Kishu Railway kiha 603 retired

[bikkuri bahn]

Another veteran has given up the ghost.  You will no longer be able to hear the pleasing knocking sound of a DMH17 engine running on the Kishu Railway, Japan's "second shortest" railway.  The kiha 603 railcar, built in 1960 by now defunct railcar builder Niigata Tekkyo, made its last run this Sunday, Oct. 25.  The railway still operates a Fuji Jyuko railbus (yuck!!)

 

[Kabutoni]

Such a shame that these old 'Showa-cab' DMU have to be set aside for more modern LE/LEC cars. It's already fortunate this company is still running during the slaughter of local lines and 3rd sector lines. However, most companies that switch to those LE/LEC cars don't live very long afterwards after all... (Sangi RR, Arita RR, Furusato Ginga-sen Rikubetsu RR, Kashima RR, etc.)

 

Honestly I thought these railcars were out of service a while now.

[bikkuri bahn]

Yes, I think the main reason this railway has survived so long is that it is owned by a resort hotel company, which uses the Kishu Railway name for status reasons.  It certainly does not make any profits on this very short line.  When I visited the area two summers ago, I missed the outbound train, so I walked for about 30 min. to the end of the line, and then took the return train (#603) back.  It's a shame the company didn't promote the line a bit more, which may have brought in more revenues to help keep the 603 in operation.  But I suppose spare parts are no longer obtainable, or parts donor sister #604 is no longer useful.

[bill937ca]

[Mudkip Orange]

 

I sincerely hope the 95km/h speed sign that you see about 40 seconds in is for the adjacent JR line and not the Kishu.

 

THAT would be scary.

[KenS]

That's a nice line.  Is there any info online about it?  The wikipedia (English-language) page is pretty sparse.  It looks like the track used to continue beyond the current end of line, and one station looked like it had had two separate tracks at one time.  But I couldn't find much (in a quick check) about its past.

 

Great videos.  Thanks for pointing them out.

[bill937ca]

That's a nice line.  Is there any info online about it?  The wikipedia (English-language) page is pretty sparse.  It looks like the track used to continue beyond the current end of line, and one station looked like it had had two separate tracks at one time.  But I couldn't find much (in a quick check) about its past.

 

Great videos.  Thanks for pointing them out.

 

 

Japanese Wikipedia is usually more detailed. A machine translator like Google Translate or Bing Translator will translate this to English.

 

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B4%80%E5%B7%9E%E9%89%84%E9%81%93

 

A couple more Japanese articles.

 

From rail.hobidas:

 

http://rail.hobidas.com/blog/natori/archives/2008/07/post_836.html

 

A web site with good photos.

 

http://mahoroba.kir.jp/sepia/kisyuutetsudou.htm

 

Any translator that allows you to translate a phrase from English to Japanese allows you to search in Google for images.  When you find images that interest you can look at the web page and, if wararnted, translate the web page.