Japanese Trainspotting in practice

As a break from the heavy detail that I included about rosters and the like yesterday here is a photograph of one of the trains listed in the short excerpt I included in my entry that might make it all a bit clearer ...

Here's our local station at Hyuuga and a 113 Class is just pulling up on a down train to Choshi. I really like this colour scheme - and indeed the trains. They are early seventies vintage but of course immaculately maintained and they have a bit of character about them. You could write a novel based on these trains and their passengers - commuters to distant Tokyo, farmers and shoppers off up to Chiba and schoolkids. They are always full - usually VERY full.

See that little yellow tag in the top of the nearest front window? That's the crucial one, the train reporting number You can't read in reduced but actually it's train Chiba Makuhari train S71 - as this is the 'Choshi end' you can check on your list from yesterday and see that the first coach here is trailer 111-1129. The yellow panel with the kanji on in the centre reads "Choshi via Yachimata" and the white panel beneath is the service number - JR East Japan Service 1348, the 10:17 Chiba-Choshi 'all stations'

You can't say that you are ever short of information as a gricer in Japan ...

Serious Japanese Gricing

A while back I warned you that 'gricing' in Japan was a tougher task than in either the UK or America and today I'll let you into a few professional secrets about collecting train numbers here.

It's not for the faint-hearted, believe me. Actually I think I should be charging consultancy rates just for telling you this ...

Japanese roster ('spotters books') come in several volumes and here is the 2004 JR Electrical Multiple Unit edition. Below is part of page 74 which gives information on some of the local units we get through Hyuuga ...

The bigger characters at the top of the page read Chi-ha-ri-5 which is short for the depot name Chiba Makuhari, our local motive power depot. All units have this 'shed code' on the lower left side of the coaches.

Below this is the class designation 113 and then a diagram of the six coaches of these particular units. There is a little lable which tell you which direction the units face (to the left Kamogawa, Choshi, Narita). There are three different kinds of coach in the train - 111 Classs ku-ha trailers, 112 Class pantograph motor coaches and 113 class motor coaches. The black boxes on the roof show the air conditioner types (almost as important in Japan as the tractive effort!)



Then the actual trains are listed on the left the reporting number. So Train Chimari S61 comprises vehicles 111-244, 113-1501,112-1501,113-1504,112-1504 and 111-1448. The date on the right (Heisei 11-10) October 1999 shows when the unit was last modified.

Hard stuff eh? But as long as you spot that yellow reporting number S61 hanging in the cab you can look up the rest at your leisure

Hyuuga

I’ve not included any pictures of our local station here so far – but here you are! Hyuuga is on the country section of the Sobu Line, a route built from Tokyo out to the port of Choshi at the mouth of the Tone River in the late 1890’s.

Hyuuga must originally have had a goods yard at the south-east side of the station, but it’s long vanished and I’ve never found a plan showing it. The whole place was remodelled when the line was electrified in the 1960’s, although the next station down the line at Naruto still has the original Sobu Railway building.

This photo was taken in June 2004 – an old ‘183’ unit on the down ‘Shiosai’ express for Choshi rumbling through while the up local bound for Chiba waits ‘in the hole’ on platform 2

Just a passing loop here now but a busy one and working it is a bit complex because there is a level crossing at the Chiba (north-west) end of the station just beyond where the trains are passing. Trains can’t be routed into one platform unless the other platform is either clear or the train in the opposite direction is already standing. In other words you can’t have trains coming into both sides of the loop from opposite directions at the same time.

As there are about twenty ‘meets’ of Choshi and Chiba-bound trains here daily there’s often the odd sight of the barriers coming down for the Chiba-bound train and then going up again without a train crossing as it halts in the station and the road is set for the opposite Choshi-bound train. Then about thirty seconds later the barriers come down to let the second train in and stay down while the first train leaves too.

Of course all us ‘locals’ know this and we are pretty nippy across that crossing if the barriers go up! Watch out if you are a pedestrian!

Keihin Railway

I've mentioned before that there are several private railways operating in the Tokyo area, and here is one I haven't featured before. Actually I stll haven't ridden on it either because if I'm travelling in this area I usually already have a JR 'Holiday Pass' for the day that will take me on a parallel route for free.

