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Plarail Fan Club Information Magazine 2001 Vol.1

This Plarail Fan (プラレールファン) fan club magazine, later called Plarail Poppo, was distributed to members of the Plarail fan club. Click photos for full size

The front cover shows the blue Time Station D51, the monorail system, and some PlaKids; all new to Plarail at the time.

Tomy introduced the monorail system new around this time and released this large D51 station in both blue and black versions. In addition to the station sets, only the Ancient Egypt Adventure Set was ever released in the series.

2001 Plarail releases including the Plarail Day Sleeper Express, PlaKids C12 and JR Kyushu "White" Kamome, and EF15 Electric Locomotive. The right side has a few sets including the First Try Set Dark Blue set.

The left page shows the Electrical Inspection Car (電気検測車) 193 series distributed to fan club members in 2001. The set is the Doctor Yellow Train Depot Set (ドクターイエロー車両基地セット), released in April. The right page shows the reprint Plarail Day Sleeper Express for 2001 as well as Mini Mini Plarail and the Plarail game for Sega Pico.

A timeline of some past Plarail sets. Highlighted is the Electric Train Set sold from 1970 to 1973 (Tomy may date these sets slightly differently based on production or development period) with EF15 and freight cars, the Round-Trip Plarail Tran Station Set with ED70 and train wash from 1975, the Round-Trip Plarail ED-70 Loader Set (stated to have been released around 1974 but really released circa 1977), 1979's Double Track Automatic Station Set with blue-nose New Hikari and L Limited, and the Hikari Railway Bridge Set with old style of slope curve rails which was released in 1982 rather than the stated 1985.

A neat page pointing to some old Japanese websites that showed people's Plarail collections and layouts. On the left page:

Plarail Hokkaido (プラレール北海道): showing how to create modified Plarail representing cars on the Hokkaido railway. Updated at least as late as 2010 but then their host seems to have gone offline.

The page in the bottom left was excluded from webcrawlers.

Gunbo's Room in the Nakazawan Family page has many Kansai region trains. It was updated into 2003.

On the right page:

New Plarail World: Kanto area trains. Unfortunately, it seems relatively little of this site is archived. Last updated in late 2000 and closed in 2002.

The Mie Battery Railway at its original URL, can now be found at でんしゃごっこ. A great deal of very interesting Plarail and railway information.

Upcoming special Plarail that were trains fans had asked for or that were limited to certain places of sale.

Some Plarail drawings from children.

The rear cover shows the massive Fan Club Exclusive Plarail 40th Anniversary Album from 1999 which was still available. The bottom right portion tells how to call the Tomy Plarail Club line and enter your member information to get new information.