Hello, Kapinozuka here.
The "Miyazawa Model Exhibition" was held the other day (9th Nov), so I will continue with the report on Railway Model items that were exhibited.
★Modemo
As expected, the featured item was the
Hiroshima Electric Railway Type 5000 "Green Mover", and there were already a test sample displayed. We had Tominon
take a few photos for us, so let’s have a look.
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At this stage, it was still uncolored. It seems that the main parts had been colored already though.
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The windows are large, so you can see the interior quite well, and it seems that there are motors on both the leader cars and the center car.
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Image of the other side. I got the impression that the design of the front part has been done very decently too.
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The roof parts that usually can only be seen from the top of buildings or pedestrian bridges etc. You can see how compactly the antennae, air conditioner, and pantograph etc. are placed.
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The two cars that has no motors or bogies are the second and the forth cars, and they seem very tidy, and had secured space right up to the floorboard too. It makes you really wonder how the seats will be expressed etc.
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And here is a low-angle shot, almost touching the surface. You can barely see the wheels, as there are only so little space between the track and the floor of the tram. I have to say, that is one of the greatest attractions of a low-
floor-trams.
Speaking of low-floor trams, there are the Toyama Light Rail that had been turned into models by Tomytec and Kato etc., but they were the styles with
2 bodies connected to 2 bogies. However, this Hiroshima Electric Railway Type
5000 "Green Mover" that is to be made into a model by Modemo this time, has
5 bodies connected to 3 bogies. The N-Scale model tram of this type is the first to be made in the history of N-Scale in Japan, so it carries
great expectations. Due to the complicated nature of its structure, they may face some difficulties, but let’s wait patiently so that they can put their best into it.
You see low-floor trams of Germany or Europe etc. on ads or travel programs on TV sometimes, and I think it’s interesting to see trams that you can barely see wheels of, smoothly gliding along the road.
To make ease for passengers to get onto the tram, they had lowered the flooring, but the calculation of how small they could make the wheels, where they could store the power unit etc. there are many factors they had taken into
consideration, the birth of this design; a product of all these technologies combined. Compared to the trams of the old days, these types of trams really do have minimal ground clearance. This just gave me a realization of how amazing
the advancing of technology is.
For the Hiroshima Electric Railways, they have 12 formations of the Type5000 "Green Mover", and if you include the successor Type5100 "Green Mover Max", they become an enormous force. You can really understand that
Hiroshima is a city of trams, and at the same time, I think that the fact Hiroshima Electric Railways are so optimistic about introducing such advanced cars cannot be left out, when discussing the urban transport of the present.
As the rest of the items displayed at the Modemo booth were almost the same as the exhibit at the Hobby Show, I will omit those. And that concludes the report of the Modemo booth.
By Kapinozuka (I want to go back to the time where the Tokyo Toden had been freely crossing the city of Tokyo)