My Kato TGV Paris-Ostfrankreich-Süddeutschland (Paris-Eastern France-Southern Germany) arrived in the post today! Although my heart is still set on the Thalys, the TGV POS is starting to grow on me. It will be a great addition to my growing inventory of high speed trains. My collection stands at two DB ICE1, two DB ICE3, one Shinkansen E4 MAX, one Shinkansen 700 and the TGV POS. I'm still waiting for the Shinkansen 500 to come in. I'd love to get an ICE2. Only Fleischmann makes that particular model, but it's way too expensive. Eurorail Hobbies has a ICE2 starter set priced at $800. Granted it is DCC ready and comes with a digital controller, but it's more than I am willing to pay. Besides, I'm still DC and would like to get the MiniTrix digital controller instead.
The detailing on the TGV is very good. However, just when I though Kato couldn't make a less user friendly coupler than the ones deployed on the Shinkansens, I was proved wrong. Talk about a poor design. There are two types of couplers on this TGV. The coupler on the locomotives were relatively easy to connect together. However, the couplers between the passenger cars were extremely difficult to snap together. In fact, I wasn't able to connect them fully. I didn't want to exert too much force on the cars for fear of breaking the coupler. That's why the gap between the cars was wider than expected in the photograph. Despite the poor couplers, I did manage to put the train through several test runs on the oval. It definitely runs fast even pushing ten cars.
I can't wait to get my railway station finished so I can display all the high speed trains together. Yeah I know it's not prototypical, but it's my utopian world. I just need to come up with a suitable name for the fictional city where the station resides.
The detailing on the TGV is very good. However, just when I though Kato couldn't make a less user friendly coupler than the ones deployed on the Shinkansens, I was proved wrong. Talk about a poor design. There are two types of couplers on this TGV. The coupler on the locomotives were relatively easy to connect together. However, the couplers between the passenger cars were extremely difficult to snap together. In fact, I wasn't able to connect them fully. I didn't want to exert too much force on the cars for fear of breaking the coupler. That's why the gap between the cars was wider than expected in the photograph. Despite the poor couplers, I did manage to put the train through several test runs on the oval. It definitely runs fast even pushing ten cars.
I can't wait to get my railway station finished so I can display all the high speed trains together. Yeah I know it's not prototypical, but it's my utopian world. I just need to come up with a suitable name for the fictional city where the station resides.
4 comments:
Again, I find myself agreeing with you! :-) The only thing worse than the connectors on the Thalys (although I found the locomotive couplers annoying and already had to order a replacement!) are the connectors on the Minitrix RAm TEE!
I have the same problem with my Minitrix IC. The cars are always decoupling. Very frustrating.
A follow up comment on the Minitrix mobile station versus the Fleischmann digital system....I think I know the ICE 2 set you are referring to, and the Fleischmann/Roco 'multimaus' controller gets a LOT of very favorable feedback from people who use it. I am thinking of converting to the Roco/Fleischmann system in the future. As for the Trix system's, I have the older Mobile Station (2 in fact) but I would not recommend them as they are not very easy to use for programming.
If you want to put a lot of high speed trains together in a prototypical way, you could model the Brussels south station, we have TGV in blue-grey livery(like the POS and older versions), Thalys, ICE 3 and Eurostar trains stopping there, coming from Lille, Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne and London.
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