The Keihin line runs south out of Tokyo more or less parallel with the JR Tokaido Line down to Kawasaki, Tsurumi, Yokohama and out to the commuter towns in the Miura Peninsula of Kanagawa Prefecture. As a lot of the route is cleared for 75 mph running it's one of the fastest private lines in Japan; even this 1000 Series 'all stations' EMU is capable of running at that speed.

The Keihin would make for an interesting model. A bit like Liverpool's old 'Overhead Railway', its natural habitat is the thirty or so miles of docklands along the west side of Tokyo Bay It also sevices Tokyo's Hanada Airport.

Roaming in the Gloaming

A busy day today with a house full of kids so just a little reminder of summer here, and of a sunny if sticky morning.

Here's my Athearn F7 - what we gricers like to refer to as 'covered wagons' because of the shape (hope I'm right Eddie!). As I'm a Espee buff ('Southern Pacific' Fallen Flag of blessed memory)! mine of course is in the 1960's SP 'Black Widow' livery of black, silver and tuscan red. This is how an F7 of long ago might have looked growling up to Dunsmuir or across the desert to Yuma.

This is the north east curve on my garden line, out amongst the conifers by the lane. This is how garden railways should be - messy, decking a bit warped but full of colour and fresh air and the sounds of clickety-click over rail joints with the birds singing. Who would want a 'pike' in the attic or basement once you have discovered the joys of garden railroading?

West Coast Railway Company

A Class 47 diesel in West Coast Railway Company livery at Carlisle station. The WCRC run charter trains. That explains the sometimes motley collection of Pullman and standard coaches that trundle past my studio.

Photo by freefoto.com

Norman

News from Carnforth

The Old "Steamtown" has long been defunct. But when I visited this link all became clear. There are pictures of various diesel shunters in different states of decay. What I did notice on my last trip through Carnforth is the number of coaches being painted in maroon livery and carrying the logo "West Coast". As the train pulled out on its way to Arnside I espied a couple of Deltics receiving a lick of paint as they are being restored to their former glory.

Norman

JR Freight

Here's a picture that I meant to post yesterday but the 'Blogger' photo upload seems to be regularly out of action these days. Anyway, it's working now!

Freight is something that you don't often hear mentioned in the context of Japanese railways. Actually the serivce is quite like the UK (and of course very unlike North America!). Here the old-style van load stuff vanished as it did in England in the 1960's leaving the old JNR with some incredibly valuable redundant real estate around Tokyo and other major cities.

It was replaced by a freightliner container operation which is quite busy and now run as a separate JR division, although it suprises me in a country as long and crowded as Japan that there aren't more trains. Of course being Japan the service is run to the second, with trains timetabled between passenger services on some main lines. That is what happens on our side of Tokyo, where the service between Shinkoiwa and the steel town of Kashiwa dovetails with expresses to Narita on the Sobu line.

Here is one of those trains coming through Monoi in charge of the usual EF65. These are interesting engines and I'll post a close up sometime - to get over the low axle load problems they have three bogies - one in the middle! So this is actually a Bo-Bo-Bo!

What the postman brought

"Take a Lookie here!" as Rev. Mugo would say and see what the postman brought me today. It seems that I've been lucky in the Central Japan Railway ticket draw and I have a ticket for the MAGLEV 'Linear Express' for the 24th August. I'm on the 10:15 train.

I never thought that I stood the slightest chance of winning one of these rides. The public are only invited on three days this year and all the 1500 seats are allocated by lottery. But there you go - I actually got one! So next month I'll be one of the few people around to have travelled at 300 mph by rail, even if it is of a rather unusual kind. That sort of speed even puts Mallard in the shade eh?

The test track is over in Yamanashi Prefecture some miles south of the Chuo Line and about half way between Tokyo and Kofu. Most of it is underground, it only surfaces at a few points as it crosses mountain valleys.

Well, watch this space! Some time towards the end of August yuo can see the photographs on "Railway Roundabout"!

The Duchesses

Yesterday I was wondering if Norman could guess what my all-time favourite West Coast Main Line motive power would be and of course this is it - the 'Duchess' Pacifics built in the 1930's by Willian Stanier. The West Coast route from London to Scotland used to pose some real operational problems because between Lancaster and Penrith trains had to climb up to Shap summit. This was nothing too impressive by North American standards but it still caused problems for heavy expresses in the days of steam and the weather over the fells could be pretty arctic too.

