JRF - KoKi 50000 to be withdrawn

[Suica]

Looks like all remaining KoKi 50000 container flatcars will be withdrawn within the year.

Source

 

Since I don't know too much about JRF, were they the last remaining JNR-era freight cars or are there others still in service?

[yakumo381]

The only other JNR era container flats I can remember having seen in use in Japan were KoKi 72 at the Aichi Depot at Inazawa and Koki 71 in the interchange sidings at Kasadera although this was a few years back so they have probably also have gone "over the rainbow" by now.

 

 

 

Looking through my Japan Railway photographs collection, there does seem to have been a decline in 50000s over recent years, the last I photographed being at Shin-Osaka in March last year:

 

 

I do remember however seeing several trains of new 107s passing throgh Kasadera in Novmber last year presumably as replacements:

 

 

[Das Steinkopf]

I remember back in 2015 when I was on my first trip I only saw one train hauling Koki 50000's and I thought they were not far from being removed from service, mind you on that trip I only got a little bit of exposure to JRF traffic and only saw a few freight yards and about a dozen freight trains, on my trip during April this year we travelled over a vast area and I got to see a large amount of freight services and yards. The Koki 5000's are still in widespread service and scattered all over the countryside, I saw them in yards as well as in trains in a vast range of locations including Sendai, Kanazawa and Shimonoseki! I will have to check through my photos to see if I spotted any in Kyushu but I am sure there was some lurking around there as well.

 

I will say one thing though in that the serial production of the Koki 107's has ramped up and I remember seeing quite a number of fresh looking cars with running numbers up around the high 1700 mark that looked as if they had entered service fairly recently, the total lack of grime on the bodies and bogies or even light surface rust on the wheels indicated that they had only been in service for a couple of months if that, as just like any other freight railway JRF are not in the habit of washing wagons.