Random photos of stations I have visited

[Jimbo]

WOW!!!! these are great,

[kuro68000]

 

 

Ishikawacho, Yokohama. The top photo shows the river at the back, the roadway next to it, the station running perpendicular over them both and another roadway running parallel over them all.

 

This is right next to Chinatown. There are also a couple of old electronics shops here. One in particular has been run by the same couple for decades and has loads of new-old-stock components. There used to be several like it in Akihabara too, but most have gone now. It's a shame because you could find all sorts of interesting and long obsolete parts there, but I guess most of the stock ended up on Yahoo Auctions.

 

 

 

Yanokuchi. Seems a bit over-engineered for a pipe, maybe the weight of whatever it carries requires it.

 

 

 

 

Funabashi. There is a massive Daiso here, as well as being the jumping off point for several Hard Off visits.

[kuro68000]

 

An oddly specific request in Ueno.

 

 

 

 

 

Asakusa, home of many great restaurants in traditional styles.

 

 

 

Denny's in Akihabara.

[kuro68000]

 

Love this diagram.

 

 

 

Tama Monorail Line.

 

 

 

Intersection at Akihabara.

 

 

 

Not sure where this is, or why I photographed it. Some interesting detail perhaps. Some kind of train sensor?

 

 

 

There is a very large park in Tachikawa called Showa Kinen. This is just a small fraction of it.

 

 

 

When larger vehicles park you often see these on the wheels, and the wheels angled to prevent it slipping straight downhill. Apparently there was some kind of accident long ago and corporations started using these to prevent it, even though modern handbrakes are extremely reliable.

 

 

 

Kinshichou. Don't really like this place for some reason. Surprised there is a Yodobashi Camera here too since the big Akihabara one is 5 minutes away from this station.

 

 

 

Suidoubashi, one of the older stations on the Chuo Line.

 

 

 

Tama Centre. Had to climb a lot of steps to get here.

 

 

 

 

Some station signage. The top one is part of a series and I wish I had the rest. There are all sorts of reasons given for not smoking in public areas and disposing of the butts responsibly. I remember one with a guy flicking the butt out of a car with a caption about how they looked like they were making a getaway from a crime scene.

 

That reminds me of another one I saw many years ago. There was a photo of a young girl with a man stood next to her. The girl was most of the frame, the man was mostly out of it but you could see his arm and hand holding a cigarette down by his waist, right next to her face. The caption said don't walk down the street carrying your cigarette carelessly as you might give her a nasty facial scar... Pretty hardcore stuff. Fortunately smoking is starting to become less socially acceptable now and fewer places are bothering with smoking sections.

 

[maihama eki]

15 hours ago, mojo said:

 

An oddly specific request in Ueno.

 

 

To all

Don't leave a bottle of mayonnaise here.

 

I really want to know what was behind that one!

  

[kuro68000]

4 hours ago, maihama eki said:

 

To all

Don't leave a bottle of mayonnaise here.

 

I really want to know what was behind that one!

  

 

From memory it was in Ameyoko Plaza or nearby. There are some small take-out places near there so maybe they had a problem with people leaving empty bottles of mayo there, or in nearby waste bins.

[kuro68000]

 

Not sure where this is. That's a very old looking train set.

 

 

 

Type 0 at Ome Railway Park. You can sit in the cab!

 

 

 

Not sure where this is either.

 

 

 

Ueno, beside the railway tracks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Popondetta in Akihabara, rental layout.

 

 

 

Ad on a JR train, probably Chuo line. A bit sexist I think!

 

 

 

Capsule machine that has retro chips. They are rated as "junk", no guarantees.

[kuro68000]

 

Kawasaki.

 

 

 

 

 

Inokashira Park again. These were taken on my DSLR, a Panasonic GF2 Micro 4/3. I'm not very good at photography and find that usually the result is better with my phone. Many of these were taken on a Google Pixel (the original one), although I have upgraded to a Pixel 5 now so they should get even better.

 

The GF2 does support HDR but you really need a tripod to make it work. The phone does a great job hand-held. While the clarity and resolution of the GF2 is way better and it can do real "portrait" shots with the right lens, I'm thinking that I'm better off using the phone most of the time. You can see in the above shots that they all blow out the bright areas, the white building and the sky, which would look great on my Pixel.

 

I don't know if newer DSLRs are better in this regard. Maybe if you know how to use them properly...

 

 

 

Can't remember where this is or what it is. What do they carry on these?

 

 

 

Kato Hobby Centre Layout. A gallery of more photos is here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/GmzStvLCZMH1AGxs5

 

Worth a visit, they often have special items you can't get anywhere else on sale. It's also interesting to see what you can do with just Kato products and minimal skill!

