Japanese Tin Trains

No, but I remember seeing them on display in 5 & 10s on the wooden cabinets with the glass dividers on top.  If you were to post some photos I'll bet they would bring smiles to a lot of readers.

I have some Sakai O gauge electric trains. The loco looks like a miniaturized Lionel 675, and the cars look like 3/16" scale Marx.

I don't collect them per se, and here are the only pieces I have. I'd be interested in who made them. They are closer to HO in scale, than O. The red one just says "made in Japan" on the bottom, and the silver one has a friction motor.

 

 

I'm fascinated by the older Japanese tin.  I haven't actually picked up any yet... soo post some more photos :-)

I have quite a varied selection of Japanese tin. Mostly TN/Nomura and Bandai ho scale stuff but also Alps, Cragstan, Marusan, Sakai, Modern Toy, Plaything, Mechanicraft etc etc etc. My favorites are the Bandai Aerotrain, Mizuno panoramic train, Daikin southern pacific and some of the Kodama trains from Asahi and Modern Toy. also monorails.

My first trains were Japanese Sakai from the early 50's. The locos were models of Japanese electrics, the freight cars all copies of US prototypes. The locos are very nice, detailed, and similar inside to the US models of the day. I still buy the occasional piece, they are not expensive, but are nice.

Great pictures Jim.  Got any more pictures?  Thanks for the post.  walter wayne

Steve E and I both have a Bandai 413 HO passenger set. His is blue and red and I have the maroon and cream. Probably one of the more nicely detailed Japanese tin sets I have seen. I also have a Bandai Baby Texas Special set I picked up on the cheap, saw a similar set for sale on eBay for $849.00 but the box was in English, mine is in Japanese. Standard Bandai Baby freight consist with the exception of the engine.

One could always join the yahoo group

• Sakai and Seki Toy Train Group

in regard to Japanese tinplate trains.

 

Ron M

Attached are two Japanese tin sets, and a set of unknown origin, it is marked "Another Sago product" "Molded in Los Angeles". Enjoy. 

The Santa Fe set is plastic, not tin, but is one of my favorites, had one back in the '50s, found this one during the Extrav at Kutztown for cheap. 

Yes, the Sakai group is a small but friendly group. Sakai can get pretty expensive too, especially the 327 engines and the EB passenger sets. Several of their freights are often mistaken for Marx 3/16 units. Pegasus Oil tankers, Pacemaker boxcar, T & P gondola, etc.

This is a fun topic!    Who has more photos?

 Here's a few of mine.

 

Steve

 

This has all normal US roadnames & graphics

 

 

These are some of my favorites. The coaches look like prewar Lionel, Ives etc. I have the tender, but no engine.

 

 

So UGLY it's cool.

 

Not Japanese, but German Distler H0 tin

the 1001 diesel is by Rosko. Have seen them in several colors. They also make a nice crane car and several boxcars.

The website www.tintoyarcade.com has some contemporary tin on it including some Japanese commuter trains. One looks like an RDC but it is a floor train. Some others are wind up Oscale in very light tin.

Marusan used the Marx Super Chief/Lumar Lines fricition train stampings until they were bloody with about 10 different variations of friction and battery-operated trains.

a few more

I also found a Schilling plastic set, red steam loco, blue tender and two yellow coaches. Runs on 3 volts DC or so, on 3 rail 027 track. Picture later. 

schilling sets are fairly common except for the baby blue tenders. Marx made a similar series with T&S couplers that had light blue Pullmans and red, light blue and black steam locos.

Two of recent additions

The caboose is Yonezawa, the trolley is made by MSK, they made them in several "gauges" generally 7 inch and ten inch. This one is their Pennsylvania and have seen them with or without the road name, but they also made a metallic green version that had Santa Fe over the passenger windows.

two versions of the Alps shuttling trains. Did you get complete sets with track, dump car, unloader/relaoder, etc? I think the 723 set came with tin logs and the other one came with barrels?

correction barrel and box

Thanks Jim O'C, my Schilling has the royal blue tender. That is a nice group you have there. How do they run? Haven't tried it on my layout, as of yet. 

Thanks, Jim!

very toy like and the batteries don't last long. Schilling is one of the battery-based sets in my armageddon inventory along with some clockwork sets so when zombies take over the earth, I'll still be playing with my trains.

I always thought that many of these tin models were really neat and showed a lot of imagination and interpretation....

 

Alan

They are complete, I got them in the close out sale of Collectible Trains & Toys in Forney, Texas, as many of you know Pat Neil passed away back in June 2013.  They were probably in the warehouse and I was a regular at the shop and had never seen them before.