Follow the Sakura Tram Alterations

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Internal Inspection of the New/New Chassis, Motor & Gear Box.

My initial thought on this new/new version of the Plarail Chassis was that it would have a simpler gearing arrangement than the new/old version because the motor was directly over the drive wheels which would make repairs a lot easier...I was wrong.

These gears will be very hard to source for replacement if needed. Even if you could find a source for some of the gears the main shaft is not round...its a hexagonal shaft so good luck finding the gears with a hex hole in the middle. Even the gear on the motor and drive axle is very different would be hard to find imo.
It sure would be nice if Plarail would release Repair Kits for the different versions of their gear boxes. These kits could include replacement gears couplings and rubber tires. They could charge whatever as I believe they would be popular. But I am sure they would rather have people buy another whole new train than to repair broken ones so this is just my pipe dream.

I have even better idea (and it's a dream too, I know): they should make entire chassis with motor and everything that we can replace if motor dies. You see, I'm no expert in motors (in fact, I do not know almost anything about motors), and what should I do if the motor stops working? In many cases I can't just buy another train, because it's not availible on the market at all. What then? The easiest way would be to buy a matching chassis with motor &tc, and put the shell body on it, no?

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Thats a great dream Mr-No and with the ideas that most all new trains will be able to use either the new/new chassis or the new/old chassis (they are interchangeable) are universal, it would be easy to just offer a complete chassis for sale.

I sometimes wonder why there are so many variations of chassis. Tomy prides themselves on a consistent track system for decades yet the engines are so varied and disparate.

It doesn't seem like a very efficient manufacturing strategy either. Wouldn't it be cheaper/easier to have a common, universal platform?

Wouldn't it be cheaper/easier to have a common, universal platform?

That's the direction they've taken with the Plarail Thomas range, with the result that the new engines (Edward, to pick just one glaring example) lack variety in the wheel department in the same way that the TM Revolution range does.

@ Finno

...or two or three universal platforms, to cover the entire range.
And a possibility to buy the chassis separately, for quick repair of the old failed motor.
I think that would fix the problem.
But I'm aware it's a dream.

There really are too many variations of the engines. For example, you simply can't put Seibu trains on the same track with Keiku trains. Both are one-speed-engines (I have 3 of each) and Keiku trains are so much faster that they would catch up on a Seibu train in a heartbeat. Why? Wouldn't it be nice to have same speed trains of a certain kind? This Sakura tram can beat some Shinkansens.

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I wanted my Sakura Tram to be like a single unit Street car/Trolley its why I bought it. But to make it look that way I had to remove the rear coupling. This was easy and might be fine by itself but I thought it left an ugly view of the opening of the coupling compartment. I wanted to come up with an idea that just wasn't permanently gluing a piece of plastic to cover the opening. I wanted something that could easily be installed and removed in case, in the future, one would want to return it to a coupled end.
 
This is what I came up with. I call it the 'Coupling Plug'. I could have taken the time to try and mix a paint color to match the burgundy which would look perfect. I could have also matched the gold stripe too but I didn't want to take all the time experimenting with mixes to get a match. Maybe in the future but for now this will have to do.

The plug looks very nice, much better than just a hole when the coupling is removed...
Is the plug removal? Can you removed it easily, if you one day wish to install the coupling again for some reason?
And can we see it in a video on the layout, please?

[Super]

Yes, the plug is just like the coupling that it replaced. It can be removed and installed just like a coupling.

Well that's great!
And what about seeing your "refurbished" tram on your layout in a video? 
(I know I'm a bit too persistent, sorry!)