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Tomy Freerail

In the early 1970s Tomy developed a series of plastic Freerail (フリーレール) train sets with neat flexible and cuttable rails that could be freely (hence the name) curved, lifted, and otherwise formed into a desired layout. The series was fairly small, with two sets released in Japan as well as an export set based on the series sold in the United States (for seemingly longer than the Japanese releases were produced!)

A Japanese commercial for the range can be seen here.

Trains

Only one train, a steam locomotive with tender, was released for the Freerail system. The engine has a flexible rear coupling and the tender two molded coupling bars, but no other cars or carriages were produced for the system, and the rail system necessitates large flanges and relatively short wheelbases that other toys wouldn't work well with... it probably wouldn't be too hard to design a 3d printable car of some kind.

Inside, a geartrain drives the rear axle and wheels as well as a cam that hits a plastic lever which pushes the smokestack up and down in a "puffing" motion as the train runs. There are at least two slight variations in production, with later export locomotives having treaded traction tires... This series stayed in production for export longer than it seems to have been sold in Japan.

Rail

Freerail rail is made up of white sleeper sections that clip together as well as into a few plastic accessory pieces. Blue flexible rail sections clip into the sleepers and can form it into curves or elevate it.

A plastic railroad crossing piece as well as switches (right-hand only) were also produced for the system. The white sleeper sections are slotted in around the plastic bases and the rails laid to meet up with the plastic components.

Accessories

In addition to reusing some period Plarail components like trees and signals, Freerail also used Iron Bridge sides on a special white bridge platform as well as small brown brick pieces that can be stacked to create elevation.

The larger Japanese No. 2 set includes a station of the same tooling as the mid 1960s Plarail Platform Station.

A cardboard tunnel with plastic portals to hold it in shape was also included in sets.

Sets

In Japan Freerail was sold in a smaller No.1 and larger No.2 set, similar to how Tomy sold many toys in the 1970s.

Year	Set name	Description	Photo
~1971	Freerail No. 1
~1971	Freerail No. 2	Larger Japanese set with switches and lots of elevation
1972-1976	The Little Engine That Could Train Set	American Montgomery Wards set that can make a figure eight with elevated portion