Stanier's Pacifics were purpose built with this need for extra power in mind - big four cylinder engines with enormous fire-boxes - and in Britain of course hand-fired by a sweating fireman armed with a shovel who might expect to shift five tons of coal between London and the locomotive change at Carlisle.

Though they were designed for power they could be exceedingly fast too. I used to love to grice on the platform at Penrith where expresses coming down the bank with an open throttle would usually pass by up around the 'ton'. For a short time one of the class even held the world speed record - I'll write about that another day.

They had a weird collection of names for such lovely engines - an assortment of royalty, gentry and various cities served by the LMS. WIth my local connections I guess I have to say my favourite was 46243 'City of Lancaster'!

Here's 46242 'City of Glasgow' at Easter 1961 and just how I remember them! She's on an up express at Wreay, near Penrith and building up a fair head of speed and steam for the big bank a few minutes ahead. You would have heard and smelled her a mile away!

The photo is courtesy of the Roundhouse book "LM Pacifics: A Pictorial Tribute". Long out of print but you can find a second-hand copy here

This is more like it

The Virgin staff don't like Pendolinos all that much either. "Not what they're cracked up to be," they say. Thay are quiet and they do tilt as they go through the Howgills at Tebay. But the ride in them is more akin to Shoestring Airlines than a premiers train.
Now this "Royal Scot" class 4-6-0 is a bit more like it, Iain. Here it is on the Carlisle-Settle Railway where steamers still run on some weekends. Granted, with a back up diesel at the other end.

Pendolino

Here's a picture of one of the Virgin 'Pendolino' units taken at Lancaster not so long after the were introduced on the faster servives up to Scotland in 2004. This one was headed for Glasgow, or would have been if they could have got the doors to shut. I seem to remember a lot of cussing and hammering going on further up the train, which I had just got off. Teething troubles eh? But they must have got it fixed somehow because it wasn't still there the next time I went to Lancaster!

They look OK eh? But somehow all these express units these days are variations on a theme - what we gricers like to call "flying bananas".

Being a fully paid up member of the Nostalgia Club I have to say that these Penolino's aren't a patch on the clapped out old Class 87's they replaced for atmosphere on dark rainy Lancashire autumn nights. I'm venerable enough now to remember five generations of 'top link' motive power here on the West Coast Main Line. No prizes for guessing which I liked the best Norman!

Along the Coast

When Britain pretty well got rid of all it's trams in the 1950's there was one place that had the sense to keep their system, or at least the largest part of it. Yes, let's be fair, we might have a good laugh about Blackpool from time to time but here's one thing that they did right, for sure.

If you aren't British you probably don't know about Blackpool at all. It's a big old seaside resort on the Lancashire coast, a kind of 'Coney Island' but on a grand scale. They have specialised (though they would hate me for saying it now) in offering cheap, cheeerful and usually very alcoholic holidays for us working-class types for more than a century.

The trams were introduced from Fleetwood down along 'the front' and out as far as Starr Gate around 1900. What Americans would call 'inter-urbans'. More than a few of them have been blown over by the sea gales down the years but they still get heavily used to 'see the lights' at Illumination time. They have some wonderful old stock too - as you can see from these 1930's examples passing at Cleveleys Square.

Yep! Go to Blackpool to ride on the trams. You'll love it.

Red For Danger

Writing about Tyler equipment yesterday reminded me of a book I enjoyed reading when I was younger - "Red For Danger" by L.T.C. Rolt. Good grief! I see on UK Amazon they are looking for twenty five quid for a secondhand copy today, I wonder if I still have mine. I guess I maybe paid thirty pence for it! This growth of rip-off pricing on UK Amazon aimed at relieving 'the collector' of his cash is really something!

Oh! But let's not go there eh? That hobby horse can stay in the stable today! If you can find a copy in a junk shop or in your library this book is very thorough and readable compendium of British railway accidents from 1825 through to the 1980's. Not only does the author give a very well written presentation of some of our most notorious railway accidents but also analyses them into kinds of cause. Is there a North American equivalent of this book I wonder?

I guess in the end though nearly all causes come down to either not knowing or not thinking. Not knowing that cast iron can fracture, that gravity can be stronger than brakes. Not thinking that you didn't hear something right, that someone else might be mistaken.

