Ok, I Just Got To Ask...

Why, oh why, do Tomy put those horrid Yellow wheels on some of the PlaRail trains?

Obviously I know they are meant to be toys for young kids, but why? They take what are in some cases quite nice looking, fairly realistic trains and stick bright yellow or red (the red I can almost cope with) wheels on them which totally ruins the image.

Maybe its me and I'm just missing the point, but I had to ask, what is wrong with grey or black wheels?

If you do have to have Yellow or Red wheels why try to make the rest of the train look realistic? You may as well mold that in flourescent green with pink detailing and go the whole hog

[Ucwepn]

It's the Japanese way, I think the majority of recent releases have black or grey wheels.

Some of the older realeases have yellow wheels, haven't seen any new ones with yellow wheels yet.

I suppose the other question has to be can the axle/wheel sets be obtained separately (apart from cannibalising/scrapping rolling stock)? That way I could potentially re-wheel any of these loco's that I obtain in the future

I don't know. You would have to search on ebay, as im sure someone has figured this out or eyes our forums and cannibalizes locos just to sell black/grey wheels.

[Ucwepn]

They never sold spare wheels/Axles separately, the only way would be to cannibalize a parts train or buy them on ebay from someone who dismantles them.

[Super]

I couldn't agree with you more Nigels. I dislike the red or yellow wheels and have converted many engines and rolling stock to black or gray. I have bought tons of bulk purchases from Ebay that had lots of trains with gray or black wheels. I would swap out the wheels with the reds or yellows I had and then resell all the rolling stock or engines in bulk lots myself so I had lots of wheels. Also in those bulk purchases that would have damaged units that I would not resell so I would strip them for all usable parts including the wheels and throw the rest away. That all being said there are a couple of sellers on the Yahoo Japan Auctions that sell bulk lots of 10 gray wheels which I have bought before. They also sell the yellow and red ones but not so much the black. These sellers also sell chassis, motors etc to. I have a couple more to go. I just swapped out red wheels of a mod I am working on now, Trackmaster Dart with the black wheels from a Trackmaster Toby. I have used Trackmaster Tobys black wheels on a couple of engines. What I like about Tobys black wheels is they do not have holes in them for side rods so they look perfect on diesel engines.

Nice to know I'm not alone on my views lol!

I think the way to go long term will be cannibalisation as I can't see any wheels seperately on eBay(UK) but that shouldn't be an issue as I'm always picking up job lots these days

God what did I do when I found this site, as if I needed another bunch of collections lol!

[Super]

God what did I do when I found this site, as if I needed another bunch of collections lol!

Blame Ucwepn...I do!