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中国火车模型 Chinese Model Trains -  Trip #18

UK (England & Wales) & Netherlands 2024

I had the opportunity to spend four weeks in Japan this year, right on the back of a two week railway hunting trip in far north Queensland Australia. I had a solid two week period for myself to explore the railways and another two weeks where I would try and fit in what I could around other commitments. Despite the rather generous time period, this proved to be not nearly enough, particularly when taking Japan's incredibly complex railway networks into consideration. I initially planned to visit three of the four main islands in the first two weeks, although it quickly became apparent I was trying to squeeze in far too much into the itinerary that some fairly drastic culling would be required and I would have to leave large swathes of the country for a future trip.

My main aims were to visit the two remaining industrial railways on Honshu island, the very scenic Tadami, Ban-Etsu and Hakubi lines, as many private railways as I could find including the the very rare 762mm gauge lines and some working steam trains. The latter would have to be planned on the weekends only, further complicating the planning. 

 

I bought a 21-day JR rail pass, which were slated to have a very considerable price hike in early October, pre-booking ** trains. I would also utilise a handful of hire cars to allow me to travel out to some of the harder to reach photography spots on various days. 

After spending an agonising eight weeks plotting and adjusting my little adventure, I finally came up with the following :

  • Tokyo area

  • Chichibu Railway

  • Tadami Line (JR East)

  • Ban Etsu West Line (JR East)

  • Tobu Railway 

  • Yokkaichi narrow gauge railways 

  • Sangi Railway

  • Tsuyama Line (JR West)

  • Hakubi Line (JR West)

  • Sanin Main Line (JR West) 

  • Ichibata Railway 

  • Gakunan Railway 

  • Fuji area

The second half was much less planned and all my railway hunting was done on a more improvised basis, but would include Hita, Hakata and Nagasaki on Kyushu island and Wakayama, Osaka and Kyoto back on Honshu island.  

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Tokyo

Tadami Line

Ban Etsu West Line

Tobu Railway

Kyoto

Osaka

Yokkaichi

Fuji

Wakayama

Sanin Main Line

Izumo

Tsuyama

Okayama

Nagasaki

Hita

Hakubi Line

Honshu island is the largest island of Japan's main four islands, home to over 115 million people and the capital city Tokyo. Despite the dense population of the gigantic metropolis cities, there is still large amount of forests and regional land. The alpine regions are particularly picturesque. Honshu island has four companies looking after the national rail network - JR East, JR Central and JR West for passengers and JR Freight which operates freight services of the other three companies as well as its own freight lines. The Shinkansen trains are operated by the above companies on dedicated high speed lines. In addition to this, there are many private railways, subway systems and even tram systems.   

The island of Kyushu is the western most of the main four islands. It is significantly less populated than Honshu. JR Kyushu and JR Freight operate the national railway network and there are a few private railways and Nagasaki's famous tramway as well. 

September 05 - Melbourne - Tokyo

My flight with Qantas to Tokyo Haneda direct from Melbourne was uneventful and we arrived/departed on time on an aging Airbus A330-200. The landing at night time was definitely the highlight of the flight, with the endless view of city lights with lightning from a large storm cell passing through. This was my second time to Japan and I am very glad I was able to fly to Haneda rather Narita airport which is much further away. I made my way through customs and got the airport train to my first hotel in Tokyo arriving around 10pm. The airport trains at this time were not particularly frequent, but I didn't have too long wait. My hotel was the Smile Hotel near Shinagawa and I rode the train all the way to the end of the line alighting at Sengakuji station. 

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September 06 - Tokyo & Chichibu Railway

I had four areas in Tokyo I wanted to achieve today and after getting ready and checking out of the hotel, I headed north towards the first one at Tamachi station, only a few hundred meters away. The weather today was very oppresive in the mid 30's (C) and hovering around 100% humidity, and although the rain was holding off, by the time I reached the road overpass south of Tamachi station, I was completely drenched in my own sweat. I spent only 20 minutes or so seeing around 40 trains in that time. There are eleven lines here and in peak time, there was never a time without at least one train on one of them.    

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I moved on to Yarakucho for a quick snap of a bullet train or two. This station has a large open forecourt on the eastern side. There are some cafe's which offer an even better spot, but all of these were closed. From ground level however, it is still possible to get an OK shot of the south bound trains. 

