Tokyo eki

If it hadn’t been for the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 Tokyo would never have had a central station. But the disaster caused so much damage to the city that it gave the government an opportunity to make a ‘corridor’ between the Shimbashi terminus on the Tokaido line to the south west and Ueno terminus on the lines to the north of Japan. Half way along this new five mile railway Tokyo’s new main station was built.

Now ten tracks head south from here and twelve to the north and east! There’s also two deeper sets of JR tracks running east in addition to a maze of metro lines headed in various diections under the building.

This is the Maronouchi side of the station – the posh side where the station master’s office is located. It’s also only about 200 yards from the Imperial Palace. When the Emperor takes the Royal Train this is where he comes to board it. The station master greets him on arrival and then leads him along a special private carpeted passage under the station to the Tokaido line tracks at platforms 9 and 10.

Actually this building is special for me too. Around the other side overlooking the Yamanote line platforms is where we had our wedding breakfast! Ideal location for a life-long ‘gricer’ eh? A train arriving every half a minute outside the window …

Caley 123

It's amazing to think now but back in 1963 I actually saw this engine double-heading a GNSR 4-4-0 an enthusiast's special on the London to Brighton main line fast tracks! It was bringing a train back up from the Bluebell line which in those days was connected to the rest of the UK rail system at Horstead Keynes. And boy were they shifting too - maybe 75 mph! It was a sight for sore eyes ...

Now sadly Caledonian 123 languishes as a static exhibit in the Glasgow Museum of Transport but these engines were built for sprinting. Back in the 1880's when exprss trains were light 'single-wheelers' were in vogue - some time soon I must write about the Anglo-Scottish 'races' of 1888 in which this engine took part.

The 'Caley' main line ran north from the English border at Carlisle to Glasgow with a branch off to Edinburgh at Carstairs. I just love that Caledonian blue livery with red trimmings, perhaps I'll build a model of one of their engines just for the pleasure of watching that brillian blue circling my garden in the sunshine.

500 Series

One ambition yet to fulfil in Japan is to travel on a 500 Series shinkansen. So far they have eluded me because they are only used on the very fastest 'Nozomi' services between Tokyo and Hakata and this is the one train that you aren't allowed to use with a Japan Rail Pass. But I need to travel down to Kyoto in December so that will be my chance to get to travel on one.

Smart beasts eh? There are nine sets built between 1995 and 1998 and they have a top speed of 200 mph although in service thay are normally run at a maximum of 186 mph. I've seen them running through Shizuoka at that speed - a very impressive sight.

These sixteen car trains are powered on every axle and have a total output of 25,000 HP. Each train cost around GBP £25 million.

CF de Provence

At the moment we are busy rooting around on the internet for possible gites (cottages) to stay in during an upcoming trip to France. The plan is that we'll spend a few days in Paris in October and then meet up with some friends in Provence.

I've visited France often but never stayed in Provence before. We're looking for something east of Avignon

Maybe this trip I'll get a chance to ride on the Chemins de Fer de Provence - the little metre gauge line that trundles down from Digne to Nice in three hours. They even have occasional steam services in summer but in October I guess the best I can hope for is one of the venerable railcars they have, like this very Gallic looking Reneault.

Amazing that this fragment of French narrow-gauge has hung on like this. Sadly the old terminus at Nice - which I visited about 15 years ago - is no longer in use. The Gard du Sud was an amazing building which hopefully will get restored soon as an art gallery, but now the line stops a few hundred metres away avoiding the city streets. When I was there olive sellers used to bring their produce down from the hills on the morning train

Tennant 2-4-0's

A lot of my study at the moment relates to passing time and the loss of experiences and information. This really strikes me in relation to 'gricing' too. We have a wealth of railway photography after 1945, and a fair number of pictures for the previous thirty years, but before about 1910 film emulsions couldn't capture moving trains well. Gefore 1880 there are very few railway photographs and they are all of static trains or station scenes.

