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!