NEX

"Railway Roundabout". If you were a juvenile railway buff like I was in the 1950's you won't need to be told that this was the title of the 'tain-spotters' programme on BBC TV. Yes, incredibly for a short time the Beeb actually ran a programme for train spotters back then, lots of grainy 405-line TV in black and white featuring sooty steam locomotives.

This blog "Railway Roundabout" is also for fun too. I'll regularly add items and pictures here not just about my current travels around JR (Japan Railways) but also on some of the many private Japanese Railways. I'll also include trips to linesides in other parts of the world and sometimes photographs of the railways of my childhood in North East England. If you have anything that you would like to add yourself please email it to me at iain(at)littlehouseinthepaddy(dot)net

I was wondering what to write about in this first entry of "Railway Roundabout" but I guess it has to be 'NEX' - the 'Narita Express'. If you ever come to Japan and land at Tokyo's international airport at Narita this will probably be the frist Japanese train you will come across. I remember the excitement I felt one sticky Sunday morning in June 1997 when Julia and I got our 'JR Passes' in a jet-lagged haze after the flight from Manchester and made our way onto the platform at Terminal 1 where one of these sleek silver black and red air-conditioned trains was waiting to speed us along the Sobuhonsen into the capital.

The Narita Express runs from the airport into Tokyo's main station but then splits with various sections heading for Shinagawa, Shinjuku, Omiya and Yokohama. As we watched the countryside of Shimosa flying by en route to Chiba - with so many farmers tending their growing rice -it all seemed very exotic. And yet just nine years after it's a journey which has become deeply familiar for me.

Here in this picture are two NEX units passing at Shinagawa a couple of Sundays ago. What a great place for young trainspotters!

- Iain