fall inside a hole

Meitetsu Blue Liner (1994)

First written December 27, 2024

The Plarail Meitetsu Blue Liner was released in 1994 and depicted the Meitetsu Blue Liner which was a specially-repainted Meitetsu 1000 series train that ran from July 1994 to October 1997.

One side of the train shows a Dutch-style village and some monkeys, with the other side having aquatic animal stickers. The design is pretty accurate to the real design of the train, although it originally had a second intermediate car.

My Plarail example was produced in 1995 and oddly has a two-speed gearbox installed. It was even soldered in place, but the chassis is the variant with the triangular nose protrusion, so someone may have swapped this chassis around at some point... I ended up swapping in the single-speed gearbox from the Tomica World variation shown below.

Fun Train (Tomica World Super Deluxe Set) (1998)

The Meitetsu Blue Liner was included as the Fun Train in the Tomica World 7423 Super Deluxe Set. This set was released in Europe and the United States and is a massive set with multiple trains and a ladder truck, and was still available around 2000.

The front battery contact on my example was broken off, so I ended up taking the single speed gearbox off and putting it on the chassis of the Plarail one above. Although my copy of the Super Deluxe Set was missing the original tail car, it did have the intermediate car - it would be cool to replicate the actual graphics of the fourth car that the real train had and put them on this car.