Random photos of stations I have visited

[kuro68000]

Here are some stations I have visited over the years.

 

Album here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rEqYWfSmE5zNHRrS6

 

 

Narimasu. Great lighting.

 

 

 

This is Seibu-Tachikawa, which isn't really near Tachikawa... Another Hard Off trip. This is a lovely urban area, lots of very nice homes and pleasant places to walk around. It was a nice winter day when I visited in January 2020, cool but not cold.

[kuro68000]

 

Hajima. There is a wonderful soba restaurant here. This station seems to have grown over time, looks like it started out smaller.

 

 

 

One of the new electronic signs at Suehirochō (metro). They used to be LED but were replaced a couple of years ago with these LCD based ones. They are industrial displays, very bright and presumably durable.  A bit difficult to photograph, as you can see in the reflection the colours on the main image are washed out.

 

This is the old one:

 

 

My favourite thing about these signs is the clock. Years ago when they were just LED I decided to make a copy of one at home. I couldn't get white LEDs at the time. It was AVR based and used regulators as row switches with the columns done on 595 shift registers, a bit unconventional but it worked. The LEDs came from a shop that sadly closed a few years back in Akihabara.

 

[kuro68000]

 

This is a much better photo of one of the new LCD signs. This one at Tawaramachi, which is at the "slum" end of Akihabara. The Segafredo Zanetti cafe has great coffee, by the way, but does unfortunately allow smoking. It's okay in the summer when the French doors are open.

 

 

 

Here's an LED sign at Meguro. This is the most common type, with dual red/green LEDs that can also produce orange when mixed.  You can see that it is starting to wear out a bit on the "LOCAL" labels where the LEDs are a bit uneven now.

 

I should try to take some video of these signs. They cycle through information, showing not just the next train but maybe one or two after that, if they are going to different destinations, or if one is a rapid or some other special type. They switch between English and Japanese too, although sometimes the scrolling messages at the bottom are not translated.

[railsquid]

2 hours ago, mojo said:

 

This is a much better photo of one of the new LCD signs. This one at Tawaramachi, which is at the "slum" end of Akihabara.

 

Asakusa, shurely?

[kuro68000]

37 minutes ago, railsquid said:

 

Asakusa, shurely?

 

G18 (just visible in the corner) is Tawaramachi, which is the stop before Asakusa. Back in the day I was sometimes so tired I missed it and had an extra 5 minute walk!

[railsquid]

Yes, I meant it's not like Tawaramachi is particularly near Akihabara...

[Tonytramman]

great thread, these are the sort of pictures that really help when modeling 

[kuro68000]

 

The Chiba Urban Monorail platform... I think this is the Chiba station, but I could be mistaken. It's very odd when you first go there. The train hangs down from the track along the ceiling and the floor, which it doesn't touch, as a kind of carpet over it.  Why it's carpet I have no idea, you would think it would get ruined by rain dripping off the train. It's fairly high up too so only a step down from the platform, and you kinda feel like you could walk over to look out the windows. Or at least I did!

 

It makes me wonder if they have trouble with people dropping things and going to retrieve them. With conventional trains the platform is high enough that you can't climb back up easily so won't be tempted to jump down and grab your lost phone, but here it would be so easy...

 

I couldn't find a good excuse to use this one so I ended up just taking a trip to some random park on it. It's a shame it doesn't stop at the New Port shopping area because the Hard Off there is really good. I guess it's aimed at urban commuters.

[kuro68000]

8 minutes ago, railsquid said:

Yes, I meant it's not like Tawaramachi is particularly near Akihabara...

 

Ah, I see, well that's true. I got it mixed up with Suehirocho! Tawaramachi is near my friend's hotel where I always stay.

[kuro68000]

4 minutes ago, Tonytramman said:

great thread, these are the sort of pictures that really help when modeling 

 

Your welcome. Next time I will take more photos of the stations. I didn't think to before, it was mostly of the trains and the tracks, but actually the stations are really interesting.

 

 

I love this poster advertising some new stuff at Akihabara station. I often pass through Akihabara because it's easy to get to from the hotel (2 stops on the Tsukuba Express). It's a parody of pulp manga which uses a lot of recycled images like characters reacting, with different objects drawn in to the frame to suit the story.

[bikkuri bahn]

Good pics of station fixtures off the (tourist) beaten track.  Narimasu Sta. is an interesting one- it is the turnback point for some local services on the Tojo Line, so there is a single pocket/layover track just past the station in the Wako direction (down line).  I see you took a journey on the Seibu Haijima Line- I like this line too, a branch but with a mainline feel off the Shinjuku line, it has some interesting twists and turns when it reaches the various junctions in the Kodaira area. 