In the end we only even learn through our mistakes, not everything can be foreseen. I'm sure that's as true now of sophisticated nuclear engineering as it ever was of gas-lit steam trains. In the end you can only predict those risks you have some ability or opportunity to foresee. The rest you learn about the hard way

I loved a little cartoon I once saw that showed a cave man dead on the ground next to a plate of dodgy looking mushrooms. His neighbour was busily carving on a big tablet of stone the reminder "Aminata phalloidies; deadly poisonous"

Tyler Block Apparatus

During my childhood and early 'teens I had the equivalent of a 'mis-spent youth' hanging around many of the signal boxes worked by my grandad. A perfect 'gricer' upbringing eh?

Of course I didn't just sit there and watch either did I? I worked all those trains as they came and went, 'setting the road' pulling 'off' the signals and handling the telegraph instruments.

So pieces of kit like the Tyler 'Absolute Block' apparatus are very familiar to me. This is the piece of equipment that 'reserves' the track between two signal boxes for a particular train. Basically if it's used correctly it's theoretically impossible for two trains to be on the same line at the same time. Normally the line is considered 'blocked' but when a train needs to move the receiving signal box sets the equipment to 'line clear' and then the dispatching signal box sets it to 'train on line'.

Foolproof. Theoretically, that is.

I first learned something about electric shocks using this bit of gear, or rather the telegraph key that goes with it. When 'offering' a train at Hopetown Junction at Darlington with my left hand on a steel lever ready to pull my right hand slipped off the ebony key and onto the brass contact underneath. It was then I discovered that 90 volts DC packs quite a punch.

Evening Star

"Evening Star" - the last steam locomotive built for British Rail. Its working career has been very short compared to other workhorses of it's ilk. It now rests in grand retirement at the Railway Museum in York. It was about eight years ago I took my grandson to that museum for the day and he quite fell in love with this particular loco. Not surprising. On close examination you can see it is very well made and beautifully engineered. Something of a rarity these days.The drivers on the 2-10-0 are only 4'-6" diameter so is geared more for power than speed. indeed these, the last of British steam were designed for heavy freight.

Norman

Across the Marshes

I'd just sat down to write 'Railway Roundabout' today when my friend Rev. Mugo in Canada sent me this link to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway site. Did I know about it? Do I know about it?? "Is the Pope a Catholic?" I ask myself!

Rev. Mugo probably has her own memories of the RHDR as it's not far from her home town of Rye.

The RHDR is a pretty unusual railway as it was essentially built as the fantasy of two very rich men back in the 1920's. You can read all about it on their excellent web site. They wanted to drive quarter-size express trains on 15" gauge and they commissioned one of Britain's best known model engineers - Henry Greenly - to design their locomotives and stock. Back in 1925 the LNER were introducing their A1 (later A3 Class) and the early locomotives in particular look very like Nigel Gresley's handiwork.

Location was a problem to start with but eventually the Romney Marshes in Kent was chosen. The main line extended to 13 miles of double track.

Amazingly and despite some 'touch and go moments' this line has survived and is - as you can see - well worth a visit! I saw it several times in the early 1960's at what I see now was a difficult moment for the RHDR. As a teenager I'd ride the 60 miles or so each way on my Triumph motor bike along deserted country roads with never a policeman in sight to get hauled by a Pacific across the marshland. Lovely! No wonder I grew up to be an insatiable gricer.

By the way ... if anyone has any fantasies about building a railway for fun I know a very pretty and remote valley in Northumberland that I've always thought would be the perfect place for 2'3" narrow gauge steam ...

Thanks to the RHDR site for the picture

Snowdrift at Bleathgill

Here's a photograph of an old LNER 20 ton plough. It's almost in need of as much maintenance and restoration as me eh?

I put it in today to remind me of the good old days of icy Pennine winds as I'm sweating and sweltering in tropical heat here. Thirty three today - and that's before you get in the car.

Somewhere back in a cardboard box in England I've got a video called "Snowdrift at Bleath Gill" which would be great to watch today. You can read all about it here. Maybe it's even been issued on DVD now - I hope so. It's a real classic and in one scene near Stainmore I recognise my grandfather's wellies and cap!

Bleath Gill was a cutting just on the west side of Stainmore Summit. There was a draughty signal box there that I never remember being in use, but when winter winds howled over the fells it was a great place for snowdrifts. And the winter of 1947 when the film was made was the daddy of them all.

