fall inside a hole
USA 583 Series Sleeper Express (2003)
First written August 22, 2024Expanded October 2025
The "USA 583 Series" or USA Sleeper Express is the name given by Japanese collectors to a series of Plarail Sleeper Express 581 and 583 series train reprints that were produced for the American Tomy Corporation of California. The Plarail Day train in 2001 had been a reprint of the Sleeper Express but the depictions in these packs is a little closer to the old-power style Plarail Sleeper Expresses from the 1970s - at least for two out of the three variations, which resemble the lighter white and darker cream color variations of the Sleeper Express (also present in the old power variations) as well as a third new silver plated version with green wheels.
The exact story on these seems a little fuzzy. Some of the trains have been found in the United States with a commemorative sticker on one side of the power car. Shortly after the original production period, when it seemed that these employee gifts had not moved well, the stock was imported to Japan and sold in some stores (apparently the Tenshodo HbF store in Ikspiari, Maihama), but seemingly always without a sticker on the power car. Examples of all three of these types of USA Sleeper Express can be seen in the Plarail Museum here. It is unknown if Tome gave these gifts out to their employees directly or if Tomy America was marketing them to other companies as potential gifts for them to give their employees... it seems the market would not have been huge either way, but perhaps some were sold in small quantities in the United States, sometimes with stickers, but eventually the leftover blank stock was brought to Japan to sell off? I also have never seen the silver version of the train naturally or reimported in the United States... I do, however, have new examples of stickered American releases of both the white and cream variations, as well as an unstickered white train sold in Japan.
A number of these versions of the USA Sleeper Express with a 20 million shipment celebration sticker appeared on eBay in late 2023 in some quantity. It seems like most of them ended up being imported into Japan by Japanese Plarail collectors, many of whom also own the unstickered versions previously sold in Japan some 20 years ago. It was a bit of a popular item for a short time, and I have seen them shown off in photos of several Plarail events since. It is not entirely clear if these 20 Mil. Shipment stickers were for Tomy America shipping 20 million of something or what exactly the SMC and logo are for, as they do not seem to match any company I could find - is SMC Shipment Million Celebration? Was this just an "example" sticker that Tomy put on trains when showing them to other companies and trying to sell them as potential employee gifts?
The Sleeper Express is an elegant train and is sought after in pretty much all of its various releases by Plarail collectors. I would not say that it looks a lot like an American style train but I do think it is probably fairly close for what was in the Plarail tooling lineup at the time and the train looks nice regardless (especially, I think, the lighter style). Both styles have the head and tail marks for the Hatsukari service, which ran on the Tohoku main line and connected with the Tohoku and Joetsu Shinkansen lines when they opened in the early 1980s. These trains have a two-speed new power gearbox with an American style warning sticker also used on Tomica World and related trains in the U.S. My white example was produced in March 2003 with all three of my yellow type being produced in June - the silver-plated type were produced in October 2003. I opened one of the yellow examples fully to photograph for this page.
These trains have the new squared-off Tomy logo on the underside, which was changed by the time of the 2001 Plarail reissue. It is still descended from the 1970's Sleeper Express with old power gearbox and front power switch, with the front of the power car chassis still having remnants from where the power switch once hung.
Recently (Fall 2025) I have acquired one of the unstickered trains that was reimported and sold in Japan and un-reimported it back to the United States. This example has an additional "S" sticker added onto the box's item number - this should mean it originally belonged to one of the silver trains, but this one currently houses a white example. I have seen others that have an importer sticker added by the Japanese store that sold them, but this one doesn't have one. A sticker on the boxes of some of the silver trains sold in Japan reads USA TOMY 583 CHROME SILVER - the source of the "USA Sleeper Express" name.
A very nice looking sleeper express, I do see why people sought these out over the Plarail Day version of the train...
Like the other white trains I have, it was produced in March 2003 and has the North American hair entanglement warning sticker on the side of the gearbox. What an odd life of importing and reimporting some of these trains have had, back and forth across the ocean... I wonder where they will be in another 25 years.