Little miniswitcher?

[Pashina12]

http://myoldsteamers.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-1870.html

 

If you click on the image you get a nicer view with higher res... curious about the little miniswitcher on what I'm assuming is the house track there, anyone know what it might be?

[railsquid]

No idea, but for reference this is the former Yunokami Station, now Yunokami-Onsen_Station .

 

This Wikipedia picture shows track maintenance equipment in what appears to be the same siding: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B9%AF%E9%87%8E%E4%B8%8A%E6%B8%A9%E6%B3%89%E9%A7%85#/media/File:Yunokami-Onsen_Station_015.JPG

[Pashina12]

Yeah, I've been pretty intensely researching (aka digging for pictures) the pre-1986 Aizu line over the past few days... I know somewhere I'll be going whenever I get to Japan one of these days! In the meantime I'll content myself with gathering pictures and then modelling the line as it was before the Ogawa Dam was opened.

[Nick_Burman]

http://myoldsteamers.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-1870.html

 

If you click on the image you get a nicer view with higher res... curious about the little miniswitcher on what I'm assuming is the house track there, anyone know what it might be?

 

Looks like a Kato Works loco with wide cab.

 

Cheers NB

[velotrain]

This won't help with the question at hand, but if you like funky industrial critters - at least North American ones, this is the place to go. I've spent many a happy hour browsing there.

There's also an interesting selection of motorcars and MOW equipment.

 

You're sure to find some new favorites, as well as many candidates for Ugliest Trains ;-)

 

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/industrial.html

[Pashina12]

This won't help with the question at hand, but if you like funky industrial critters - at least North American ones, this is the place to go. I've spent many a happy hour browsing there.

There's also an interesting selection of motorcars and MOW equipment.

 

You're sure to find some new favorites, as well as many candidates for Ugliest Trains ;-)

 

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/industrial.html

 

My favourite of all time is attached... this was 5-6 blocks away from our house when I was a kid. Little chain-drive thing with plywood body, and it was parked next to an old Dick-Kerr electric locomotive that had been converted into a double-ended snowplough.

[kvp]

My favourite from the list above is the rebuilt steam shay from Vancouver BC:

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/diesel126.html
3rd row from the bottom, 1st column:

CFP Shay 50 ton class B #98, BC Logging Vancouver, nee Pacific Mills #3 blt 1921, 400 hp Cummins rblt by Tyee Machinery in 1951

 

ps: a popular hungarian critter is the type C50 narrow gauge locomotive http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%E2%80%9350 mostly know for having a variable gauge and traction weight, so it could be adopted to run on almost any kind of track

[Pashina12]

Yeah we have/had a lot of cool stuff around here, especially on the old logging railways. The Pacific Elevators Hunslet is something I see usually once a week when I'm in that part of town.

 

 

The C50s are really nifty. I read through the wiki article, though I have to observe that I've ridden both the Szilvásvárad line and the Úttörővasút/Gyermekvasút but I don't recall seeing a C50 at either one. And I was way too young to remember what was running when I rode on the Börzsöny line in like 1979. I'm pretty sure I saw one *somewhere* west of the Danube though sometime between 1995 and 2002, I just really can't remember where/when.

[Das Steinkopf]

It's a low cab variant of the TMC100 class.

 

http://c58363.image.coocan.jp/paleo/paleo_09/p09051602.htm

[westfalen]

From what I've seen most Japanese rail served industries have or had a small switcher like this.  The mainline local freight just spots the cars inside the property and the industry's little switcher moves them to where they have to go.  I've even seen them at small industries with only a single track siding, parked near the end of the track sometimes in a small shed.

[velotrain]

Does this mean that the mainline local freight engine never does "in plant" switching, or just that it wasn't standard practice? If a small industry didn't have their own engine, would they need to pay JRF an additional fee for this service?

 

I'm curious when the colors for small regional freight engines (DD13, DE10, et al) went from the brown/grape to red and grey? Was this at the same time as privatization, or had it started before then?

 

I ran across something odd, and I have a guess on the reason, but was wondering what others thought.

 

There had been an industry near Okawa station receiving Taki 5450 liquid chlorine cars, delivered by a DE10.

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://hokarida.web.fc2.com/09_novel/081-22.html&prev=search

 

However, as the series of photos show, there was some manual placement involved, even though the engine was nearby. I believe the track they're being pushed onto had access from the other end, but perhaps not. Since the text says they're empties, I'm wondering if it is a stub track, and they had to be positioned there so the engine could couple in front of them for the return run to Tsurumi - or wherever they came from? There was a switchback (just past the station) to access this property which lasted about two decades after Nisshin Flour shut down their rail operations.

 

More info on the area and photos of the chemical plant on this site:

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.geocities.jp/takeshi_departure/turumi.html&prev=search

 

I just found a site new to me, which has a great shot of a train heading for this plant crossing over the bridge from the mainland. This was taken from the west, and I'd love to have a high res photo taken from the road bridge looking east to use as a photo backdrop ;-)

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://logitan.blog70.fc2.com/blog-entry-7.html%3Fsp&prev=search

 

The text on this site seems to support my earlier conjecture, but the photo of the DE10 supposedly pulling the empties out of the plant seems wrong in that case.

 

Aha - I just realized that I had the right idea, but the wrong location. I thought this was happening inside the plant, but the last photo shows the assembled train against the block wall built at the edge of the Nisshin property after the tracks were removed. You can see this location in the second photo of the second link. Two photos down is one of an odd-shaped building, and I had always interpreted the middle part as an operations tower of some sort. I'm glad to see it identified as previously occupied by JR cargo.

[kvp]

Does this mean that the mainline local freight engine never does "in plant" switching, or just that it wasn't standard practice? If a small industry didn't have their own engine, would they need to pay JRF an additional fee for this service?

What i saw on most images and videos was that most companies used transfer tracks that were used to place and retrive the freight cars by the serving railroad. For some industries these tracks were outside for other inside their fence. Some industries could load/unload without moving the cars, while others needed some shunting. This shunting was done either manually, chain/rope hauled, with small tractors or with proper shunting locomotives, depending on the needs of the company or what was available.

 

For the paint change, the brown base paint was phased out somewhere along with the brown color also disappearing from the mainline engines, but it was still in use at some places after the JNR breakup.