fall inside a hole

Tomy TGV

First written November 10, 2026

The TGV is a French high-speed passenger service that began operation in 1981. In the later 90s as Tomy began to produce more detailed and niche trains as well as selling the Tomica World range overseas it made sense to produce a few international trains like the TGV and Virgin Express. The Plarail train depicts the "Sud-Est" trains in their original and very iconic orange livery while both orange and the repainted silver Sud-Est TGV were exported.

TGV (1999)

The orange TGV was first released in Japan on June 26, 1999.

The power car has a large and surprisingly heavy weight inside, and the chassis is the then fairly new AA type with a two-speed gearbox.

This example was made in October 2000 and is currently missing its inner battery cover.

7467 TGV (Tomica World) (1999)

The orange TGV train was also released for the export Tomica World series in Europe starting in 1999.

I have come across a second intermediate orange car, also from a Japanese-issue TGV, so I can run an extra-long train. Actually, I also found just the top to an orange TGV power car at a thrift store in the US several years ago now... I don't think it was imported here, at least not widely, but it would not be the first nor last time I found imported or foreign toys at local thrift stores.

7561 TGV (Tomica World) (1999/2000)

Released first in the large French Tomica World TGV Set in 1999, where this example comes from, was a very nice silver version of the TGV train.

In 2000 this train was released individually in red packaging with the new TOMY logo as 7561 TGV. This is one of the harder-to-find Tomica World trains.

As mentioned, this train comes from the 1999 TGV Set. It has the same large weight screwed between the power car body shell and a plastic carrier. This TGV has its inner battery sleeve!

Between the production time of this silver 1999 train and the orange train from 2000 the power car chassis was changed with more shrouding around the screws and the intermediate car has a plastic ring around the screw instead of the wider-headed screws used on the earlier train. I wonder if the orange tail car is from a different set or if this happened to be right when the change was happening.