Hofu Off-Rail Station (ORS) Sanyo Main Line

[bill937ca]

Some photos of the Hofu Freight Station on the Sanyo Main Line. This basically a container unloading location, but there is a small office building and a former freight station platform that could be modeled. It apparently is an Off-Rail Station (ORS) which no longer has any freight trains stopping since October 3, 1998 but still handles 12 foot containers.

 

https://blog.goo.ne.jp/yoshi0749/e/423bd2d8406eba112433241609ed89f8

 

Haven't found any videos of this place.

[bill937ca]

Another ORS.

 

https://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/kouki19980409/25470054.html

[Kiha66]

Interesting, so it doesn't serve trains but now just serves as a truck to truck transfer point?

[bill937ca]

Views of Off Rail Station freight handling.  

 

 

 

 

[bill937ca]

2 minutes ago, Kiha66 said:

Interesting, so it doesn't serve trains but now just serves as a truck to truck transfer point?

 

Yes. I thought this was stand alone, but I am finding more and more. The last vestiges of rail freight service in these places or building a new client base?

[Das Steinkopf]

It's quite common these days for some of the older and somewhat smaller yards to be repurposed as container staging yards for road delivery within a local area, the vast bulk would be empty containers that are being stored for future use by businesses within that area, they would be trucked out to the customer who requires them and once the containers are full they would then be taken to a JRF yard to be loaded onto a train. The Hofu Freight Terminal had a rather short life as it was opened in 1986 and ceased to take trains in 1998, from then to 2006 the sidings were only used to store empty wagons as a staging yard and then finally in 2010 the points that serviced the sidings was removed as well as the track for the sidings, these days all rail freight for the area is serviced by the JRF yard at Shin Nanyo which is about 20kms north of Hofu. 

 

 The yard that is in the first video is Funamachi and was the former freight yard of the southern end of the Iida Line and served the Toyohashi area, these days the yard is run by Nippon Express, there are some tracks still in place but they have now been largely overgrown by weeds and some sections are now under paved surfaces, rail freight for the area is handled by the JRF terminal at Hamamatsu.