So we have no idea of what gricing might have been like back in the 1850's or 1860's for example. What would it have been like to stand by the tracks and watch the trains going by 150 years ago? What did they look like? Were they clean or dirty? What noise did they make?

If I was to get a trip in a time machine I'd like to travel back to Darlington in the summer of 1885 - the year Henry Tennant's 2-4-0's were introduced. I know what '1463' here looks like in North Road Museum, but how did she look clattering in on an express of six-wheel coaches at speed? And in the yard there would be Stockton and Darlington Bouch '1001' 0-6-0's shunting coal hoppers and Fletcher '901' class on local passenger trains.

Yes, that might make for a perfect summer afternoon. Where's my fask of tea and sandwiches?

My thanks to Steve Frost for this photo

Freight Train Stopped in Carlisle.

I was just about to board the Newcastle train when this Freightliner in DRS livery pulled in. The driver nipped out to get a sandwich at the station cafe just opposite. I like the freight trains. At least they have proper locomotives and have a bit more character about them than the soul-less silver cigar tubes that Virgin run. The sharp eyed among you may see this is a container train, flatbed trucks with containers on them. This one had about fifty containers on. Thats fifty less big lorries going down the M6. A good argument for keeping our railways.
The other regular freight carrier is EWS (England-Wales-Scotland). Their trains tend to bit a bit scruffier. But it is bulk haulage they do most of, coal, aggregate, mucky stuff. They use the same type of loco as shown here but painted marron and yellow. I'll try and get a piccy of an EWS sometime.

Norman

Will I get a ticket?

Here's something a bit mouth-watering. I spotted this poster in Tokyo Station last week.

JR Central Japan are having three open days on their MAGLEV test track. This was built some years ago in the mountains of Yamanashi-ken to try out their prototype high speed trains and it's about 40 miles long. If you draw a line of a map from Tokyo to Nagoya then this track is pretty well on it - the plan is that one day it will be incorporated into a new high speed route. Around 80% of it is tunnels

Only in Japan would engineers be allowed to take that kind of a financial gamble. In Britain it takes us decades to get around to building a couple of miles of new railway.

So 1800 lucky people will get a chance to ride on the route fron 25th to 28th August. There's a lottery for tickets and the lucky winners will get to travel at 300 miles an hour on the MLX-01 experimental MAGLEV train. If you want to learn more look here

Will I be applying for a ticket? What do you think?

White Gloves

A couple of weeks ago my friend Rev. Mugo commented about the way drivers and guards here wear white gloves, and also something about the fancy hand-work that they use.

In Japan anyone touching or operating machinery wears white gloves - and train and bus drivers always! Well, you wouldn't want to get perspiration and fingermarks on that nicely polished machine eh? And also you don't want any oil or grease on your hands. People are very conscious of cleanliness here.

Also on trains everything is done like a military drill. On the kaisoku into Tokyo yesterday I snuck this picture of the driver as we sped along the fast line to Ichikawa. Around every twenty seconds or so he'd point to the approaching signal and say aloud to himself "aspect green!" It's a safety procedure, it means that he's even less likely to miss a warning signal.

They take procedures like this extremely seriously here, no one would ever let it slip or think it unnecessary. Guards too, when they close the doors at stations have their own checklist to recite, pointing down the train to check that all the 'open door' lights are extinguished and on curves checking the platform camera.

I should have had a 'routine' myself yesterday. I arrived at Chiba with eight minutes to spare to catch this train and settled myself comfortably in the front coach. Departure time came, the warning bell for 'doors closing' sounded and ... the doors didn't close and the signal was still red! Then - the train in the next platform departed - I'd got on the one next door leaving six minutes later! So I'm starting my own hand signal routine now - point to the departure board and say "right train!"

