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

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!

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!