Does anyone have or have experience with the Kato NEX Train (Narita Express)? I just received mine from Japan, and can't figure out the funky couplers. The instructions have illustrations, but of course the text is in Japanese.
According to the pictures, the u bend faces down, the leaf spring things clip onto the coupler, surrounding it, and then you push the cars together. I am sure this detail piece means you need larger radius curves, which s way they made it optional, and as a trim/detail part for the coupler. They’re strange looking for sure, but according to pictures they just push together, and then pull apart.
You were right, they just push together. I left the detail pieces off, they got in the way, and I'm not a rivet counter. Once I got it put together, it's a pretty cool commuter train. The second car is actually powered, the front and rear are dummies. Although they do have lights.
When I built a mabuchii battleship , all the instructions were in Japanese. I built by pictures and any problems I actually went to a Japanese steakhouse and asked someone to translate the problem areas for me , and paid them 5$ to do it. It's worth a try if there is one around where you live.
I have the older 253 version of this train, yours is the current 259 version. The couplers on mine and on all my other Kato Japanese trains just push together and pull apart. On the JNS forum I am sure you could find someone who could translate the instructions.
So they operate just like the Shinkansen, motor car in the middle and lighted end cars? Good to know! They don’t happen to use the em13 as the DCC decoder also, do they?
Thought maybe it might since the bullet trains all take the em13 under the floor. I was curious so I checked JNS, and it is decoder ready. So it does take the EM13. And of course it should also take two fl12s for the end cars for directional lighting on DCC.
