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In the 4th International Model Railroad Convention Japan(JAM4) held at Tokyo Big Sight through August 22(Fri.) to 24(Sun.) 2003, open operation of T-Trak was performed.
 With an unprecedented scale of approximately total 100 set of modules by about 50 participants, this time we were confronted with such problems as delay of preparation and shortage of a space on that very day. But we could narrowly escape the worst situation of the operation being impossible.
The event was held for three days. It is a big problem that it took more time than expected in preparation on the first and second morning and we could not make it to the opening at 10:00 A.M. Such problems as forming an ultimate arrangement plans, earlier assembly and the installation method of ATS (Automatic Train Stop) equipment still remained unsettled.
Although the problem of the crowd caused by the entrants has improved from before, with the limited inner space of the endless, we had to do almost everything from outside such as maintenance work and carrying in (out) equipments. We still have to improve many things.
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Staling of participating modules was also pointed out in advance. But the number of new modules has increased, so we had to exclude old ones from the combination. As a result, this problem seems to have been inconspicuous to some extent. But along with arrangement plans, continuous examination is required.
As a plan, TOMIX(a Japanese model railroad brand)"store set" conversion competition was performed. It seems that there were relatively few conversion works which do not retain a figure of prototype but many ideas how to change an image by small processing or paint were introduced.
Floating of the pavements etc. occurred in some modules. But we got fewer troubles compared to the past, corresponding to the numbers of the modules. The track maintenance condition had improved to some extent. From now on, much more examinations and measures are required, such as measures against expansion of the rails caused by the heat characteristic in summer, and against stretch of paper pavement caused by the humidity.
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As for the types of trams brought to run this time, those in Kanto region(in and around Tokyo metropolitan area), such as Toden(trams of Tokyo Metropolitan Transport Bureau), Tamaden (former Tokyu Tamagawa line and existent Setagaya line), and Enoden (Enoshima Electric Railway) or the finished products of MODEMO (a Japanese model railroad brand, especially well-known for its tram products) got a majority. On the other hand, the trams in Western part of Japan such as those of Osaka and Kyoto municipalities were extremely few. Thus the distribution had become quite biased. Mostly overlapping the distribution of domiciles of the participants, this situation was inevitable. But it was not satisfactory in respect of spectators' entertainment.
On the first and second day, we tentatively divided time into some zones, and made the vehicles in operation have specific themes. As we could not grasp beforehand what kind of vehicles were to run this time, depending on the theme chosen, few vehicles could run in that time zone as mentioned above. Although we can not say that this trial had succeeded, it seemed effective about the guidance of the vehicles in operation to the spectators.
The "camera car"(a CCD camera equipped train) had installed a power unit of ED75(a Japanese electric locomotive) in the power car, and showed a stable running. Since the scale of the layout was large, in some part far from a receiving antenna, the state of the radio wave was bad. We regret that we could not get clear images.
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