May already—how did that happen? With the bank holiday weekend coming up for many of us in the UK, it's a great chance to spend a little more time at the workbench or running trains. However you spend it, we hope it includes something railway-related!

In my last emails I drew your attention to KATO Japan's regular announcements. There's updated versions of:

• the beautiful, green and gold TWILIGHT EXPRESS, 
• HB-E300 'Resort Shirakami' with an amazing print
• the fascinating M250 Series Super Rail Cargo multiple unit (which can be extended to a looong train) 
• the all new E8 Series Yamagata Shinkansen "Tsubasa" which will be available either as a 7 car special edition, or 3 car basic + 4 car add-on. 

All of these are expected to be released in Japan in August, and will be with us a few weeks later. We've now confirmed our pricing for those items and you can pre-order them here.

Also announced in the meantime is a brand new tooling for the SD70ACU from KatoUSA, due at the end of the year.

In many ways the SD70ACU is a modified SD90MAC. The SD90MAC struggled to find a place on US and Canadian Railroads in the 90s. While Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific purchased many of these engines - smaller railroads felt alienated from the gigantic primer movers which limited the SD90MAC’s operational use. In 2016 Norfolk Southern decided to convert several SD90MACs to SD70ACUs, the Siemens tech was swapped with Mitsubishi components and the cab was replaced with the SD70ACe’s cab.

Canadian Pacific decided to rebuild their collection of SD90MACs as well. However instead of going to Norfolk Southern to rebuild these engines, they reached out to Progress Rail instead. 60 ACUs were delivered in 2019 and this order contained several heritage units. These special heritage units were used to commemorate different branches of the US and Canadian Army.

Take a look below for these military inspired liveries - I'm sure KatoUSA will make an excellent job of them! Pre-order here in Analogue or DCC Sound.

Announcements are coming thick and fast from Japan. There are some MORE items still for us to list, including a new TGV, a H5 Shinkansen in HO scale, those RhB sets I mentioned in my last email and more. Watch this space...

Best regards,
Ian & the Train Trax team www.traintrax.co.uk
www.model-railway-magic.co.uk
www.themodeltreeshop.co.uk

PS. Keep an eye on your inboxes and social media for another special message from me shortly about Golden week.