Christmas is coming...

Thanks for the info and the pictures P-Man. Do you know if Plarail made one of those  495 Series Maintenance units?

It doesn't look like it from the research i've done - The only model appearing on Google was a singular N-scale release by 'Micro-Ace' of the 495 Series from roughly the time the unit was last in semi-regular service [late 1980's-early 1990's].



[For what it's worth, the other Japanese notation referring to this unit was 'KuMoYa 495' which is the name the Micro-Ace model was sold under]

Can't say that surprises me all that much as this one was apparently a unique one-of-a-kind unit that operated in a very limited area of Central Japan under the JNR and later JR, whereas the 193-00 Series ran in and around Tokyo for a much longer period of time [retired in 2003 whereas the 495 retired in 1998], so the 193-00 probably had more immediate recognition? 

That said, the 193-00 also had the benefit of being visually very similar to the 485 Series which as we know TOMY already had a mould of, so one can surmise it was probably easier for them to make a repaint of an existing mould for a limited-run special edition than to make an entirely brand-new custom mould for a limited run of a very obscure train....

Then again, that's all conjecture, who knows, TOMY might surprise us one day and drop a special-edition 495 into our midst, who knows


[MINOR EDIT - So it turns out there's 2 versions of the Plarail 193-00! I searched 'Plarail KuMoYa' thinking maybe that would show if they made a 495 already, and wouldn't you know it, while there was no 495, there was a JNR brown/cream paint version of the 193-00, which was it's original colour scheme prior to getting the yellow/blue. Either way, kinda wild that an already rare and obscure variant of the Plarail 485 has variants of it's own ]