[marknewton]

On 1/13/2021 at 1:10 AM, mojo said:

 

Narimasu. Great lighting

That's a lovely photo. 👍

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

 

 

[kuro68000]

 

Tamagawa station. Should have pointed the camera the other way! But I liked this, it was exceptionally neat and tidy even for a Japanese station. The fence is slightly unusual too.

 

If you look in the album (link in first post) there is a panorama which shows lots of detail of the inside of the station, but I can't post it here because of the way they work in Google Photos.

 

 

Hibarigaoka station. The end of the opposite platform is rather small! The gold line stops you walking right to the end, although I have see people set up tripods there before.

[kuro68000]

 

This is the Akihabara Tsukuba Express station. It feels like they intended to put a lot more stuff in this area, or maybe they just excavated a very large space for some reason. QB House at the top is a hairdresser, mostly catering to men. You can pick from a number of styles and the whole process takes 10 minutes, ideal for busy office workers passing through. Afterwards they have a special vacuum cleaner that "washes" your head so you don't have cuttings all over you when you go back to work.

 

The little Family Mart is surprisingly good.

 

 

 

Saw this at Musashino, not sure what it is but found it interesting. Why it is up against the wall like that I have no idea either.

 

 

 

Finally one of Minami-Makigahara station. I like this one, it's submerged and in the middle of a lovely urban area. There is a nice branch of Hard Off within walking distance, and a large park/zoo to the east. The children's play area looks epic but I'm a bit old for that... It's a very simple, small station but in a nice area.

[kuro68000]

 

Minatomirai in Yokohama.  This station is really deep, the escalators are very long. You think you will just pop down to hop a few stops but then spend 5 minutes descending.

 

 

This is Toyoda. It's been recently renovated, re-painted primarily. I used to visit here a lot. It's actually a fairly small station and a small town (although recently got a big new Aeon shopping centre so maybe more popular now), but it's on the Chuo line and between Hachioji and Tachikawa so the platforms have to be sized for those trains. You can get on the Special Rapid here before it gets crammed at Tachikawa, very handy when you need to get back to central Tokyo fast.

 

Having said that the Special Rapid trains only end up being about 10 minutes earlier than the normal ones over that kind of distance so it's not that big of a deal and I often prefer to use a less crowded train. I usually changed at Ochanomizu and if you have been sat there for nearly an hour you can get hemmed in and it's hard to get off!

[railsquid]

2 hours ago, mojo said:

This is Toyoda. It's been recently renovated, re-painted primarily. I used to visit here a lot. It's actually a fairly small station and a small town (although recently got a big new Aeon shopping centre so maybe more popular now), but it's on the Chuo line and between Hachioji and Tachikawa so the platforms have to be sized for those trains. You can get on the Special Rapid here before it gets crammed at Tachikawa, very handy when you need to get back to central Tokyo fast.

 

It's also the station where trains to/from the eponymous depot get taken in and out of service, hence the two platforms despite the "nowhere special in suburbia" location.

[kuro68000]

 

Here's a random elevator from Yokohama station. I love the signage in Japan, especially at JR stations. If you look closely you can see that there are little turquoise stickers  by the buttons as well.

 

I don't know what type of stickers they are, there are a few manufacturers who do machines for them. I have a Casio one, but King Jim and Brother are popular too. The fact that you can just walking into a stationary shop or electrical retailer and buy the machines to produce these kinds of signs probably contributes to their popularity.

 

 

 

This isn't a station, it's the shopping area adjacent to Minami-Makigahara. I just wanted to show it off because despite being a fairly small urban town apparently little expense was spared here. They do not do things by halves.

Edited January 16, 2021 by mojo

[kuro68000]

 

 

Back in Hajima again there is a pretty nice view from the station.

 

About the inside of the station. All the fixtures seem to be pretty standard for JR, as you might expect. The tiles, the ceiling, the utility lockers, the coves, and of course the tactile parts. The wall cladding is particularly interesting to me. If you look back to the late 70s and early 80s a particular aesthetic emerged for visions of the future. Maybe you have seen cartoons like Ulysses 31, which was animated in Japan. Everything is panels and cladding, it looks like someone carefully designed it all to fit rather than just throwing up plaster after the wall was built to the approximate height.

 

Thinking about it Japan as a whole is often like that. I guess they prefer cladding and covering everything to make it look extremely regular. I love it.

Edited January 16, 2021 by mojo

[kuro68000]

 

Not exactly a station but I love this photo. It's a cell tower in Chiba. The cable management is so neat and tidy.

 

 

 

This is Ueno, the Keihin Touhoku line from the look of it (the blue band on the fence). It's elevated quite a way above ground level. Does anyone know what the white line painted by the track is?

 

 

This is Akihabara, the Keihin Touhoku line again. The blue walkway in the distance is for train maintenance, but I've never seen it in use.

[Kamome442]

3 hours ago, mojo said:

Does anyone know what the white line painted by the track is?

