly japanese ebay seller and asked him if he could get just the middle cars which just also happen to be the train motor cars. He did, I ordered some and then they arrived (hooray!!).

Now one small issue with the Daiso power cars is that they don't 'free-wheel' and of course the connections between cars are normally two connectors on the centre car which connect to the head/tail cars using a clip on arrangement. I had seen a video where a guy got round this by stripping parts out and then adding eye and hook type metal connectors which seemed a bit of a faff, but thought I'd give it a go anyway.

So I started with a pair of the 'sunset express' type double decker coaches, the good news is it turned out to be a doddle, you just remove the cover, pop the wheels off one side of the axles, remove a couple of screws, out with the motor, battery terminals, cog, switch and then re-assemble the body. I also removed one of the connectors and the traction tires. Result a freewheeling coach that has a connector on one end and a bar for connecting the other, so it simply plugs into the middle of the train. Here's a pic of the de-constructed model;

I then decided to go one further and add some glazing (i.e. windows) to the train rather than leave it plarail style with just holes. So I cut some strips of clear plastic off the bubble part of the package it came in and using some polystyrene cement glued these into the inside of the car, the result as you can see below is pretty good;

Best of all though is the spare parts removed will not go to waste either, the motor (complete with worm gear) is ideal for replacing old/tired motors in the Takara PokeTrains I own, I have spare connectors if any should break on the Daiso trains and also spare traction tires for the Daiso's. Here's a pic of the parts removed from the two I stripped down;

P.S. Mr Ripley, if you think these battery terminals may work in your PlaRail engines you renovate let me know and I can send you some