Cross-Country Virgin

From Exeter to Glasgow via Birmingham New Street. The "cross country" route (or one of them) all of which at some point join the West Coast line. These trains look sleek and fast. By British standards they are fast but in no way compete with the Japanese Shinko. About 120 mph is their speed but are capable of 180 mph but the track in Britain simply isn't up to it. Despite the bad press these trains do run on time give or take a few minutes. The only thing I have against them is the seating; set like economy class aircraft and the seats themselves are not comfortable for long journeys. The most comfortable trains here are the Trans Pennine blue trains. I posted a picture of one coming into Carnforth about a month ago.
These Virgin Voyagers as they are called are diesel multiple units. The other type that Virgin run are the Pendolino which is electric and is a bit more comfortable, but not much. It does the Glasgow-London run.

Norman

Training Train

I've just got back from a stint wardening a Youth Hostel in Northumberland. I went there by train and bus. The train to newcastle from Lancaster entails a change at Carlisle where I had to wait a half hour for my connection. This diesel loco in VIRGIN livery travels daily from Peston to Carlisle then returns to Preston. It passes my studio each day at 3-00pm and returns at 5-00pm. I have been told it is used by trainee drivers "learning the road", where they familiarise themselves with signals, points, speed limits etc. before driving the passenger trains.
I got this picture at Carlisle as it was prepared for its return journy south. It never seems to haul coaches or trucks. Its always the solo loco.

Norman

Driver's side

Whizzing by tonight on my way to choir practice but here's a picture of something I think is a bit unusual.

This is the cab of a steam locomotive - actually a JNR C57 Class Pacific number C57 66 which as appeared on this Blog before. It's the driver's side - the steam regulator is just out of the photo but the handles and levers in the centre are the 'reverse' which also acted as a kind of power regulator too and the air brake.

It's looking very neat and almost as if the engine was last in steam yesterday, rather than back in 1964.

But here's the surprise. This engine lives in a public park in Tokyo a couple of minutes walk from Oomori station. And anyone can climb up into the cab and take a look. And yet as far as I can see there's not a single piece of damage to any of the gauges or glasses or electrical equipment. And nothing has been stolen.

That says a lot for Japanese society eh? Where else in the world could you leave a steam locomotive unguarded for forty years and expect it to stay in one piece?

Chiba City Monorail

Chiba cty has quite an extensive monorail system. The 'main line' runs from the Prefectural offices through the city centre to the main station and then around the north of town in a loop to a terminus out east in Wakaba-ku. A short branch, the first leg of an anticipated extension towards Midori-ku, branches off at the main station and heads down past City Hall to JR Chiba Minato station.

I's a cute system, around 12 miles and about a dozen stations. A lot of people from Inage and further out do use it to commute into the city centre, but I can't belive it's remotely profitable. This kind of project was very popular before the economic balloon burst in 1993, Japanese bureaucrats loved these kind of toys as a 'legacy' to hand down to their long suffering tax payers.

All the trains on the Chiba system are two cars,like the one approaching Tsuga seen here in the picture. In some places they get up to around 40 mph which feels plenty fast enough to me that high up in the air and they give you a curious sense of 'flying by train' when they get moving too. If you are scared of flying here's something to practice with!

Oh! But then you would need to fly to Japan first eh?

'Gricing' with history

Here's a nice old 'Valentines' postcard of Newcastle Central Station in the 1930's. Actually you can't see the station building - the artist or photographer must have been sitting on the roof to capture this view. But what you can see is the old castle 'keep' which was - and still is - sandwiched so tightly into this juncion that you could look right down the chimney of passing locomotives on both sides from the roof.

Some people must have paid their sixpence to admire Norman military architecture but the rest of us used to head up there for the high quality trainspooting it offered. The line coming in on the left is from Edinburgh and the artist has painted an A4 arriving on an 'up' express from Scotland. Apart from the fact that A4's were green in my day this is how I remember the 'Flying Scotsman' or 'Elizabethan' looking here.

On the far left a Tyneside Electric unit is creeping out, waiting for a clear road through to Manors Junction and on to Whitley Bay and the coast.

The line to the right is to Sunderland over Stephenson's High Level Bridge. Until the new King Edward Bridge was opened, I think in 1905, trains from London would enter the station this way and then reverse out to continue to Scotland.

