NIB Tomy Express Dark Blue Track Accessory Sets on German eBay

brtrainz

Not my listing, no experience with the seller.
Thought someone here might be interested as there are some tracks that I think are hard to find in dark blue:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Vintage-Tomy-Express-Tomica-World-Zubehor-Set-mit-Schienen-Weichen/163950645746?hash=item262c3851f2:g:1zoAAOSwVt9d0yPz
5 available at time of posting.

AOF04

Looks like it is only parts, no train. Code on the side of the box is 4300 which when they show the back of the box is not on the box, please is in the number range on the parts in bottom left hand corner, ramps and joiners.

Finno

Great find. I actually have this train with Tomy Express in red writing on the side. We had no idea where it came from until now.

The only other set I have seen like this was also all in German so it seems there was a line of Tomy Trains called Tomy Express released in Germany.

Here's the only other one I have seen. It doesn't appear to have the red writing on the Hakari train (at least on the box).
https://ttdb.info/entry.php?id=1

I will add this new one in. Thanks for the find.

chrisjo

Oh yes, I was going to write some more about the German Tomy Express series when I posted this in the Branded! thread, but I didn't ever get around to it. Thanks for the reminder! These are enhanced images from the box in the lot linked at the top of this thread.

Off The Rails

That’s very interesting! Although it’s a bit hard to tell, the dark blue track looks a bit different than the Tomy Train LEGO compatible sets from the 1990s.

Looking closer, I might be wrong about my initial observation and in fact, I think it might be the same dark blue track used for the Tomy Train line. I wonder why the sets sold in Germany used this track instead of the common Plarail “sky blue”?

Super

First time I have seen a Tomy brand in a German box, very different and very cool.

While looking at this Vintage Tomy Train Set I browsed around for more and came across one I had not seen or heard of.

Vintage Tomy Train Euro Park - Theme Park Set
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Tomy-Train-Euro-Park-Theme-Park-Set/264560494592?hash=item3d9908c800:g:Z5kAAOSwUrZd7ScL

chrisjo

Tomy Train stuff came with boxes and instructions in a variety of European languages on them, but on some of them at least not German, which suggests some difference in licensing arrangements over their lifetime that I haven't quite worked out yet. (So many questions, so few answers!)

I have the Europark set (bought new!) though the box is long gone. It has quite a few cardboard bits in it, including a trackside western-style saloon frontage on a rail base that features a pair of gunfighters that emerge as the train passes by. The 'drawbridge' features pale blue hippos & yellow crocodiles. The engine shed is re-purposed as a ghost-train with a scary bat that decends from the roof inside, and the pink tunnel has a fairy-tale castle perched on top.

The question of why Tomy decided to use dark blue tracks for Tomy Train / Tomy Trains / Tomy-Express when it had always been Skyblue Railroad in Japan is a very good one, but I doubt we'll ever have an answer to it. Is it my imagination, or is the dark blue track made from a harder plastic than the skyblue track, or was the plarail track of the same vintage also made of this material (which with age tends to develop splits at the joining tabs/recesses)?

Super

In my mind I always thought that the Dark Blue Rails were the first color and Tomy changed it to the blue we now see a bit later but thats just my mind talking to me. I also thought, that like the earlier regular blue track, plastic was in its infancy and the formula tended to deteriorate over time and become brittle. I have seen this and been disappointed several times when receiving the vintage sloped rails and the first time I try to connect a piece of track their male connector breaks.

Wow...upon further inspection of the Europark set, I see that they had an Auto-3-Way Splitter Switch Rail in Dark Blue which I only assumed that this was a more modern piece in the normal blue. I also see, Four, of the double length sloped rising over culvert rails where I only remember seeing any set coming with only one or maybe two of these.

Off The Rails

The dark color does seem to get more brittle over time. I have heard from people who supposedly know what they’re talking about that it’s an effect of the colorant used in the plastic which, when used in higher concentrations to achieve darker or more saturated colors, can throw off the ductile strength of the base plastic over time. The problem is that you can’t immediately know whether it will happen since most plastics become more brittle with age. It might be decades before THAT particular color suddenly starts to crack apart with only slight pressure. When I collected large scale GI Joes many years ago, old, blow molded polyethylene parts molded in dark colors would often self destruct after a few decades. The bodies of African American Joes were especially susceptible to this. Added to the problem is that the Joes made from 1963 to 1974 were strung with elastic ribbons and the tension could sometimes cause a figure to implode when the plastic became too brittle to resist it.