Any ideas as to the vintage or history of this tin box car possibly HO scale

I found this treasure in with all the other stuff I’m sorting thru. I had never seen a tin train in what appears to be HO scale.


Thanks
Kim

3 Likes

I’d say you’re right, it definitely looks like Japanese HO most likely Sakai. Take a look at this page: Seki/Sakai/Stonlite/Bryant/Oxil/Stalwart House/Standard Railway/Maraklin Trains

1 Like

Thanks that was an interesting read. Could fit the bill perhaps 50-60 era if i read the info correctly.

1 Like

I ran a Google search on T.N inside a diamond and came up with The Nomura Toy Industrial Company LTD. The search indicated they were a 50’s - 60’s Japanese manufacturer of tin toys.

…and, when I ran a search on Nomura Toy Train images I came up with this over on Pinterest.

Some of the auction text indicates the set was battery powered.

2 Likes

There you go! :+1:

Thanks.
So how is it you do that search like that? Did you just type that into the question field?

Or is that some kind of google app or AI search?

The end of the car indicates it was made in Japan so my first input to Google was “Japanese Toy Manufacturers trademarks 1950 - 1960”

Several items popped up and one of them was the image of a sheet with a long list of Japanese Toy Makers and their trademarks. One of them was yours and it had the name underneath the trademark but the image was too small to allow for a clear reading. However that image was associated with a hypertext link to another site. That site just had verbal descriptions of hundreds of Japanese toy company trademarks and the actual name of the company.

The names were in alphabetical order so I scrolled down to the T’s and found nothing. Then I remembered the Japanese write from right to left so the first part of the name would have to start with “N” . I went to the N’s and there it was - the company name and the description of the trademark which matched the image.

Next I put in the name and asked for the trademark for that company and the first image in the above post came up.

Next I asked Google to show me images of Nomura toys. It turns out their big specialty was toy robots and the pictures went on forever. So I then asked just for Nomura toy trains. The images came up, I scrolled down just a bit, and found the second image.

Wow you really know how to make technology work for you. Definitely using some detective techniques too.

Thanks again

When I searched for “T.N Nomura” I found a German forum.

[T.N Nomura Toy Company] [Spur H0] Santa Fe

2 Likes

Found this pair on eBay by searching for nomura.

Wow it looks like the sparks are really flying in that short clip or could be just the reflection of the light off the rails as it was filmed. It seems a bit jittery as it rounds the bends and skips along the short loop. I guess its a few decades away from having a dcc decoder issue

1 Like