27 Mar 2013

Unsorted Trains (1)

Hello all,

From time to time, I'll also post pictures of trains I photographed during one of my many travels. These posts have no particular theme other than trains. There is no time order in the pictures as well. It's just trains and trains for the sake of trains.

09-03-2013 Kamata station. Tōkyū 7600 Series with 'Kabuki' style painted fronts.

09-03-2013 Tamagawa station. Tōkyū 7700 Series.

09-03-2013 Jiyūgaoka station. Tōkyū 9100 Series on one of its last days on the Tōyoko line.

09-03-2013 Kamata station. Two Tōkyū 7700 Series stand ready to operate a new service on both the Tamagawa and Ikegami line.

10-03-2013 Yokohama station. A Yokohama Minatomirai Y500 Series stands ready for a through run to Motomachi-Chūkagai (Chinatown) on the Minatomirai 21 line (21 standing for the 21st century).

10-03-2013 Tamagawa station. Now disappeared from the Tōkyū Tōyoko line are these Tōkyō Metro 03 Series. The only 18m length trains still in operation on the Tōyoko line as well.

10-03-2013 Tamagawa station. A Tōei Mita line 6300 Series rushes into the station. Personally, the Mita line is of much interest, because of the large number of different rolling stock used who all have a different front design. I'll probably spend a day trying to catch all types on camera in the future.

03-02-2013 Yokohama station. A Keikyū 2100 Series and a JR East E233-1000 Series next to each other in a symbolic way. Both companies have a heavy rivalry going on for the sake of rapid passenger transport between Shinagawa in Tokyo and Yokohama. All in all, Keikyū is the winner in both speed and price.

03-02-2013 Mizunokuchi station. A Keikyū 2100 Series and N1000 Series, 10th type with stainless steel body, stand next to each other on the southernmost point of the Keikyū network. In the future, this station will probably remain the final point of the line, since nobody can tell if the line is being extended.

03-02-2013 Namamugi station. A 4-door 800 Series is being overtaken by a 1000 Series, aluminium body. I love these 800 Series, as they really have a Shōwa (pre 1990s) atmosphere and are incredibly powerful.

03-02-2013 Yokohama station. A 8700 Series from Sōtetsu is getting ready again for an express run to Ebina.

03-02-2013 Futatamagawa station. A 10000 Series in a seldom 8-car formation on a local train service from Yamato to Yokohama. Usually, trains on the Sōtetsu network are 10-cars long, but there are also 8-car trains for local runs outside of the rush hour.

Cheers!

Toni

A trainy weekend (2)

Hello all,

It's been a while already since I made a new entry. I know my absence caused some confusion, since I was close to the end of my visa expiration and feared for the worst. Now, I've been to Busan in Korea (I'll make a blog entry on that later) with my dear girlfriend and extended my visa for another 3 months! Hurray! From now on I'll try to concentrate on less, but better pictures and larger previews. The text will also be in line with the pictures, so no confusion between text and pictures will start to exist. Also, maintaining the layout will be a hell of a lot easier for me as well. So, let's continue where we left off.


After the train museum, we went to the parental home of my girlfriend. They live near the station of Shimodate, a crossing point in the north of the Kantō plains of the JR East Mito line, Mooka Railway and Kantō Railway Josō line. Now, this is already interesting enough for me, since on all three lines, interesting rolling stock is used, though the Mooka railway stands out from all three companies crossing in Shimodate.

Now, here's a small hint. For those capable of reading Japanese, this is already clear. For those wondering what SL stands for, please read on. The usual trains on the Mooka railway are single or combined two car DMU (Diesel Multiple Units), but the one we were riding that day was a bit more special....


Wait, a simple diesel locomotive with brown coaches? Not that special huh. Well, apart from locomotive hauled passenger trains being extremely rare in Japan, this one has a bit more to it. See the little white plume in the distance?



Yeees! It's a steam train! That's what the 'SL' stands for: Steam Locomotive. Even Japanese prefer to call a steam train an 'SL', instead of 蒸気機関車 (Jyōki Kikansha), because it's easier to pronounce. This engine is one of the two owned by the Mooka railway and was the only one in operation that day. Sometimes Mooka operates the two at the same time, on special occasions and national holidays, but usually it's the C12 or C11. That day we were presented with the C12.