These crossovers were once 'state of the art' magnesium steel but all that has long gone as the trains are less frequent and much lighter. But I'm happy to say that - as far as I know - you can still climb to the top of that castle 'keep' to watch trains.

Filling Up

One of the exciting events around running steam express trains in Britain was taking on water. An express locomotive would need to fill up it's tender with water around every hundred miles or so, they were very thirsty machines. This was usually done from a water column beside the track at stations using a large capacity hose, but on longer express passenger routes they would fill up on the move from troughs between the rails. A few other European systems and some North American railroads (where they were called 'pans') used this process too, but in Britain it was very popular and happened at high speed.

The trough between the rails had - for obvious reasons! - to be on completely level track and was about half a mile long. As the locomotve approached at perhaps 80 mph the fireman would quickly lower a scoop under the tender and the speed of the train would transfer perhaps 5000 gallons into the tender in around 20 seconds.

If the fireman left the scoop down even a second too long everything in a wide radius got a shower from a 'tidal wave' as several hundred gallons overflowed. It was all a rather dodgy business, and especially in the dark!

I was looking for a photo of Whiske Moor troughs near Darlington where I often watched engines taking water like this as a child from a safe distance, but this lovely print of a GWR train on Reading troughs by Barry Freeman was the best I could find. You can see other examples of his work here Sadly it's something you can never watch now - I don't think there are working troughs left anywhere in the world.

Neat Parking

One thing that's amazingly different in Japan compared with England is the way people get on and off trains.

In England we kind of mill around on the platform spread evenly like jam. The train arrives, stops pretty well anywhere, and everyone dives towards the doors.

Here in Japan every platform is carefully marked with the little markers you see here, and if more than one kind of train uses a platform then with several sets of little markers. This one says 'kaisoku' - 'rapid' train. This is where the doors will be when the train arives and this is where you queue in a tidy line to get on. At busy stations in Tokyo there are actually two markers which line up with either side of the door so that you can get on at the sides while people get off in the middle. This is how JR can achieve 'turn arounds' at stations of typically less than 30 seconds.

Drivers here take a pride in stopping their trains at exactly the right place - most of the time I'd guess that they aren't more than 15 cm (6") off the mark. With a heavy fifteen car train on wet rails with maybe 3000 people aboard that is no mean skill

GS-4

I first started travelling to California around 1990 and instantly liked the 'Espee' - the Southern Pacific Railroad that back then provided most of the state's freigh services. And when I read more about the SP I liked it even more and not least for its wonderful array of steam locomotives over the years.

All Espee fans have a particular 'soft spot' for the GS-4 class of 4-8-4's. Here is one of the class on the 'Argonaut' back in the late 1940's somewhere in the Arizona or southern Californian desert between El Paso and Los Angeles.

Strange to think that in fact these beautiful engines were only operating for about fifteen years. No 4449 for example - the preserved member of the class - was built in 1941 and retired in late 1954. In fact she spent longer rusting away in a park in Portand before being restored for the bicentennial in 1976 than she ever did in steam.

This last generation of American steam superpower all had short lives, which is a shame. But there's some amazing pictures of them in action.

Brighton Belle

All this football on TV at the moment with the World Cup in progress has reminded me of my student days and that famous World Cup held in England in 1966. It was a hot and rather sticky summer's day and I was doing a 'holiday job' cleaning at Gatwick Airport. The entire world seemed to come to a standstill for the England - Germany final and we clustered around 'trannie radios' to listen to the game where we could (TV's just didn't exist at the airport in those distant days). And of course the whole place was in uproar when we heard that famous line - "They think it's all over - it is now!"

I mention this because almost at that exact moment the 'Brighton Belle' was hurrying past the airport station. So my most vivid memory of football is also of a Pullman train.

The 'Brighton Belle' used to travel I think four times a day from London (Victoria) to Brighton on the south coast. It's only 60 miles and the train took an hour non-stop. It began as a steam service but from 1933 the Brighton line was elecrified at 750 volts third rail and three new EMU trains were built - the '5-Bels' 2051, 2052 and 2053. They were a familiar sight for me as a teenager on this line but I never got to travel on the train itself.