20 ton ploughs like this were used to re-open the line. The practice was rather dodgy - basically you backed off a few hundred yards with the plough and a couple of locos and charged. Then you hung on for dear life as you hit the drift like a stone wall.

Eddie - I once saw some lovely pictures of this kind of ploughing in progress out in rural Michigan somewhere. Have you seen them?

Tyneside Electrics

The North Eastern Railway - one of Britain's most innovative of railway companies - electrified it's suburban routes between Newcastle and the coast to win back customers from the tramways and this was one of our earliest and most successful electrified networks. A lot of the original 1904 rolling stock intoduced by Charles Mertz had quite an American 'inter-urban' feel to it but sadly most of that first generation was destroyed in a depot fire in 1915.

This picture shows some of the last stock built in 1937. None of the rolling stock has survived - incredibly British Rail tore out the whole electrification during the 1960's - but I'm pleased to say that most of the original routes now operate again under electric power as part of the Tyne and Wear Metro network.

I have very happy memories of these trains. My girlfriend used to live out at Whitley Bay and I'd catch these services every weekend to go and see her. Thinking about it - in retrospect maybe my time would have been better spent on the platforms of Newcastle Central! Or maybe not ...!

2-Bil

Back in 1959 we moved from the north of England to the south and took up a home in Crawley New Town in Sussex. Even today this might be rather a culture shock but then it was more like moving between two different countries. In fact many kids at my new school couldn't understand a word I said ...

This move brought me in contact for the first time with former Southern Railway electric trains. The trains along the Horsham line were mainly 2-BIL units like the one shown here - Iunderstand that 'BIL' stands for the romantic label 'bi-lavatory'. Did that mean that the trains had two? Dunno ...

I liked these 1930's electric units in their malachite green livery. They had old fashioned 'slam doors' and were like rocking horses once they got over sixty but I can see now that the were trains full of character. I used to catch them up to London regulalrly and down to Bognor on the coast. They ran (as our modern units on these lines still do) on 700 volts DC picked up from that third rail.

Photo courtesy of Southern E-Group site.

Makuharihongo

When I was a child on Teeside in the north of England we had an area like this between Middlesborough and Thornaby. It was locally known as 'The Wilderness'and was the area where all the coke and ore trains tying up for Dorman Long steelworks were berthed. So I have a soft spot for this kind of panorama which probably isn't shared by many.

These are some of the outer 'parking tracks' at Makuharihongo Depot, the biggest and most important JR site on the east side of Tokyo. The picture is taken from a bridge I often use as a short cut doing my field studies and I could spend hours lurking up here on a nice day. Gricing heaven! On the far left is the Sobu Line 'down' fast for Chiba and away over to the right beyond the trains is the 'up' fast for Tokyo and the slow lines. Also the Keisei Railway tracks, which run parallel to JR here. So there's a heck of a lot of railway around - I think 22 tracks in total running unter this bridge!

Here in a picture taken on a muggy day a year ago is a selection of typical Chiba area power - including three old 183 Class units now of blessed memory.

The pylons to the left may look like any old pylons to you but they follow the line of one of the first long distance power distribution routes in Japan - they appear on a map of this area made in 1918. Needless to say most of the rest of the view would have been fields at the time.

Deltics

Us ECML (East Coast Main Line) gricers were appalled at the idea of the Gresley Pacifics being scrapped but actually we were pretty lucky with their first generation diesel replacements - the 'Deltics'. There were 35 built as top link diesel traction and they were introduced from 1959.

These engines had a lot of character - for North American readers I should say they were as distinctive as the Alco 'PA's and if anything noisier and smokier! They could also run like the wind; back in the early sixties 100 mph running was commonplace.

The most wonderful thing about Deltics though was the noise they made - so distinctive I could recognise one in my sleep (and often did). Their 3300 hp diesel engines, which they took their name from, were originally devised for fast navy minesweepers.

Here's D9000 - 'Royal Scots Grey' in early 1960's two tone green livery and sporting the familiar 'Flying Scotsman' head board thistle. When I was up at Durham University and didn't have late morning lectures I'd regularly head up to the viaduct to see the up 'Scotsman' speeding through at 11:15 am. Happy days.

