Anyone Know???

[Super]

Anyone know where these road pieces are from?




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KChOseBllHk

Looks like a guards van to me, is it one of the wagons that come with one of the real world steamers that have a coach and a caboose/baggage car or something?!?

[Super]

LOL...Dolt moment...I uploaded the wrong picture. The right picture can now be seen. Doh!

I did wonder when you said "Road Item" and had a wagon circled, but I figured maybe you just had a senior moment or similar

I'm not sure where those parts came from definiitively, but Tomica do also have a car only system the name of which eludes me (my senior moment ) but its something like Tomica motorway and its intended if I recall correctly for the motorised vehicles or diecast cars.  That had all sorts of slopes, ramps etc...  I only know about it as I narrowly lost out in an auction on eBay a couple of years back - they don't come up very often as they are a Japan only release I think...

[Super]

Thanks Nigels

It would be nice to know more about that nice silver tram behind the slopes/ramps...
I suppose it's a custom Doraemon tram...

[Super]

I just can't find any road pieces that even come close to the ones in the video. I assumed that they were from Tomica but maybe they are from something different. If you look closely at the dual lane ramp, it had to be shimmed up for it to be high enough for a train to pass under.

Mr No...Watch the Linked video above...its all about that silver Tram.

OK guys, I might be able to shed a little light, and believe it or not, it's because i'm British, and this track is [technically] a British thing 

I'd better explain.

Basically, I also saw a listing on Jauce for this type of track as a set, packaged and presented as a Tomica product, and my jaw hit the floor, because I immediately said to myself 'Matchbox road in a Tomica box?' as I was looking at the same stuff I had as a kid, Matchbox Motor-City roadway. [If I find another picture, I'll put it here, because it would prove what i'm on about - I swear the box had the Matchbox logo as well, and was (possibly) a re-package of one of the Matchbox Motor-City sets just with a Tomica overlay and Japanese stickers]

Matchbox, for those who don't know, is basically Britain's answer to Tomica - I say this because it shares more than a few commonalities with Tomica [aside from the obvious of being die-cast cars], which managed to reach similar levels of success before fading into [kind of] obscurity, or more accurately, becoming something almost entirely unrelated to it's origins.

Matchbox cars were extra-detailed scale-models, packaged in single-vehicle boxes in a numbered range, with a rotating selection of models [just like Tomica]. Being British, many of the British auto marques were represented, and like Tomica, provided blueprints and other materials to help the Matchbox designers create more accurate models.

Beating Hot Wheels to the UK market helped them become the entrenched UK brand through to the end of the 1980's, but ironically their reluctance to emulate Hot Wheels and retain their British feel was their downfall, and they were bought by Mattel in the 1990's, with the line merged into Hot Wheels, being relaunched as a sister brand in the 2000's, variously being marketed as a cheaper alternative to Hot Wheels, or as a similar but distinct line of vehicles and playsets mostly unrelated to their pre-Mattel counterparts.

Motor-City was, in short, Matchbox's British attempt at something along the lines of what Tomica did with the 'Tomica Town' system, that is, connectable road tracks and a series of playsets and buildings designed to allow the user to build their own city with die-cast cars. Interestingly, the entire line seems to have borrowed several ideas from Tomica, including the use of clip-on road signs to attach to the road for extra realism, sets that were user-customisable using interchangable stacking parts, and other ideas.





Note here in this 'Motor-City 400 set', there's some very familiar looking ramps in the back, answering Super's question [Look closely at the picture in Super's post, you'll also note the straight track pieces at the top and bottom are also the same type]  





In that way, because of the similarities, it's fascinating to me that it ended up becoming a part of the Tomica line, especially since Tomy, through Tomica, had actually developed and pioneered many of the concepts that Matchbox seemed to try and emulate for Motor-City   That, and of course any more links between Tomica and my childhood are most welcome lol

[Fun bonus fact - Matchbox's Japanese links weren't just limited to Tomy either - They are also well known as being the international brand responsible for importing, and somewhat modifying Bandai/Popy's designs for the various giant robots from several anime sold as Voltron in English speaking regions]

When I was a kid I had so many "Matchbox" cars, and I never knew there were "Matchbox" road pieces...

I've seen Matchbox/Hotwheels sized cars made by Takara Tomy along side smaller Thomas characters. It could be a road system for them.