Eventually the train was withdrawn in 1972 but almost all the fifteen 5-Bel coaches have survived in some guise - many are used now on the 'Venice Simplon Orient Express' excusions.

I still rememeber that old electric train speeding through the Sussex countryside in her brown and cream livery - beautiful! The photo is of one of the 'Belle' Pullmans from unit 2052, Doris. Now she is preserved on the Bluebell Railway.

Jubilee

After his retirement in 1962 my grandfather spent twenty years living near the small town of Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria. From the sink in the kitchen - when you were washing up after tea - you might see trains passing in the distance on the Settle - Carlisle line.

More about that lovely railway another time, but one of my favourite classes along the route back then was the LMS 'Jubilees'. Introduced in the 1930's as a lighter express locomotive they survived right until the end of main line steam in Britain and some still operate on preserved railways.

Here's a picture of 45589 'Gwailor' hurrying down from Blea Moor Tunnel to Ribblehead. It was taken in April 1963 and it looks like an 'all stations' train - maybe I was even aboard as I'd quite often travel to the Ingleborough area using this service. Incredible to think that even as recently as the 1960's this was 'just an ordinary train'.

The LMS designed some very classy 4-6-0's but maybe the Jubilees were the neatest. If you want so see some more pictures take a look at Simon Robinson's excellent site here.

Boilerwork

Here's a picture from the rare book on Southern Pacific 'Daylights' by Robert Church that I featured recently. It shows the boiler of a 'GS' class being brazed at the Lima locomotive works in Ohio in 1937. The boiler is on it's side and the men are working in the firebox. Most of the structural strength comes from the heavy duty riveting.

That's a heck of a firebox eh? The grate area must be about 100 square feet. Like almost all other Southern Pacific engines this one will be oil fired when complete. That's a mainly American technology I never had much experience with but I guess the burner was attached outside the fire door and made a huge flame into the firebox. Engines like this could use 6000 gallons of fuel in a day in service.

In Britain most of our engines were coal fired by hand. Absolutely no chance of even an Olympic weightlifter hand firing this GS boiler with a shovel!

I've actually made model locomotive boilers with brazing and rivets and it's really fun to flange copper plates.

In the full size boiler shops like this one the noise was incredible. In those days no-one thought much about occupational injuries and all boilermakers were completely deaf. I once went into the boiler shop at Swindon when new boilers were still being made and I'll never forget how the din of all those pheumatic riveting hammers almost knocked you over as you walked through the door.

Tralee to Dingle

I mentioned the Irish narrow gauge a few days ago, but here's a picture of maybe my favourite Irish line. About 30 years ago I finally made it down that long peninsula to Dingle and saw for myself some of the remnants of the old T&D although most of the track had been 'lifted' twenty years before and all the locomotives and stock were long gone.

Dingle was the furthest west point in the whole of Europe ever reached by rails!

The thing that really struck me then was how fearsome the gradients on this line used to be. I suspect that more smoke came off the engine's brake shoes than out of the chimney.

So it was was something amazing about ten years ago to travel on the Tralee and Dingle once more. Only about 2 miles across the marshes from Tralee to Blennerville have been relaid again but the truly remarkable thing was that after a fifty year absence - much of it spent as a static exhibit in Steamtown in the USA - T&D number 5T is back home again and in steam. Beautiful.

If you are in the west of Ireland a visit to Blennerville is a 'must'. Take a look here for details ...

Night Trains

I bought this book in a 'remainder' book store in Albuquerque the night before flying back to the UK some time in the mid-1990's so I don't know if it is even still in print. But's it's a favourite to take off the shelf to admire the night photographs.

There's inevitably a touch of romance about passenger trains that run through the night. In Britain there are very few (if any?) left and I guess in North America now it's limited to the Amtrak long distance runs. In Japan we've also lost a lot in the last few years. Here the spread of fast daytime shinkansen services makes night travel a convenience rather than a necessity and on some routes if they can't replace and repair track during the night there's never any other chance.

