My Rokuhan starter set just arrived and I'm very happy with it, my first train set since playing with my dad's old one as a child. I went for the DD51 starter set and a few extras, so far I'm very impressed with the quality of it. I have found it hard to find much in the way of reviews etc. so hopefully some of this information can help someone in future. My fledgling layout with a couple of turnouts, I just really built this from what I have, no planning. I will start planning something a bit more interesting and hopefully buy new track next month and have a good bit more surface area! My turnouts are from the Siding set that Rokuhan make which includes both a left and right turnout plus some extra track. The locomotive that comes with the set is a DD51 1000 A Cold district type (Renewed design), in Japan Freight Railway Company (JRF) livery. It's a single shaft motor with directional running lights and the build quality is impressive, reassuringly weighty and solid. It seems to perform well at slow speeds but can also go surprisingly fast! There is one small thing that is annoying me, but it's possible I'm just doing something wrong. The middle truck is free floating and on a spring, I found it quite hard to set this on the rails even using the re-railer that was included. It will also hop off the rails sometimes, although this doesn't seem to slow the loco down, I suspect maybe it's because I am going through the turnouts too fast? You also get two Koki 106 blue freight cars, with 6x 20ft containers (2x of each design), the detail on these and the containers is again very good; I also got a set of two Taki1000 Tank cars in Japan Oil Transportation Co. livery, mainly because I really liked the color, again, very nice details; The rails are very easy to set up and take down, with the built in road bed it makes it very easy to connect them. You don't need a specific power connector set of rail as all the straight pieces have a small piece that can be temporarily removed to allow the power to connect. The Set comes with the RC02 controller, I had to get a separate AC adapter and a US to UK plug converter but you can also run it on batteries. It works fine and I like the fact that if I buy turnout switches they can be "snapped on" to the side, in future I will probably upgrade to the RC03 controller which has two turnout switches built in, but for now the RC02 is more than enough for my needs. I'm really looking forward to learning more about the hobby and designing a fun layout, my next purchases will be more track and rolling stock, most likely all Rokuhan. I will probably hold off on another Loco for awhile, I can't really run more than one at the minute anyway so I@d rather ensure that my layout gives me lots of interesting options to play with first. I've seen a lot of great layouts and modelling work on these forums and I hope to one day have something just as good to share with you all, but first, baby steps!
Awesome! Welcome to the world of Japanese Z Scale! I too mainly use Rokuhan and am intending to model mostly Japanese settings. The DD51 from Rokuhan is a great locomotive - I have one also. The center wheels are a bit finicky to place on the track, but you get the hang of it eventually. I'm not sure why the center wheels jump off the track for you. Are you running your locomotive very fast when this happens? I never run mine full speed. It seems to me that when I run any model train really fast (way beyond realistic speeds), I run into these kinds of problems and it's just part of the hobby. I could see this especially happening if you're going very fast over a turnout or some kind of crossing. The Koki 106s are awesome, which I have too, and I love your tankers. I considered getting the tankers but decided to focus my freight operations primarily on small 12' containers. You're going to enjoy fooling around with different layout arrangements. I would advice you to not set your track layout "in stone" too quickly. I have re-arranged mine numerous times. Another bit of advice is keep you track clean. My DD51 once got really dirty wheels from neglecting my track and I had a fair bit of work cleaning the wheels with toothpicks to get it running well again.
I might have been running it too fast then, still getting comfortable with controlling it. I'll try play around with keeping it at a more realistic speed, especially at the turnouts and see how that works out I do really like the containers and really like the idea of them being picked up from a big dock to be transported, are you just using the Rokuhan containers or are there other makes that fit well on the Koki 106s? Thanks, that's good advice. I probably won't have time/space to make anything too permanent for a while, I travel a lot for work. I'll experiment with some small layout designs and see what features I find the most fun before committing to anything big/permanent. I will definitely keep an eye out for the track condition, I'm already on permanent watch for cat hairs!
I'm just using Rokuhan containers. I'm not sure if other brands can snap onto the Koki flat cars. I found a small lot of used Rokuhan containers on an auction site for a very reasonable price, but I think I just got lucky. One thought I had for your track layout - it could be fun to arrange your two sidings together in such a way that they connect and you have a "passing." I understand you're not planning on getting another locomotive soon, but if you do get another locomotive, this easily allows you to have two trains on the layout at once. You can alternate running the trains without having to take one off and put the other on. You just "park" one train in the passing area. Rokuhan switches are "power routing" so when the turnouts are turned away from a line, it gets isolated and no power goes there, turning off the "parked" train. I recently rearranged my Rokuhan siding set to give me a small such passing. It is very convenient to switch which train I'm running without having to reverse into a siding.
That's a very good idea, I'll bear that in mind Thanks. I think I might look into getting a steam loco in the near future just for some variety, once money allows
Looks like a nice stater set though. I went with MT, Rokuhan Control, and Loco and cars from another manufacturer. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
