Tomix - 92136 - Sanriku Railway - 36

Specific Item Information: 2 car set with 1 motorized car and trailer car.

Road Name History: The Sanriku Railway (三陸鉄道 Sanriku Tetsudō?) is a railway company in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. The company and its lines are also known as Santetsu (三鉄?). The company was founded in 1981, as the first "third sector" (half public, half private) railway line in the country, excluding special cases such as freight railways in seaports. Its lines are former Japanese National Railways (JNR) lines, that were going to be closed. Santetsu acquired these lines in 1984. The company also operates a travel agency and other businesses.

Brand/Importer Information: Tomix is a brand of Takara Tomy, a large Japanese conglomerate of companies that makes toys and games for the international marketplace. The Tomix brand (along with the Tomytec brand) are both managed by the Tomytec subsidiary/division of Takara Tomy. Prior to 1976 Tomy produced model trains using the "Tomy" brand name of the products. In 1976, they launched the new brand "Tomix" to segregate their model trains from their childrens toy lines.

Generally it can be difficult to understand why Tomytec releases some items using the Tomix brand and others using the Tomytec brand. There are some generalizations we have observed. Thomas the Tank Engine falls under Tomix, as do the JNR steam engines as well as bullet trains (Shinkansen) and track cleaning cars. Maybe another curator can step in and elaborate on this section.

Manufacturer Information: Largely a Japanese manufacturer of children's toys and baby products, Takara Tomy has established a number of different subsidiary companies, with sales offices and factories located in various locations around the world. The firm is the product of a 2006 merger-of-equals between Tomy and Takara.

Takara Tomy produces N Scale model trains under their Tomytec division (we use the term loosely because it is actually a more complex relationship) using two different brand names "Tomytec" and "Tomix". Technically speaking these are not brands in the Western sense but rather they more closely resemble subsidiaries -of-subsidiaries, and where they fit in the corporate org chart may be the matter for a Master's thesis, but for our purposes we can think of them as simply two different brands with one manufacturer. In the past (prior to 1976) some model train products were branded simply "Tomy". To further confuse things, since 2000, outside of Japan, the company goes by the simple name, "Tomy" for their international subsidiaries.

If you consider both brand names as a single company, then the Tomytec/Tomix product line is the largest of its kind in Japan; with Kato following in second place (as of 2017). While Takara Tomy products are popular around the world, the firm's focus on children's toys has limited the international acceptance and distribution of its Tomytec model railroad products. Furthermore, unlike Kato, their focus tends to be heavily skewed towards Japanes prototypes.