Tomica World Station

You never know where a simple thought is going to lead you, sometimes days later…...

Take for example this basic station building:



Its only appearances in any form outside of Plarail itself, that I know about, were as part of two Tomica World sets, the 1998 Mega Set 7422 (with 1987 Fuji Blue Train EF65) and the 1999 Super Spiral Set 7429 (with 1998 red Fresh Hitachi). Intriguingly, the picture on the box of Tomy-Express set 03 no.4261 also includes it, but it’s not in the set itself!
 

What, I wondered, were its Plarail origins?

A search through the catalogues that I have available shows this model of station making its first appearance in 1986, as こうか駅 (Elevated Station). Although not billed as ‘new’ here, I don’t see it in 1985.



You’ll notice that there appears to be a sticker attached to the front of the platform itself. We’ll come back to that later. In the 1988 catalogue scenic items have been given ‘J’ numbers for the first time. This station becomes J-22.



A Google search for プラレールJ-22こうか駅 produces no relevant results, and there’s no picture of it as yet in the new Plarail Museum. The last catalogue in which J-22 appears is 1992.

The same station appeared in a number of sets, starting with the 1988 2スピード新幹線セット(2-speed Shinkansen set), and making a final appearance in the 1996-1997 catalogue with the 2スピードつばさ号セット (2-speed Tsubasa set) and 人形あそびはじめてのセット (Doll Play Starter Set).
 

So we can say that this station had been discontinued by Plarail both as an individual item and as part of a set by 1997, but that it re-appeared in Tomica World in 1998.

One question that immediately arises is why it was called an Elevated Station, despite the fact that in every set it is shown sitting firmly at ground-level? There’s a clue in that sticker on the front of the platform:



The text is ゆめがおか駅 (Yumegaoka Station). Further investigation shows that Yumegaoka Station was an elevated single-island-platform station on the Sagami Railway Izumino Line, but that the current Yumegaoka station with its modern glass dome was opened in 1999. I haven’t yet found any picture of its predecessor. Incidentally, a search for プラレール ゆめがおか駅 is far more productive than was the search for J-22, but it still doesn’t produce a picture of J-22 in its original packaging.

One further twist is to be found in a picture of a station that has mysteriously gained two further stickers, the text of which is おかやま駅 (Okayama Station). Okayama is the starting point for all trains connecting the islands of Honshu and Shikoku via the Great Seto Bridge, and the set in which it appears, the 1988 近郊電車(ブルーライン) デラックスレールロードセット (Suburban Train (Blue Line) DX Rail Road set), includes a bridge that is clearly modelled on it.
 

Maybe the Okayama Station stickers were included in that set as an alternative? I don’t know.

Is this the only map of Tomica World in existence? It looks like a busy place.