Chuo Line

"Chuo" in Japanese means 'Central' but actually this line serves the west of Tokyo and eventually heads out into the central part of Honshu and Yamanashi Prefecture. It's a curious animal somehow. At Tokyo Station the Chuo Line is platfoms 1 and 2 and they are about 30' higher than the main part of the station. Trains come out down the ramp northwards and run due north for about a mile before curving west to follow the line of what was once the vast moat of Edo Castle for a few miles to Shinjuku.

Along the line of the moat the tracks run beside the Sobu line. This is Ichigaya Station - our Sobu locals stop here but the Chou Line by-passes the station as a fast line.

Most Chuo Line 'locals' are made up of 102 Class trains which handle a lot of the Tokyo commuter traffic. Here's one on a steamy evening last week, the hot dull weather so typical of Manto in July. But occasionally long distance expresses also weave their way between these trains, notably the 'Super Azusa' units headed for Kofu.

This must be one of the busiest stretches of railway in the world. In the rush hour services run here on a three minute headway on each line, so that's a train passing every forty seconds or so!

'Colonial' Gauge

One thing I've been meaning to do since I landed in Japan is to sit down and make a detailed list of all the three foot six inch gauge (3'6") railway systems in the world.

In Britain this gauge used to be called 'Colonial Gauge' because back in Victorian times we used to build in areas that wouldn't have supported the expense of the heavier engineering required for 'standard gauge' track. It's not just a matter of the width of the track itself of course - the real heavier work comes because with standard gauge you can't turn such tight corners and so have to go through or under hills rather than around them.

3'6" gauge networks grew up in south and east Africa, in Australia and New Zealand and of course in Japan where the gauge is now 1071mm. Here's a picture from the Nairobi Railway Museum of an East African Railways Class 30

It's an interesting size because unlike smaller 'narrow gauge' systems it allows the development of heavy and fast locomotives. In fact it's perhaps the most attractive of all railway 'sizes' when you see it at work.

What other countries used this gauge? I'll have to make that list!

Evening Express

Walking back from the village a couple of evenings ago I reached our local level crossing at the same time as the 'up' Shiosai. This far south it gets dark early even in midsummer and as you see by six thirty the light is almost gone. But there's a 30 mph speed limit on the tight curve here which is just about enough to 'freeze' the train for a photographer in the twilight

I wonder what the passengers have been doing out in Choshi all day? Business trips or visiting relatives perhaps. But now, on a very hot humid evening they are already half way back to town. The train will be 'tying up' in Tokyo in another fifty minutes after a sprint down the Sobu-honsen fast tracks from Chiba.

Whatever the purpose of their trip I guess those on the train will glad tonight for the powerful air-conditioning on board. I can hear it humming before I can hear the traction motors! I'm not sure that I really like these brash new 255 Class "Boso View Express" units much compared with their lovely old brown and tuscan red 183 Class forbears but they certainly look comfortable through those smoked glass windows ...

Stopping the 'Non-Stop'

Back in 1935 when the A4's were first introduced and the 'Silver Jubilee' started as a fast 'non-stop' service between Newcastle and London, my grandfather worked as a signalman on the main line at Tollerton - the first station north of York.

The 44 miles between York and Darlington has always been known as the 'race track' on the East Coast Main Line and at Tollerton, where there's four parallel tracks - a fast and a slow line in each direction - the 'flyer' would crank up to around the 100 mph mark. There were special rules to keep it on time. Preceding expresses had to leave an adequate margin and the train was "double blocked" on the telegraph - worked two sections ahead rather than just one to allow time to get all the signals 'off' (clear).

A couple of months after the service started my grandfather 'accepted' the train on the block telegraph one morning and 'set the road' - pulled the necessary levers to set the signals and points for the train. It was a busy day, he had two other trains to deal with at the same time.

The track there is dead straight for miles and after a few minutes he could see th e 'Non-Stop' coming. But something was very wrong. The engine was braking hard and whistling. He watched with interest and concern - "What is that fool of a driver doing?" he wondered.

He looked at his levers and track diagram again and ...!!!!. He had 'set the road' for the wrong line! By mistake he'd pulled off the signals for the slow goods line and not the parallel fast track! Like lightening he cleared the signals for the express and it accellerated away again.