After the reguar DMU had entered and left Shimodate station, the SL rode up to the platform and was ready to be boarded.


The inside of the ex-JR East 50 Series coaches were adorned with strawberry designs and patterns, a local speciality that happened to be in season. In Europe, we're used to having strawberries in summer, but in Japan it's at the end of winter.


Of course, there were vendors on the train, so we bought a beer for on the trip. The entirety of the line isn't very interesting, but on the approach to the last station, Motegi (known for the racing circuit), the mountains started to dominate the landscape. During the ride, a lot of railfans, locals and children were waving and taking pictures of the train. Some even went as far as to chasing the train with cars, since we spotted the same cars during the trip at photographing spots.


In Motegi we decided on taking a regular train back to Shimodate, since we were going somewhere else that day. More on that in the next update. By the way, the regular trains are called 'Suika' or watermelons by the locals. I can sort of understand why. Also, I really like the livery design of these DMU. It makes them stand out from the usual trains in Japan. It's almost like they were designed by Mitooka Eiji, the famous designer who does a lot of stuff in the railway business.


 As a goodbye of this blog entry, a view of the drivers cab of a regular Mooka Railway DMU. Very modern with the single-handle lever (I prefer dual-handle operated trains though) and provides for a very smooth and surprisingly fast accelerating ride.

See you next time! Cheers!

Toni

26 Feb 2013

A trainy weekend (1)

Hello all,

Last weekend was a busy weekend with lots and lots and lots and lots of trains. The plan was to visit the parents of my girlfriend on friday and have a stopover in Ōmiya at the JR railway museum (鉄道博物館).

It's quite a trip from where we live, but it was en-route to where the parents of my girlfriend live, so that was pretty convenient. We had only a small suitcase with us with clothes, so on our way we went.

After a quite long, but quick trip to Ōmiya, we changed to the Saitama New Urban Transit for the Railway Museum station. This station was especially built for the museum, so you practically disembark in the museum.

The station itself isn't much in the style of the museum (mostly because Saitama New Urban Transit has not much to do with the JR Group), but outside it's very much museum-like.

With train wheels on display and the fronts of a D51 steam locomotive and 153 Series EMU (in school colours, orange and yellow), you already are in the right atmosphere right away. On the floor a Shinkansen schedule plan was made in tiles and behind glass there were also some interesting items on display.

We stowed away our luggage in the free lockers and went inside. Luckily, we got free entrance tickets, because my girlfriend had saved up on Lumine points, so we didn't have to pay ¥1,000 each (which is still pretty good for such a museum).

Upon entering the museum, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. The museum is three stories high, with the floor level able to house full-size trains, which it does.

The centre piece is of course the C57 on the turntable, which gets turned around at 15:00 and blows its magnificent whistle. Other than that, around the turntable, legendary trains are positioned, such as two bonnet-nosed Ltd. Express 481 and 181 Series and, one of my favourites, an ED75 Type electric locomotive.

A map of all trains inside the museum can be found here: http://www.railway-museum.jp/zone/index.html It's in Japanese, but easy enough to understand I think.

At the end of the day, we had an advanced drivers class (we were too late to attend the entry class) and both of us did pretty well in it. I managed to mess up my perfect score with over speeding a 25km/h signal and answering a question wrongly (too much text) from 100 points to 60 points... Disappointing, but ah well. We got some cool white drivers handshoes (yes, that is correct railway jargon) to take home.

The parents of my girlfriend picked us up at Oyama and we went for some really good rāmen (Chinese style noodles) nearby. It was a good day, but the weekend had just begun! The next day would be a continuation of what we had started.

Cheers!

Toni

P.s. check out the texts when you hover over the pictures for a short description!

15 Feb 2013

Model Trains (1)

Hello all,

In this blog, I've been writing about all sorts of stuff, srs business, not so srs business, but now it's about to get down. One of my biggest passions in life: model trains.

I liked trains ever since I was a kid. Riding them, the sounds, the experience, the landscapes, but most of all, the rolling stock. On a modern commuter line, modern and efficient rolling stock should be used. On a high-speed line, sleek and fast trains, etc. etc. Every train is made for its purpose, but sometimes they end up being used in a completely different environment for what it was intended. Especially on Japanese smaller private railways, you can often see old rolling stock from the big cities being used as shorter and slightly modified local trains.