 

 

 

Omiya Railway Museum layout. There is a gallery of more photos of this layout here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/o1x2cFtLnDFAcNrd7

 

 

 

Type 0 at the Railway Museum. You can go inside, I thought I had some photos but can't find them now, maybe later.

[JR 500系]

Really lovely pictures, it's like being there myself! Thanks for sharing!! 

[bikkuri bahn]

Quote

Not sure where this is. That's a very old looking train set.

Hachioji Station.  That parking lot in the foreground is now a shopping center and high rise condominium.  

[railsquid]

3 hours ago, mojo said:

 

Not sure where this is. That's a very old looking train set.

 

And the train set is a 115 series, retired from the Chuo Line in 2014.

 

View from a slightly different angle last summer:

 

hachioji-2020-08-30_03 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Album with a bunch of pictures around the station: https://www.flickr.com/photos/railsquid/albums/72157682902241561

 

[railsquid]

3 hours ago, mojo said:

 

Can't remember where this is or what it is. What do they carry on these?

 

Taken from a Shinkansen on the west side of Toyohashi Station, approximately here.

 

The wagons are part some sort of JR Tokai Shinkansen maintenance train, from their hopper-esque nature I guess ballast-related. Similar ones visible in this photo, about halfway down this page.

[gavino200]

13 hours ago, mojo said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inokashira Park again. These were taken on my DSLR, a Panasonic GF2 Micro 4/3. I'm not very good at photography and find that usually the result is better with my phone. Many of these were taken on a Google Pixel (the original one), although I have upgraded to a Pixel 5 now so they should get even better.

 

 

 

Ah, I remember visiting that shrine. The lady there put a beautiful 'stampu' in my son's stamp book. 

 

Thanks for posting these beautiful pictures. 

[kuro68000]

Thanks for providing more information for some of these photos. I wasn't organized enough to record location on many of them so I don't know where they are anymore.

 

Amazing how you can identify locations like that.

[kuro68000]

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure where this is. The white train reminds me of something... Maybe Saitama? Taken on the 10th of March 2011, a day before the earthquake.

 

 

 

Yokohama Minato Mirai.

 

 

 

 

Tsukuba Express line, sorry not sure which station. I wanted to see down into the tunnel.

 

 

 

 

 

This layout was at a shop in Kawasaki, in the Dice building near the two stations. It was a nice shop but it went a few years ago.

 

 

 

The Omiya New Shuttle track. The New Shuttle runs on tyres rather than rails. It's good for accessing the railway museum from Omiya station. Some of the turns are very tight. I think I have a photo illustrating that coming up at some point. There is one on Google Maps anyway.

 

 

 

Akihabara main street. That branch of Aoki has a sale are around the back where I bought a few things over the years. Size is always the problem in Japan. XL isn't very XL. I take a size 30 shoe, always go for the extra wide ones from ASICS so my choices are pretty limited. Uniqlo doesn't even stock size 30 socks, you have to order them online.

 

 

 

Not sure again... But it might be one of the lines from Narita Airport perhaps, either the Skyliner or more likely the Narita Express (NEX) based on the timeframe. I rarely get up this early so the most likely explanation is an early arrival flight.

 

 

 

The temple at China Town in Yokohama. It's definitely Chinese style, a lot more ornate than the Japanese ones.

[gavino200]

3 minutes ago, mojo said:

 

 

 

 

 

Tsukuba Express line, sorry not sure which station. I wanted to see down into the tunnel.

 

 

 

 

 

Lol. I'm always doing this. These things fascinate me!

[kuro68000]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some more from the Omiya Railway Museum.

 

 

 

The Type 0 again. I just love this machine. It represents the spirit of Japan and is such a great achievement, a technical masterpiece.

 

The windows are interesting. At the time it was difficult to produce the kind of curved, high strength glass we are used to now so they used flat panes. There was concern about things like birds hitting them at very high speed.

 

The result gives it that angular, futuristic look, where as the rest of the front is more rounded. If you look at manga from the time which was starting to feature giant robots and futuristic vehicles, and then later Super Sentai shows too, they adopted this aesthetic. They almost look like eyes, in fact some artists like to do their eyes that shape, notably Akira Toriyama of Dragonball fame. I'm not certain but I think the 0 may have been inspiration for a lot it.

 

Or maybe I'm the only one who sees it!

 

 

 

This is the MARS 1 mainframe. It was the world's first seat reservation system for trains. Painted green of course. To this day reserved seats are in the green car, and purchased at the green window. Even the electronic ticket machines are still green.