In the first half of the twentieth century there was an amazing network of overnight Pullman sleeper services to every part of the United States before it evaporated with the spread of air travel in the 1950's. This book details those trains state by state. So if you are a sad person like me who loves details and tables of numbers and has to know were each train was at midnight (35 miles west of Cheyenne!) it's the book for you.

But there's also a wonderful nostalgia here too. All those long vanished trains like the 'Dixie Flagler' and 'Olympian Hiawatha' and 'Paul Revere' that rode off into the night sometime durng the 1950's never to return are described and illustrated with fine black and white photographs. Yes, a book worth exploring ...

Red Letter Day

Well, here's something! I really love the Southern Pacific 'GS' classes and ever since I first visited the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento for the first time in 1990 I've been watching for a copy of this book! It's Robert Church's "Those Daylight 4-8-4's" published by Kratsville in 1976 around the time that GS4 no 4449 was restored to pull the bicentennial 'Freedom Train'. I saw a copy in the museum library there and photocopied one of the general arrangement drawings in the appendix. The librarian commented to me "You'll be lucky if you can ever find a copy of this!"

Now 16 years later I have one at last. I've seen two copies for sale down the years but both at around the $175 mark. This one was less than half that so a real 'snip'

I spotted it on the American 'Amazon' site. The miserable shop owner wouldn't mail to me abroad but thankfully my friend Dave in New York agreed to forward it for me.

It's one of the best loco class books I've ever seen and full of photographs of the constuction of the engines at Lima Locomotive Company. Maybe in the coming weeks I'll include a few photographs here

J21

I was pleased to see on the internet recently that one of my favourite engines is about to be restored (again!). For several years it has been up at Beamish Open Air Museum on the silly little length of track they have there but it looks likely that she will get some longer runs soon after more than forty years. If you want to find out more about the project see here

0-6-0 locomotive designs like this were the backbone of traffic operation on most of our secondary lines for nearly a century. There must have been several hundred designs around the same theme and thousands of locomotives.

'65033' is an LNER 'J21' and before that a North Eastern Railway Class 'C'. Designed by T.W.Worsdell she 'entered traffic'in March 1889 and ran until April 1962 - 73 years of service! She was one of the last of the 201 engines in the class in steam and piloted many passenger excursions in her time.

After withdrawal from service she led a charmed life at the back of the Darlington scrapyard and miraculously survived to make it up to Beamish in the early 1970's as part of their collection. I saw her being restored there (the first time!) around 1975.

I have a particular soft spot for '65033' because one snowy day in the 1950's I rode in her cab between Barnard Castle and Bowes when she was on snow ploughing duties. Those big cabs were pretty chilly in winter if the wind was from the other direction!

'Acts of God'

As I understand it lawyers define 'Acts of God' as something so impossible to foresee that no-one could be blamed for not thinking about it.

One of the more remarkable 'Acts of God' in railway history was the Owencarrow Viaduct accident of 1925. The Owencarrow River is in northern County Donegal in Ireland, just a couple of miles from the ocean and in winter it gets pretty windy up there. Some years ago I camped a little along the coast from this spot and it was breezy enough in mid-summer.

One dark January night a train was actually blown off Owencarrow viaduct, right over the edge. The driver had realised that the weather was very bad and slowed down to walking pace but the hurricane took the whole train over the parapet. I wonder if it has ever happened elsewhere in railway history.

The viaduct was on the Londonderry and Lough Swilly's 'Burtonport Extension' - an Irish 3' gauge line out to the far west. There are still plenty of relics of the route left although it closed in the 1940's, but sadly not this viaduct.

I came across this picture of the bridge on the internet tonight here. Actually it gave me a smile - the viaduct is a good likeness but the train in the picture looks like Irish 5'3" gauge - the locomotive might be a Great Northern of Ireland 4-4-0. I'd guess it's by a local artist who worked from postcards

'MX' in the snow

Back during the winter of 1968-1969 I was studying (is that what they call it?) in Aarhus in Denmark. I'm not sure that I took on board much settlement geography but I certainly enjoyed the country and the people despite pretty limited scholarship funding - I seem to remember that the end of the month was a lean time foodwise.

