fall inside a hole

Rotary Snowplow Reissue (1999)

First written February 7, 2025

In 1999 Tomy released a modern new-power reproduction of the Rotary Snowplow that originally came in the 1973 C-12 Rotary Snowplow Set, which can be seen in the Plarail Museum. On October 14th it was released with a black rotary snowplow with tender as well as an unpowered C-12 as the 1999 Plarail Day limited release Rotary Snowplow (ロータリーじょせつしゃ).

20th Century Toy Museum Exhibition Rotary Snowplow (1999)

In addition to the Plarail Day reissue, the tooling was also used for the limited edition of 3000 20th Century Toy Museum Exhibition Rotary Snowplow (20世紀おもちゃ博物館展ロータリーじょせつしゃ) which was released at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo as part of the 20th Century Toy Museum Exhibition held from December 28, 1999 to January 9, 2000. The box is black and white like some other event items and is the same size as the shorter style of Plarail Day box used in the 1990s.

This release has a nice brown variant of the snowplow with yellow blades similar to the original 1970s version as well as a very cool looking blue C-12.

Like the regular Plarail Day rerelease, the snowplow is powered and spins the blades of the plow itself, and the C-12 is unpowered (this is unlike the original where the snowplow spun its blades but the C-12 pushed it from behind). The chute on top of the thrower can be angled to either side of the train.

A sticker of the logo of the exhibition is added to the tender, and as the Plarail Museum notes there is a yellow stripe that signifies it is a non-high-speed car. The whole lot of 3000 were likely produced in November 1999. I tried to open the main snowplow unit up to inspect the drive mechanism, but in addition to an easy to remove screw in the top it really seems like the clips seen towards the back of the sides of the chassis had an insert locking piece glued into place after assembly... Like the Chin Chin Tram reissue it appears there is a gear affixed to the outside of the gearbox that rides on top of the wheels and forms a natural clutch with the rubber tire that will slip if the propeller is impeded while the train is running, nicer than powering it from the motor directly. This also means the propeller will spin faster as the train runs faster, although the built-in single-speed gearbox only runs at one speed.

The original old power C-12 had a front coupling specifically to connect to the original snowplow, and carried it forward for many years, with this blue C-12 based on the new power C12 from the mid 1990s but with an unpowered chassis. It is a nice touch that the coal in the bunker is still black, and the black couplings always look nice...

A screw in the funnel holds the body shell to the dummy chassis. The blue shell can be fit onto other new power C12s, and other C12 bodies fit onto the blank. A pretty cool release.