 

The machine is a HITAC 3030 built by Hitachi, originally for this project but later sold for other purposes. It had magnetic drum memory and could handle reservations for 4 trains, up to 15 days in advance. Like most machines of the time it had a unique architecture, with 40 bits per word and two instructions per word.

 

Apparently it took 30 minutes to issue a ticket for a normal train and 1 hour for shinkansen, but was supposedly quite fast in terms of processing speed. I imagine the delay was because the operator had to set up a remote terminal, dial in to it and then issue the ticket, and it probably didn't have many lines available so there could have been delays. The first one was installed at Akihabara Station in a special building.

 

 

 

[railsquid]

1 hour ago, mojo said:

Thanks for providing more information for some of these photos. I wasn't organized enough to record location on many of them so I don't know where they are anymore.

 

Amazing how you can identify locations like that.

 

The location rang a faint bell, as the Shinkansen lines at Toyohashi are not elevated and I once spend half an hour waiting there. Logo on the MoW trucks looked distinctly JR Tokai and the Toyoko Inn in the background combined with the slightly unusual bridge design made it easy to locate. Google Streetview shows no way of accessing the side of the line at that point, so either you were trespassing on the rails, or (much more likely of course) on the train.

 

48 minutes ago, mojo said:

 

Not sure where this is. The white train reminds me of something... Maybe Saitama? Taken on the 10th of March 2011, a day before the earthquake.

 

 

Wrong direction - that's Ebina, and the train is classic Odakyu. The train with the red stripe in one of the preceding photos at the same location is Sotetsu.

[200系]

3 hours ago, mojo said:

The Type 0 again. I just love this machine. It represents the spirit of Japan and is such a great achievement, a technical masterpiece.

 

 

That's actually a 200 series (series not type, the type designation is only used for specific cars within the shinkansen classification system (as in this case a type 222 car), or test/prototype cars (e.g. 922/923/925 types are the various Doctor Yellow units)) not a 0 series.

 

While the 200 series may resemble the 0 series at a quick glance (only at a very quick glance though), in actuality it is an entirely different series, both in terms of technology as well as the exterior design. The 200 series nose is slightly longer, extends to a higher point and has a slightly altered curvature in comparison to the 0 series. Furthermore, the cab windows are entirely different, more angular, smaller and 4 sided in comparison to the 6 sided windshield used on the 0 series (0 sub-type and 1000 sub-types only, the 2000 sub-type used a 4 sided design with the 2 side ward panels changed to a design based on the 200 series). The car bodies themselves have nothing in common with the 0 series, using an entirely new design. The 200 series design was actually taken from the 962 type prototypes, and the 925 type 0 sub-type (both use the same design). In fact the only common part between the 0 series and the 200 series is the electrostatic antenna (the L shaped device on top of the cab), though this part has been shared by all shinkansen up till the N700S.

 

The 962 type, and 925 type 0 sub-type shinkansen, built in 1979, were further developments of the 961 type shinkansen design. The 961 type shinkansen was built as a 6 car test train in 1973, she was built for speed improvement tests at the Sanyō Shinkansen, but because of delays and labour issues she was eventually modified with a number of snow resistance measures intended for the 200 series then in development, and used for testing on the Oyama test line in 1979 (now part of the completed Tōhoku Shinkansen), where she set the Japanese speed record (319 km/h) on the 7th of December 1979. The 961 type nose design was again a further development of the 951 type test cars, a 2 car formation delivered in March 1969. This test train was also built as part of the program to develop a 250km/h capable successor to the 0 series. the 951 type used the 0 series nose design as a basis, though it was highly modified in comparison to the original.

So while the 200 series does have a familiar lineage with the 0 series, it's not a very close relationship in any shape or form.

 

Anyway, this specific car is 222-35, a type 222 (200 series, normal car, powered end car), built by Kinki Sharō in march of 1982 as part of 12 car formation E35. This was one of the 36 E formations (E1~E36) built before the opening of the Tōhoku and Jōetsu Shinkansen on the 23rd of June 1986 and November the 15th of the same year respectively. As she was part of the E formations, and thus the original 200 series 0 sub-type cars, she had a maximum service speed of 210km/h. With the opening of the Ueno-Ōmiya section of the Tōhoku Shinkansen, on the 14th of March 1985, and the resulting increase in speed to 240km/h, she was one of the first 6 E formations to be modified for this higher top-speed (E30~E35->F51~F57). This made them comparable to the new built F formations (F1~F3 and F4~F21) which had been delivered in 1983 (F1~F3) and 1984~1985 (F4~F21), and had been built for possible higher speed operations in the future. She would re-enter service as formation F56 (though very briefly as F62).