But in those days they were very strict about such things and soon the inevitable forms started to arrive to check why he had slowed the train. After about a week of explanations and apologies he eventually just wrote "I made a mistake!!" and they let it go at that. He was lucky.

ICE

Back in 2001 my daughter Julia had a year at Giessen University and I got to make two trips over to Germany during the time she was there. On the first visit we took the train up to Koln (where the picture above shows the main station and the cathedral) and on the second visit we toured around a bit by car and I got a good look at the new high speed line between Koln and Frankfurt.

That was some day. I'd identified a good 'gricing' spot on the 1:50,000 map and it really WAS good. The Germans don't hide their hew high speed trains behind big wire fences - incredibly there the track wasn't fenced at all - so you could get some great views of trains running at 150 mph a few feet away.

At this particular site there was a tunnel and the sound of trains approaching through that was extraordinary, almost like an organ playing before they burst into the open.

Here's one of the new ICE Inter-City units I saw on that day. The are pretty smart and the livery is nice too. Another train to get a ride on to somewhere, some day.

Ribblehead Viaduct

Railways in Northern England are well known for their fine stone-built viaducts. Here in Japan the first good tremor would have one of these turned into a heap of rubble in the bottom of the valley in about ten seconds. But in Britain more stable geology and the availability of good quality cheap limestone for building made this kind of design very popular.

And this I suppose is the daddy of them all - Ribblehead Viaduct. It's on the Settle - Carlisle line anout fifteen miles north of Settle. The bridge was constructed in the early 1870's on the new Midland Railway route from Leeds north to the Scottish border.

It wasn't an easy task. Part of the bridge was built over a bog called Batty Moss and they struggled to get a good foundation for the piers.

In the 1980's this viaduct was so much in need of repair that there was talk of closing the line but thankfully even Margaret Thatcher realised that it was a political non-starter. We take our railway heritage seriously in England! It was repaired at huge cost although now it's been single tracked to conserve the structure.

Back in the 1960's I often caught the train over this viaduct to climb Ingleborough - the mountain hidden in clouds in the background. Here's a double-headed excursion in March 2004 with a 4MT on the 'nose' - if you want to see more of Andrew Naylor's lovely pictures go here

Super Soya

How far north do you want to go? All the way? Well, this train is the Japanese equivalent of the service from Inverness to Thurso or the journey up to Churchill in Canada.

In Japan they don't go any further north than the Super Soya does. When it reaches the buffers at Wakkanai in the far north of Hokkaido, that's as far as you can go.

Not always though. At one time Japan also included Karafuto just across the Soya Strait - the southern part of the island of Sakhalin which now is a part of Russia. There are more than a few mouldering railway relics up there and maybe one day I'll make it.

I only ever made it to Wakkanai once. It's a heck of a long way - four hours north of Sapporo which is far enough from the rest of Japan. I went one cold day in October 2003, travelled overnight on the night train and then two hours later caught the morning Super Soya south again and on to Abashiri (another story!) Beleive me, in the frozen light of a snowbound dawn two hours there was just enough!

Tokaido Line

A lot of people have heard of the Tokaido Line but maybe most of them are pretty hazy as to what it is.

The Tokaido was one of the ancient highways of Japan, running between Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). The name literally means "Eastern Sea Route" TheTokaido line was Japan's first main line joining those two cities built back in the 1880's and it largely follows the route of the road south and west down to Shizuoka and Nagoya. But then the railway headed up to Lake Biwa and west to Kyoto - the old road crossed the bay by ferry and ran through Mie Prefecture.

In the 1960's the parallel Tokaido Shinkansen ") ("New trunk route")was lbuit. It too follows the old railway for much of the way but of course takes a lot of liberties with tunneling through mountains etc. not possible eighty years before.

You can still travel on the Tokaido line from Tokyo down to Kyoto but not (with a few interesting exceptions I'll mention later) by through express. JR don't compete with themselves on parallel routes. So now most of the very busy Tokaido line traffic is fairly local kaisoku fast trains. From Tokyo you ususally catch them down to Odawara, and then change trains to go further west.

So these Tokaido Line platforms at Tokyo station have come down in the world over the years. No longer do JNR C57 Pacifics pull out with expresses to the west - to get the shinkansen you need to go a few platforms across from here. But when I'm gricing at Tokyo |I still sense the ghosts of expresses long departed from platform 9 here.