J.R. Series 500 Type Eva - video and layout work

Well, I got my birthday present! :) 

It's an eight car set, but I think I'm only going to run seven cars because...IT'S SO LONG!!!!

Sadly, I had to make a repair before doing anything. One of the wheels were off. Must have happened when they boxed it up. :(   Relatively easy fix.

Before I got it rolling without a derailment or a crash into the station, I had to do some work. There were three trouble spots on the layout.

Spot one was the area in front of the temple that I made a banked curve by clipping the Kato unitrack plastic on one side. It worked really well, but I believe that I banked the area a bit TOO much. The train runs through in one direction, but not the other.

Which brings to mind a Henry Youngman joke.

Man "Doctor, it hurts when I lift my arm up."
Doctor "So...don't lift your arm up then."

heh.

The second spot was another banked curve further along. Same situation. The train would derail every time.

This one seemed easier to address right away, so I got Soyokaze and Kiwamura's teams in action and started them working on tearing the banked track out.  :)

While they were working on that problem, I moved to the last area that needed to be addressed. Sadly, I found out the train would hit the station in Kiwamura when heading out or in around a curved area. BOOM! The whole thing derailed!  I just removed the station platform at that end and marked it for "augmentation" at a later date. I'm going to end up chopping it up a bit and adding a guardrail.

I'm very happy with the train overall. I actually need to give it a closer look - I realized that I tossed it onto the layout without REALLY looking it over. I'll have to take some detail photos.

I was really excited when this finally arrived. My wife watched as I opened the package and even asked if I wanted her to take video of me opening it because she knew how much it meant for me. :)

The packaging is really lovely. They knocked it out of the park, I believe. 

I'd love to hear from someone who has both the Kato and Tomix versions to see what they thought of them both. Which one is better, I wonder. Either way, I'm VERY happy with mine! :)

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