A good example not too far away from where I now live is Izukyu railroad, where ex-Tokyu 8000 Type commuter trains are being used as local trains in 3-car formation. Prior to their transfer to Izukyu they were used on the heavily used Tokyu network, and now have a quiet and easy pension on the beautiful seaside of the Sagami-nada Sea. Another example are the 6000 Series trains that are now used on the Fujikyuko railroad. These 205 Series ex-JR East trains were used on the commuter lines of Tokyo and now last their days on the local lines at the foot of Mt. Fuji.


Anyway, they trains I collect have a somewhat similar history, but have a more radical origin. The trains you see on the left of this text were originally Nagoya Subway cars, running on a 3rd rail. A 3rd rail is commonly used on underground trains to receive power, but is very dangerous when used above ground where the public has easy access to the tracks (e.g. with level crossings). As you can see these trains now have pantographs for catenary power pickup.

After the retirement from the Nagoya Subway, these trains (e.g. 250, 300 and 1000 Types) were transfered to the Takamatsu Kotohira Railway -'Kotoden' in short- to serve on the rural standard gauge network of Shikoku. The trains had to be rebuilt to overhead wire electrics, but that was about it. Aside from a repaint job and small modifications, these trains are still subway cars essentially. The thing I really like about these trains is that they are short, about 16 meters long. Ususally, train cars in Japan are 18 to 21 meters, not allowing them to use tight curves, but these are short enough to negate tram-style curves.

Now, I would like to create a fictional railway company with a complete collection of rolling stock. As these trains from the Nagoya Subway weren't all sold to Kotoden, I presume I could kind of 'save' some from the scrapper and use them in my roster.

My collection is far from completed, since I plan to get a few more of these ex-Subway cars (I'd like to have at least 6 sets of 2) and maybe one or two locomotives and a few maintenance freight cars to have at least a minimum for a self respecting Japanese private railway company. Next to that, maybe a dedicated Limited Express train that matches the 16 meter length of these short trains. I'm thinking about the Nagano 1000 Series (4-car ex-Odakyu 10000 Type) released by Tomix some time ago.

The trains for my private railway will all be repainted in an orthodox standard livery, so the attractive Kotoden colours will unfortunately disappear. The trains will also receive a unique registration number (OCD FTW). I'm also thinking about one or two trains receiving a semi-permanent commercial livery to add some variation to the fleet. This not only adds some visual variation, but also adds the atmosphere of a financially struggling company that tries to get by with a few extra commercial exploits.

Now, I mentioned 'orthodox standard livery'. I presume not many of you know what I'm talking about, so let me explain. Usually in Japan, when one speaks of this phenomenon, you talk about classic colour combinations that were used in the past by many companies. The most well known of these liveries is the crème-red combination. In different shades (the red ranging from bordeaux to orange/brown, and the crème ranging from snow white to yellow/light pink), this was the livery most used by almost all companies, with JNR (the former Japan National Railways) as the main example.

This colour combination was used on Limited Express trains (the most prestigious of all trains prior to the Shinkansen), so many local companies copied this livery for their own use. From narrow gauge diesel cars running through the cold of Northern Japan to luxury express trains in the metropolitan area, this livery was all over the place. Other examples of 'orthodox standard liveries' are of course the crème-blue (Yokosuka-livery), all dark-green or bordeaux-red (which was usual for private companies in pre-war times), or the obvious all-brown livery.

As for me, I have yet to decide on the final livery, but that will come once the fleet is completed. I'd probably go with a variation on the red-crème livery, not to make it too boring. For now, I'm too low on cash to invest any more in model trains, so I'll have to make do for now, Once I have a steady income, more trains will be bought and more updates on real things will come. For now, I can only fantasize and make plans for the future, but that's satisfying enough for me, since I like to dream (and make those dreams come true).

Cheers all!

P.s. hover over the pictures for more info!

12 Feb 2013

The dark side of Japan

Hello all,

The title might sound a bit depressing and may sound like I don't like it here, but it's not like that at all, so bear with me.

This weekend, me and my girlfriend went out a few times for some walks around town, to say goodbye to a good friend who was returning to the Netherlands, to buy stuff you can't get elsewhere and stuff like that.

