fall inside a hole
Super Rail Black ED-75 Set
Originally written April 13, 2025
In 1975 the Super Rail series was expanded and reformatted as the Super Rail Black series, with the ED75 with two-speed reversing drive system present in the original series reappearing in this ED-75 Set (ED-75 セット).
The N-24 mark on the box signifies that this box was printed in 1975 or early 1976. This box is rather tattered... The side view is reconstructed from pictures of both sides stitched together. I suppose it is 50 years old...
Set contents
| Quantity |
Item |
Photo |
|---|---|---|
| 3
pieces |
ED75 with box van and tanker |
 |
| 3 | Straight Rail |
 |
| 1 | Half Straight Rail |
 |
| 8 | C Curve Rail |
 |
| 1 | B Point Rail (right) |
 |
| 1 | Control Rail |
 |
| 1 | Uncoupling Rail |
 |
| 4 | Overhead wire holders |
 |
| 1 | Signal |
 |
| 1 | Buffers |
 |
| 2 | Reversing insert |
 |
The train in this set is the ED-75, first produced during the earlier original Super Rail series in the earlier 1970s, with this set introducing it to Super Rail Black. The ED75 has a headmark sticker on the front.
This is one of the very cool two-speed trains with articulated boogies.
A mechanical gear selector and all-metal geartrain in the powered truck changes the locomotive's speed, with an electrical reverser built into the unpowered truck that will also disconnect motor power in neutral on a stop plate section. The front wheels are spring-loaded with the front coupling attached. The original tires had dry-rotted and I replaced them with a cut-out section of Plarail traction tires. I ended up having to shave a little down from the inside of the tire to get them to sit deeper in the wheel and not make the flange overrun the rail, which was a problem I ran into at first.
The tooling is nicely detailed... someone at Tomy spent a lot of time looking at trains. The locomotive takes two C batteries, and it is nice and heavy...
The set includes a green WHAM 80000 series box van with opening doors and a Shell TAKI 45000 series tanker.
In addition to the two-speed reversing train, the freight cars both feature the functioning Super Rail coupling system with spring-loaded couplings that can be released by the uncoupling rail.
In addition to an oval of track, the Control Track that will change the train's speed and direction independently from each entering direction or stop it in the middle is included.
The two speed levers show that they will change the train's speed depending on which direction it is facing, not which direction it is actually going - with the ED75 that is mostly symmetric, it can look like a switch is set to speed it up when really the train is going backwards facing the other direction and will slow down. The stop section is often overrun when the train is running at high speed, but flipping it into low speed before the stop will bring it to a stop nicely.
There is also the very cool uncoupling and coupling rail and set of points to automatically shunt and pick up trucks. Two reversing plates can be used to speed up automated reversing operation.
It might not be as sophisticated or as big as some of the earlier 1970s sets, but it packs a lot of cool features into about as small of a layout as could handle it, and overhead wire holders and a signal are also included.
The slow speed is nice and looks like a big locomotive crawling along to organize some freight...