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Speed change with rails!! E5 series Shinkansen Hayabusa

First written September 30 2024

In 2018 a new two-speed version of the "new mechanism" chassis was produced and was used in sets until a few individual release trains like the E5 series Shinkansen were released in 2019.

S-16 Speed change with rails!! E5 series Shinkansen Hayabusa




On March 14, 2019 the S-16 Speed change with rails!! E5 series Shinkansen Hayabusa was released in tenth generation packaging. The example pictured here was bought used and was produced in January 2019 ahead of the initial release. The box also includes two rails, one red that speeds the train up and the other green that slows it back down again.

Compared to the normal E5 Plarail shinkansen, the front window is a shiny plated color. The two-speed chassis has a pink power switch. The speed-change rails are half-length.

I don't like the shape of these newer duckbill-type Shinkansens as much as the older bullet-style ones, but I do think the Plarail has a fairly nice shrunken-down representation of the real train with a nice speckle effect.

The two-speed gearbox fits in the same footprint as the other "new mechanism" type drive systems, meaning it can be swapped into other trains. The pink lever hanging under the rear wheels flips back and forth to mechanically change gears in the gearbox to change the speed.

The special tracks flip the gear change lever back and forth. When the power switch is turned off, it sets the gearing back to low gear.

The red track pushes the switch towards the center and into high gear and the green track swings the lever back to the outside.