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From this point I decided to drop the final two spots in Tokyo and head straight to Tokyo station to arrange my JR Rail Pass and collect all of the reserved tickets I had made online. The last time I visited Japan, some eight years ago, I purchased my rail pass voucher through a travel agency which was then exchanged at Tokyo Railway station for the actual pass. Since then, JR have made it possible to purchase the pass online. Although this costs 10% extra, it did at least enable me to pre-book all of my tickets rather than arrive and hope all the trains I needed would still be available. I found a JR Pass desk at the JR Cafe on the eastern entrance of the station and the very helpful staff quickly had me on my way with 31 train tickets to use over the next few weeks. The JR Pass is printed on the same paper as the reserved seat tickets and it is the one that must be used to pass through gates. In fact, with all the trains I travelled on, I seldom had to present my reserved seat ticket to anyone at the ticket gates or even on the train. I decided after this was done, to travel straight up to Kumagaya to begin half a day early on the Chichibu line. My JR pass was still not going to be valid for a few days (as I had the longest pass available with 21 days and I was staying for 26, so I had to purchase my train ticket to Kumagaya separately. As a non-Japanese speaking person, I've always found Tokyo to be one of the most confusing railway stations I've visited, but I eventually found my platform and got on board a very sleek white, blue and gold W7 type bullet train for the forty minute dash north.   

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After a very smooth and quick ride out of Tokyo, I found myself some 65kms north in the city of Kumagaya. I dropped my large bag at the nearby hotel for the night and headed straight back to Kumagaya station for a quick lunch at a curry house before starting my afternoon on the privately owned and operated Chichibu railway. The Chichibu railway is a unique railway in Japan, being one of only two left in Japan to have its own freight services. They also run a passenger service using various electric railcars & train sets and even have a steam locomotive for special services on Sundays. Their bread and butter however is focused on the cement plant, bringing loads of limestone from the quarry near Uramayguchi to the Taiheiyo cement plant on a spur line just east of Takekawa station, and this would be my primary focus over the next couple of days. These trains are hauled by an elderly fleet of 100, 300, 400 and 500 class Bo-Bo electric locomotives which date back to the 1950's, all of which are in immaculate condition. The Chichibu platforms are in the same building and I decided to make use of my Suica card, rather than one way or an all day ticket instead.

The weather was threatening to finally open up and as the day was already half gone, I decided to first visit Takekawa station where there was a high chance of seeing some of the cement trains. There is a pedestrian overpass here which gives good views in both directions, if not for the jungle of overhead wires! There is also a marshalling yard which typically sees an empty train waiting for a loaded one to clear the section. The line is very busy and although I was unable to find a freight timetable, there seems to be a stone train every hour or so in both directions. All cement trains I saw were single header and the standard size train comprises of twenty open top hoppers.

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I was able to photograph three freight trains in a little over an hour, as well as all the stabled locomotives in the vicinity, before the rain arrived and I had to scramble for cover. Due to this little inconvenience, I decided to travel the line to hunt for some good photo locations around a number of the train stations and scout out some of the better looking photograph locations.    

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Locomotives/Trains seen : 

September 07 - Chichibu Railway

Locomotives/Trains seen : 

August 24 - Ayr

August 25 - Ingham

August 26 - Ingham

August 27 - Tully

August 28 - South Johnstone

August 29 - Gordonvale

August 30 - Mossvale

August 31 - Homehill

September 01 - Mackay

September 02 - Mackay

September 03 - Mackay - Moree

September 04 - Moree - Melbourne

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Locomotives/Trains seen : 

Summary

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Video Library

Some videos of my recent trip to Java can be found here. To assist with my YouTube channel, Pete's World Railway Videos, please consider subscribing to the channel, sharing with your friends and commenting & liking my videos. This greatly helps with YouTube's algorithm.    

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September 2022 Monthly Drone Compilation

Duration 8:01 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRydLrSR_NY

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October 2022 Monthly Drone Compilation

Duration 6:19 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUQtMkDYxWE

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November 2022 Monthly Drone Compilation

Duration 6:13 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCGFDUmzprM

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Passenger & Cargo trains around Jakarta

Duration 8:50 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9TSUIiTp8c&t=11s

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Fireless Steam Locomotives in service at Pagotan Sugar Mill

Duration 6:29 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJdtamY7yHc&t=57s

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Kedawung Sugar Mill's field lines

Duration 6:26 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L50_3_LdQVE

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