 

The same lines are were painted on on the Yamanote and Keihin Tohoku tracks around Yurakucho when I visited. They have since been added to the Tokaido Main line too.

 

My assumption is that indicate the maximum loading gauge, I am not sure why that would need to be permanently marked on the track. It would be nice if anyone can confirm that.

They seem to repaint them quite frequently, a lot of time and effort so it must have value.

I am looking forward to painting them on my track work once the ballast is down,  I think they are an interesting and unusual addition.

 

I did find a picture of a maintenance car with two nozzles one each side below the cab used to spray lines, I have a feeling it was on the Japan Railfan website but I am not 100% sure.

Joe

 

Edit: Ok I can't seem to find the maintenance car, I will keep looking (hopefully I didn't just imagine it!). Another thought could the lines be to do with the E235 having realtime track monitoring equipment, something to do with tracking any signs of subsidence? I am not sure it other lines have had similar equipment retrofitted.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Kamome442

[kuro68000]

 

Nerima station bus stop. So clean and well organized. Note the striped area in the foreground and how the stripes are not parallel! Oddly irregular for Japanese road markings.

 

Extensive use of cladding makes what would otherwise be a concrete bridge/platform look nice.

 

 

 

Here's a bus stop at Nagatsuta. It's one of the most dilapidated bus stops I've seen for a long while in Japan, but it's still clean and fairly tidy by British standards. The further back one is newer and has a light sensor that turns the lights on at dusk, and you can see they have gone to the effort of adding new lighting to the old one as well.

 

 

 

Higashi-Kurume Station here. Bike park and combined service area. This is an interesting example of indirect lighting that is used a lot in Japan. There are no lights above the ATM corner or by the venting machines. I think there is one in the ticket area but the bike storage area doesn't have overhead lights. Instead light is provided by a combination of smaller lights like the signs and vending machines, and by reflected light shining off the cladding.

 

I'm stood on the platform here so most of the light is actually coming from the platform lights.

 

Lighting in public spaces in Japan is fantastic. Maybe not the best for actually seeing well but Japan is very safe and tidy so the danger is minimal. Instead of get lots of smaller lights, often coloured. Lots of great contrast, drawing your eye to things people have chosen to light, and just looks incredibly beautiful in a way that few other urban places do. It's often not planned either, just a result of lots of individual decisions.

[railsquid]

On 1/16/2021 at 10:34 PM, Kamome442 said:

 

The same lines are were painted on on the Yamanote and Keihin Tohoku tracks around Yurakucho when I visited. They have since been added to the Tokaido Main line too.

 

My assumption is that indicate the maximum loading gauge, I am not sure why that would need to be permanently marked on the track. It would be nice if anyone can confirm that.

They seem to repaint them quite frequently, a lot of time and effort so it must have value.

I am looking forward to painting them on my track work once the ballast is down,  I think they are an interesting and unusual addition.

 

I did find a picture of a maintenance car with two nozzles one each side below the cab used to spray lines, I have a feeling it was on the Japan Railfan website but I am not 100% sure.

Joe

 

Edit: Ok I can't seem to find the maintenance car, I will keep looking (hopefully I didn't just imagine it!). Another thought could the lines be to do with the E235 having realtime track monitoring equipment, something to do with tracking any signs of subsidence? I am not sure it other lines have had similar equipment retrofitted.

 

Yup, they are there to assist with automated permanent way monitoring, see this JR East PDF:  https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2018/20180704.pdf

[bikkuri bahn]

Quote

Note the striped area in the foreground and how the stripes are not parallel! Oddly irregular for Japanese road markings.

These areas of striping are called "zebra zones" and are for guiding the flow of traffic.  The non-parallel stripes are quite common on sharper curves, probably to guide drivers going at speed through the curve as having the stripes perfectly parallel could possibly disorient.  Look at the second picture in this blog page of an intersection with non-parallel stripes:

https://yaziup.com/life-style/car/58933

[railsquid]

On 1/16/2021 at 1:52 AM, mojo said:

 

Here's a random elevator from Yokohama station. I love the signage in Japan, especially at JR stations. If you look closely you can see that there are little turquoise stickers  by the buttons as well.

 

I don't know what type of stickers they are, there are a few manufacturers who do machines for them. I have a Casio one, but King Jim and Brother are popular too. The fact that you can just walking into a stationary shop or electrical retailer and buy the machines to produce these kinds of signs probably contributes to their popularity.

 

One of the things I appreciate about living in Japan is the amount of effort which goes into signage, notices, maps etc., and keeping them up to date. And if there's a short-term danger of ambiguity due to e.g. construction work, there'll most likely be someone standing around (possibly with an illuminated baton) to assist.

[HankyuDentetsu]

Just wanted to say I'm really enjoying this thread!! Something about the variety of locations and subjects just really draws me in. Keep it up!!