So, on Saturday we first went on a walk from Shinjuku to Shibuya, a bit of a long walk, but we wanted to get out and do some window shopping, so this was my first time again to be around a busy place in Tokyo in a very long time. As a teenager, I was intrigued by the hustle and bustle of the places, but now, I was feeling resent.

Maybe I'm getting too old or something, but busy places don't attract me any more. If I go to a busy place -like Akihabara, it's more for the shops, rather than the atmosphere. It's fun to visit such busy places from time to time, but also very tiring and frustrating. I guess I'm more of a small-town person after all, which is why I like Sagamiono a lot.

Anyway, Shibuya wasn't that bad actually, since you can see the Ginza subway, crossing the traffic square from a lot of view points, the old Tokyu station (which is shortly being demolished), and a lot of very expensive cars driving around. I'm lucky to have a girlfriend who can appreciate the rumble of V8 engines and knows a thing or two about cars.

The following day we went out to say goodbye to a good friend of mine who was returning to the Netherlands after a 2 week holiday in Japan. We had some ramen in Akasaka, said farewell and my girlfriend and me went on a walk to Roppongi. Now, I've never visited the place before, but I heard it was a kind of 'foreigner heaven', so I avoided it like the plague. However, sometimes in life, you have to confront yourself with your biggest aversions, so we went there on foot.

Roppongi is a dirty place, I don't like it, and it's full with a special type of foreigner. I don't have anything against other foreigners in Japan, hell, that would be outrageously hypocrite of me, but I do have a thing against those people who tend to stay well in their confinement where they have no interaction with Japanese society at all. Roppongi is just the place where these kind of people tend to hang out, especially Westerners, so that kind of explains my reason to dislike the place beforehand. Preconceptions, yes indeed, but with a reason. If people want to stay in their own 'foreigner ghetto', that's fine by me, but I don't have the need to interact with that kind of culture. I'm here for the Japan of the Japanese, not the Japan of the expats and those too scared to speak the language of the country (both in a literal and figurative manner). Ah, so much hate... Let's quit while I'm ahead of myself.

Yesterday was Foundation Day (建国記念の日, Kenkoku Kinen no Hi), so my girlfriend had an extra day off. We are in dire need of some Indo cooking by yours truly, so we went out to Okubo (just a bit north of Shinjuku) to look for Kecap Manis, a sweet and thick Indonesian soy sauce, which is used a lot in Indo cooking. Here I met another of the demons of Japan.

Okubo is a place I immediately liked. It's the Asian district of Tokyo, where a lot of Chinese and Korean conduct businesses. It's dirty as well, but the atmosphere was very relaxed. Not like the more Western-oriented Roppongi at all. However, that day, the atmosphere was somewhat less relaxed than usual, I presumed. All of a sudden, we noticed riot police all over the place, especially around a local kindergarten. I quickly assumed this to be because of the national holiday and because of some kind of political rally inside of the kindergarten (which was not operating that day). The police was however not too concerned with the rally itself, as they seemed to protect the place, rather than the other way around. It all seems a bit strange to outsiders, but I was expecting to see some Uyoku cars any time soon. The Uyoku are the Japanese ultra right-wing nationalists, who have extreme views concerning the country and are a legacy of the fascist movement of the pre-WW2 era. Google will help you on your quest for more information.

Anyway, I soon spotted the first black Nissan Patrol with agressive tuning, speakers on the roof and banners with ultra nationalistic slogans. Also, I soon spotted several people with head-sets and dresses a bit too smug for the day. These could have been undercover cops, Uyoku members, or maybe neighborhood watch people. I've also spotted a few local shop owners with walkie-talkies who were keeping track of suspicious looking people. It seemed that there were three groups involved, but the public seemed not to care too much. In Okubo, we bought some amazing Kimchi and some drinks, and went to Shinjuku for some more shopping.

Ah, I almost forgot! We bought a nice rug yesterday! We don't have a rug or carpet, but we do spend a lot of time on the floor. Eating and watching TV is done on the floor, but as I write this, I also work sitting on the floor. So, tomorrow evening a new addition to the house is delivered! I'm very glad we bought a rug, since I think it won't only improve our way of living, but also add some order in the room... It's kind of messy here you know...

Cheers!