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In preparation for the special Twilight Express San'in Course service to be operated from July 25th, a 4-car formation of 24 series passenger cars was tested in western Honshu. The route passed through Okayama, north to Yonago via the Hakubi Line, west to the end of the San'in Main Line at Shimonoseki, then back to Miyahara Depot in Osaka via the San'yo Main Line. Motive power was EF65 1133 and DD51 1191. Hobidas News: http://rail.hobidas.com/rmn/archives/2015/07/jrdd51244.html JR West: http://www.jr-odekake.net/navi/kankou/twilight_plan/#train03 Sankei news on future Twilight Express Mizukaze w/ route map: http://www.sankei.com/west/news/150618/wst1506180091-n1.html On the Kobe Line (Tokaido/San'yo Lines between Osaka and Himeji) by k arata

Unique photos of Japan's Tokyo to Kyoto line in the very early 1900s, published in Dec. 2013 by the Imperial Household Agency. One set shows the royal train at the time of Emperor Taisho's coronation in 1915. He used it to travel from Tokyo to Kyoto for the ceremony. The carriage known as the Kashikodokoro Jogyosha was designed specially "to transport the Yata-no-Kagami [sacred mirror], the most sacred of the three divine symbols of the Japanese imperial throne. The images show that the car came with a bamboo blind and base to transport the mirror," reported the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "The Kashikodokoro Jogyosha car was run only one more time: when the enthronement ceremony for Emperor Showa was held in 1928, also at the Kyoto Imperial Palace," it added. The photos: Imperial train in 1915 (click the blue buttons to leaf through the album) Kyoto station in 1917 (see photographs 48-52) Images of the then bucolic Sanyo line, including sleeping cars (undated, but the railway opened in 1900) (see photographs 22-27)