About a week ago I posted about finding some of the Tomy PlaRail Real Class train packs on AliExpress. Well not to be one just to tell people and let them take the risk I decided to buy one partly to check they are genuine (which it seems they are) and partly because I've just never seen one of these trains that everyone keeps talking about.

The one I went for was the 'Odakyu RomanceCar 3100 NSE' a 4 car set with leading (powered) and trailing (unpowered) cars and two central cars. It also has 3 pieces of straight track, presumably so you can display it instead of running it if that's what you get them for. I've not opened up the car yet, but the mechanism looks to by typical PlaRail based on the wheels etc... Dimensions are also PlaRail typical, although the finish is much improved to the point you even get glazed windows and interiors. I was a bit disappointed to find that the 'detail parts' have to be fitted yourself, this includes roofing and the pantograph's and frankly not a lot else. The instructions are a typical plarail little A5 sheet of double side printed paper and a little card with a QR code, presumably to a site telling you more about this set or the range (not looked yet).

So having seen one what do I think? Well they are a definite improvement and do look quite a bit more realistic apart from the stubby dimensions PlaRail delivers. Whether they are worth the extra money is another question, I would probably say it is on a knife-edge as I don't see them being that much better than some PlaRail I've seen in the past, although of course the current stuff is definitely getting the FP dumbing down treatment so I guess they are massively better than the generic range. Anyway here's a bunch of pictures to show you more, apologies for the dodgy pics, but they were just taken with my phone camera with the LED illumination on 🙂