In January it got amazingly cold - real sea-freezing stuff. But of course that's no discouragement to the keen 'gricer'

Aarhus station is a 'reverse'. Well, probably it's changed now but in those days you drifted in from the south and only a couple of tracks went through the train shed and on out and down to the quay. Expresses changed locos and went back the way they came taking the northern tracks at the junction towards Aalborg.

Favourites amongst the engines for me were these fat 'MX' diesels which operated most expresses. I'd walk a couple of miles out of town on smowy winter nights to do some trackside 'gricing' where I could watch them at speed. Happy days!

Here's one beautifully restored to 1960's DSB (Dansk Statsbaner) Danish State Railways livery. Oh! That takes me back. That lovely Danish flag red ...

Picture thanks to DSB Museumstog

Up in the air

Japan is famous for the sheer amount of nepotism that has gone on between the ruling LDP and the construction industry for years. In fact it's not just a recent phenomenon - even in the Edo era two hundred years ago the government used to take back-handers from contractors.

One consequence of this is that in Japan the contruction industry works at a rate unimaginable in most countries. So many fat contracts to be had!

Take a look here for example - here's the Keio Line built during the late 1980's, mostly on land reclaimed from Tokyo bay. Almost the whole of this thirty mile new line is built elevated like this, and the rest is in tunnels under Tokyo. Around 20 miles of the nearby Sobu line was raised off the ground in the 1970's. Fifty miles of elevated track in twenty years just in one Prefecture. That's a heck of a lot of concrete eh?

Of course it does have the advantage that you can operate an intensive service totally reliably and free from the hassles of traffic and new civil engineering work

And it's quiet too - at least from ground level. You can hear the birdsong even above the rumble of a passing Boso EMU!

A train with a view

One of the very nice things about travelling on Japanese Railways is that you get a perfect driver's eye view of the track ahead on most ordinary trains. Somehow it's taken for granted here that passengers find it reassuring to see that their driver is awake, alert and not reading his paper or supping a flask of tea. Or even exceeding the speed limit, because if you are so inclined you can see all the controls and dials.

Here's my 204 unit speeding to Inage-kaigan this morning. It's hard to believe for an English 'gricer'that this spectacular view comes free! Long ago some of our early diesel multiple units had glass between driver and passengers but generally it was in the first class and most drivers immediately closed the blinds if anyone showed any curiousity about the track ahead. There's probably some rule against it or perhaps the unions kicked up a fuss about the driver's right to privacy to have a 'fag' or pick his nose. Nowadays you never get this view on a British train.

Here in Japan the driver's blinds come down at night or on route sections with long tunnels and then the trick is to go to the back of the train where the guard sits in the other cab - the blinds there are always open. Otherwise crews seem to take a real pleasure in people watching their skilled handling of the train. It's good PR eh? And good for security too.

You don't get this view on the shinkansen or some expresses because cabs are at higher levels. But maybe the most spectacular views you will ever get anywhere like this are on the 'Furico' units between Kushiro and Sapporo up in Hokkaido. Here the driver's cab is higher but a lower 'connecting door' to link units has a glass window so you can stand right at the front of the train and look forward like that bit in the 'Titanic' movie! There are long mountain tunnels blasted through rock on that line and it's pretty scary to roar through those at 80 mph peering down the bore in the train headlight!

This is York

As a fan of the former North Eastern Railway (and that's the pre-1923 North Eastern, not the upstart LNER from 1923-1948!) my favourite stations in Britain are Darlington (Bank Top), York and Newcastle - in that order. Pure cathedrals of the great railway age. Well, Darlington I'm come to later but here's a recent photograph to introduce York.

York is the home of our National Railway Museum - it's a couple of hundred yards to the west of the station and in fact if you follow that footbridge to the left you'll come to it.

