>>9521175Close friend of mine got me this little nugget: "Kato Pocket Line Series Electrical Freight Car"
I model 1950s-60s era Britain so I had no prior knowledge of Kato stuff but first impressions are great.
At an RRP equal to about £28 this set appears to be the Japanese equivalent of those budget Hornby 0-4-0s except it comes with two wagons as well. Despite this, the mechanism in this thing puts UK manufacturers to shame, N gauge or otherwise.
It's only a four wheeler but powered by a decent size coreless motor with a flywheel and, intentional or not, the chassis has some flex in the wheelsets giving a basic kind of suspension which helps keep all four wheels planted when running over shitty old pointwork and crossovers, combined with the flywheel it's one of the smoothest running n gauge models I've ever seen. This chassis is sold on its own for the equivalent of about £15 which really makes it seem like the UK manufacturers are taking the piss out of us.
Since I'm already fairly flexible on what time period and region I'm covering I plan to anglicise it as best I can, some red bufferbeams and yellow warning panels on the loco ends would probably suit it nicely...
