fall inside a hole

Tomy Super Rail Shinkansens

Perhaps surprisingly, the first Shinkansen train for Tomy's Super Rail system did not come out until a few years after the series was introduced. Super Rail lasted long enough to see the addition of both the 200 and 100 series Shinkansens, with the 0 and 200 series appearing in a few variations over the years.

Hikari Shinkansen (1975)

The first 0 series train for the range was a three-car, two axle train with a simplified coupling system that seem to have been at least in part an effort to bring down the cost of the large early 1970s sets. The middle car is powered, and the front and rear cars have blue nose cones and pantographs on the roof. In 1980 the tooling for the front and rear cars was updated to accommodate a light feature in the leading car.

The Super Rail Hikari appears on the late 1974 DD-20 and single-speed D-51 set boxes, and I have begun to suspect that there may have been a very short lived late Super Rail era set made in 1974 that preceded the Super Rail Black series. The Hikari Set featuring the train and an oval of track was a staple of the Super Rail Black series and was rereleased with the lit train in 1980.

Hikari Shinkansen with Headlights (1980)

Appearing as an individual train, as shown above, and in the Hikari with Headlights Set, the update to the older Super Rail Black Hikari set, was a new lit version of the two-axle 0 series Shinkansen Hikari.

The intermediate car is essentially the same as the original release, with the motor and reversing mechanism powered by one C battery. The lead car has an additional battery compartment and powers a bulb in the nose cone that shines through the front headlights. The tail car, sharing the same tooling as the lead car, has the new battery compartment and slot for the light's power switch present but unused.

Because I have two of these trains, I swapped the pin and hole couplings on the head and tail car of one of them so that both ends of the train could have lit headlights. This isn't really true-to-life, the rear lights shone red on the real trains.

Tohoku Joetsu Shinkansen with Headlights (1981)

In 1982 a very nice two-bogie 200 series Shinkansen was released with a headlight feature as the Tohoku Joetsu Shinkansen with Headlights.

Tokaido Shinkansen Hikari with Headlights (1982)

In 1982 a very nice new 0 series Hikari was released based on the 200 series tooling with large long bogied cars. It includes the headlight feature.

Yamabiko and Asahi Shinkansen with Headlights (1984)

In the mid 1980s a smaller two-axle style 200 series train based on the Hikari with Light tooling and with the same power arrangement of powered middle car with separately-powered headlights in the lead car was released.

Tokaido Sanyo New Shinkansen (1986)

One of the last new toolings for the range was the 100 series "New Shinkansen," introduced to the Tokaido-Sanyo line in 1985.

Returning to the cheaper two-axle style of train, the New Shinkansen has the untensioned style of couplings that can be manually connected to most other Super Rail cars. The intermediate car is a double-decker and is tooled differently on either side with the "NS" New Shinkansen mark in red. It will always be the New Shinkansen...

I have two of these trains from later Super Rail sets, so I can make a nice four-car set.