This is the third (maybe fourth?) station at York and was opened in the 1880's. As you can see it's got a beautiful steel roof, with cast iron pillars. Actually a lot of this span is quite recent - during WW2 this platform took a direct hit from a bomb.

The train here is a 'Virgin' Voyager of some description - probably a 220 Class. It will be headed for Bristol and maybe further west.

Fairlie's Patent

Of all the North Wales narrow gauge lines I think that the Ffestiniog is easily my favourite. It climbs about twenty miles from the coast at Porthmadog up to the slate quarrying area of Blaenau Ffestiniog, and it was one of the early narrow gauge lines to be taken over by preservationists.

The Ffestiniog is a really serious railway - a busy heavily graded main line with long trains and some powerful locomotives. Probably the most interesting are the 'Fairlie Patents'.

This one is named 'David Lloyd George' after the famous Liberal Prime Minister. As you can see the really curious thing about Fairlies is that they are a kind of 'Siamese twin' locomotive - in effect two identical locomotives back to back. This one is an 0-4-4-0 but in France I think some 0-6-6-0's were built and I have a vague recollection the principle was once used in the USA too.

It is actually only one firebox in the boiler. In the cab in the middle the driver stands on one side of the engine and the fireman on the other firing from the side. Despite having inspected this arrangement close up it still confuses the heck out of me! And the sight of the 'same locomotive' pointing in two directions at once is amusing. A very pretty engine though eh?

C12

I have a real 'soft spot' for all kinds of small tank engines and there are three Japanese designs I especially like. Here is one of them - the C12 class introduced in the 1930's and used on many lines around here in Kanto.

Often when I'm waiting on a steamy country station platform down here in leafy Chiba-ken I like to imagine the ghosts of these machines chugging towards me through the hot summer afternoons of yesteryear with a couple of very much 'not-airconditioned' coaches with all the windows open. Of couse as soon as a tunnel turned up we would slam those windows closed soon enough.

The last C12's operated in the 1960's but there are several well-preserved examples around including some in steam on the Moka railway. I must pay them a visit soon.

Thanks for this picture to Kurogane no Michi

The View from my Studio Window

The West Coast main line crosses the River Lune at Carlisle Bridge, so named because it is at that end of Lancaster station that leads to Carlisle. Obvious really I suppose. This ancient Maybach diesel is pulling some even more antiquated Pullman coaches on a Bank Holiday special excursion from Carnforth to who knows where. There hasn't been so many steam hauled specials lately. Network Rail have been a bit upset by a spate of steam locos breaking down and putting the whole of Virgin's West Coast trains behind schedule. Consequently they tend to be diesel hauled these days.
There is still some interest in it for me. In a previous incarnation way back in the sixties and seventies I worked at a steel foundry where we made the castings for these locos. So I can look at them and say, "I 'elped to build that!"

Norman

Feeling Lost?

On my first visit to Japan (Good grief! Only nine years ago this month!) I was really worried that we'd get hopelessly lost what with all the signs being in impossible-to-read 'kanji' - the Japanese set of 'Chinese Characters'. There's more than 2,000 of them.

Well, one thing is sure, it would be very hard for anyone to get lost in Japan. You only have to look a little bit uneasy for people to start checking you out to make sure that you are OK. They are really helpful here.

And the signs on the railways are especially helpful. Here's a very typical and standard 'JR East Japan' station sign.

First you get the name in 'kanji' which is how it will appear on your Japanese map if you have one. Actually often you can't tell how a place is pronounced just from this even if you are Japanese - it's a bit like having a little picture of a man on a toilet door but not knowing if people here say 'gents', 'hombres' or 'monsieurs'. So immediately under the kanji is the place name again in Japanese 'kana' - a table of sounds. It says 'o-o-a-mi' just so that you know what locals call it. Then for English speaking travellers there's the roman alphabet underneath. So you actually get the name three times.

And to be extra helpful to the left and right are the names of the next stations along the line.

No one could get lost eh? Hmm ... well, you might know what it's called, but as to WHERE you really are ... that's still sometimes a mystery.