Futuristic / Monorail style trains ??

Can't wait to see some results

Takara Tomy sells the Tomica System series which has similar gauge tracks as the old Motor Road and Rail tracks. They also have slopes, girders, block girders and scenery parts. The girders and block girders are compatible with the Plarail (Motor Road and Rail) system and stack on top of them perfectly. The only problem is that you cannot have a car block girder on a railway track because the height of the block girder is too low.

-plarnold

P.S. Isn't this thread supposed to be about trains? It's turned into cars now…

Ironic really as that's how I found this site, I was initially looking for information on the Tomy road system and then stumbled across the plarail range and then when I got a job lot had questions which led me here.

So now things seem to have gone full circle lol!

That is a great system that Tomy have, but the price is totally prohibitive from what I've seen. I would love to get some of it at some point, but I need to find a cheaper source lol!

Can't wait to see some results

Ok, well sorry to report back late, but I've been attending job interviews and such the last couple of days so didn't get round to run the tests I had in mind.

Anyway I have finally had a play around and here's my findings;

1. The cars do run very well on the Tomy track, pretty fast too, however this is when the track is flat. If you tilt the standard track they can't manage inclines as its simply too smooth. The actual real Tomy slopes may work as they have some grooves molded in them I believe similar to those found on the blue tracks, however I don't have any to hand at the minute so can't confirm this.

2. You can place the barcodes on the track and as long as the car goes over them correctly they do trigger the appropriate action. However if you wanted this to work definitively you would probably be better off printing some new bar codes on stickers that would span the width of the road as the cars are smaller than the track width and they may miss the standard bar codes unless they are on the correct part of the track.

3. As the Tomy track does not have any raised dividing guides built into it like the real Tagamoto track then you can't guarantee they will stay on one side of the track or other, although they will naturally hug the outside edge of the curves.

4. Finally although they may just about pass each other in opposite directions the road is not really wide enough to allow it.

Hope this helps

[Super]

Thanks Nigels

What a great idea of scanning the bar codes and print them out so they span the whole track. One could use the removable label stickers to print them on so they are easily removed.

Hi Super,

My thoughts exactly, when I get a moment I'll scan a set of the bar codes and make them available to all who want them.

Although in some ways it may be simpler to just integrate the genuine Tagamoto roads into a Tomy layout, the roads could probably be made to fit round things like the Hypercity car parks etc... and in some ways probably do look a bit more realistic what with the raised parts as they look almost like road markings. They are definitely an improvement on the current cardboard Tomy roads that's for sure

If you are in the UK/USA it is very cheap to buy the track sets at the moment. They can be got from Amazon very cheaply, in the UK you can pretty much purchase the smallest sets for less than the cost of a car alone. I've even found a supplier selling the enforcer sets for £9.99 and that as you know includes two cars including the exclusive police cruiser

good to know the tomy road works, if not 100%. thanks, nigels.