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.
★ACI Toys
The fourth report will be an introduction of the Manufacturer in Hong Kong called "ACI Toys".
I would imagine there may be some of you that hadn’t heard of the company before.
ACI Toys is a company that deals with the 1/6 scale figures (or fashion dolls to be accurate) and their change of clothing etc, as well as 1/144 scale aircrafts and tanks, figures etc as well.
So why introduce them in Railway Models this time, you may be wondering... well, take a look at these.
•
40 feet Container Normal Ver. 8 pieces
*Click to enlarge
•
20 feet Container Normal Ver. 10 pieces
*Click to enlarge
It’s because there are models of containers that the cargo container fans would want to take a look at!
And it’s also in the 1/150 scale, the same size as that of the Japanese N-Scale.
*It’s only in Japan (and Taiwan and Hong Kong?) that N-Scale is 1/150 scale, so it is actually the minority when looking from a global view.
And the surprising part about these containers is that
the door opens!
I would believe that there are almost no companies that make their containers to have their doors opening. So
door opening = able to reproduce loading/unloading of luggage, which makes this so great.
Unfortunately we failed to take images of the products at the show, but I did get to have a play with the samples. The door felt slightly thick, but that makes the container itself a nice, sturdy model.
These models have a bottom surface (floor), so you may need to make some adjustments if you are to load it onto the trailers or trucks by other companies, or the container freight cars etc. I would imagine this is due to these models
being designed for stacking in dioramas of ports or container terminals etc.
There is a tiny issue with these, that it is a bit difficult to reopen the container once you close it, but that’s only natural, if you think about the fact that it’s a container for people of the 1/150 scale world to open,
and a person at 1/1 scale is attempting to open such tiny thing. I tried tapping the other side lightly a few times and that did the trick, although I’m not too sure if that was the correct way to open it.
The above containers have logos of transport companies that are familiar to the ocean freight. There are some that are also seen in the Tomytec’s The Trailer collection too, but its great to have variety, in my opinion.
Furthermore,
Have a look at these too, please.
•
40 feet Container Weathered Ver. 8 pieces
*Click to enlarge
•
20 feet Container Weathered Ver. 10 pieces
*Click to enlarge
Would you believe it,
There are even variations with
realistic weathering effect!
If you look at the cargo containers in real life, they are often pretty weatherworn due to the rain and wind etc. They may be dents and rust and paint peeling etc. but you could think of that as their medal for the containers that are
transported around the world.
However, weathering effect isn’t very easy for those that aren’t used to it. So it really is handy to have containers that have the weathering effect already applied, allowing you to recreate a realistic container base very
easily.
So it’s up to you which version you would pick!
And that will be it for the introduction of a slightly odd? cargo containers.
By Kapinozuka (I've kept it short today.)
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