 

After the split/privatisation of the National Railways on the 1st of April 1987,  Formation F56, like all her 200 series sisters would be transferred to the newly formed JR East. In the early 1990's, as JR East was working on the opening of the Yamagata (mini) Shinkansen, and the required new trains (which would become the 400 series) and with the Tōkyō-Ōmiya section of the Tōhoku shinkansen being the second busiest shinkansen, it was decided that the 400 series would have to run in combination with other services on the Tōhoku shinkansen. For this purpose, eleven 8 car formations would be formed, the K formations (K1~K11). F56 was one of the formations chosen to be re-organised into the K formations, however as 6 pairs of 200 series 1500 sub-type cars were becoming surplus because of the formation of the 16 car H formations (H1~H6 using 2000 sub-type (H3/H4) and 200 sub-type cars (H1/H2/H5/H6), and therefore could be modified earlier, the 221/222 type end cars of the original formations were swamped with those cars at this point. For some formations, this resulted in a cascading effect whereby a 221/222 type 1500 sub-type pair would replace a 0 sub-type pair which would in turn replace another 0 sub-type pair which would then be used to form a new formation with other surplus cars. For F56 this meant that most of the cars were divided between formations K3, K7 and K8, with the end cars, including 222-35 ending up in formation K11.

After 222-35 had been modified with, among others, a retractable coupler for combined services with the 400 series (new seats were another change, as well as ATC changes IIRC), formation K11 entered service on the 16th of June 1992.

 

With the opening of the Akita (mini) Shinkansen in 1997, it was decided to form another 11 new K formations by using 11 of the remaining original 12 car F formations. As the new K formations, K41~K51 would be 10 car formations as opposed to the original 8 car formations, the 2 cars per formation which would be surplus would be used to extend K1~K11 to 10 car formations as well. The modified formations would have +20 added to their formation number, creating the K21~K31 sub-group. K11 would receive a 225/226 type 1000 sub-type pair from formation F10 (with the other cars becoming formation K44), and would become formation K31 (as seen on the windshield on your photo).

 

K31 was, similar to most of her sisters of the K21~K31 sub-group, one of the K formations which was not chosen to go through the K formation renewal program between March of 1999 and January 2002. Though K21, K25 and K26 would go through renewal, the majority of the 12 renewed formations would be part of the K41~K43 and K44~K51 sub-group.

In December 2002 JR East started with the implementation of DS-ATC (Digital Shinkansen Automatic Train Control), which would be displacing the original ATC-2 system in the near future. As even the youngest 200 series had surpassed 15 years of service at that point, it was decided that it would be too costly, taking into account their remaining service life, to refit them with DS-ATC. The 12 renewed K formations, which had been renewed with the intention of at least 10 more years of service post renewal, were refitted, as well as F formation F19 which was to be used for DS-ATC testing purposes. The other remaining formations, were to retire from service between 2002 and 2005, with the bulk leaving between 2003 and 2004 as scheduled services were supposed to end in 2003 (after 2003 there would still be limited temporary services using non-renewed 200 series formations). This would have been the case for K31 as well, if not for nature interfering.

 

On the 23rd of October 2004, renewed K formation K25 was operating Toki 325, bound for Niigata, on the Jōetsu Shinkansen, when the Niigata Chūetsu Earthquake happened. Though the earthquake detection system detected the earthquake, and the emergency brakes were immediately applied the proximity of the train compared to the epicentre of the quake, meant that when the secondary waves hit, the train was still traveling at around 200km/h. As a result cars 1 till 8 derailed, with car 1 coming to a rest in a drainage ditch (used to drain the melted snow during the winter season) at an almost 45 degree angle. Though, thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt and the train its self had held strong, the damage to formation K25 was extensive enough for repairs to be uneconomical. While an extra E2 series 1000 sub-type formation would be ordered for replacement (formation J69), it would take a while for this formation to be built, as J66~J68 still had to be built as well. As a result K31, though at that moment only used for temporary trains, was pressed into service again to make up for the loss of formation K25. This would continue for about a year, with J69 delivered on the 5th of December 2005, K31 would be retired on the 11th of January 2006 as the last original 200 series shinkansen still in scheduled service (F19 was still in service, but only used for temporary trains, she would retire on the 11th of May 2007 as the final original 200 series).

After her retirement, 222-35 was preserved, and as is obvious considering the topic at hand, exhibited at the Railway Museum in Saitama.

 

Anyway, that's a bit of additional information I could give you, while trying to keep myself from going on a tangent (note, I tried😅).

Edited January 27, 2021 by 200系
Cleaning up text

[miyakoji]

Great pictures @mojo.  Were you able to visit the Nagoya and Kyoto museums as well?  All three are new since I left Japan, they are at the top of my list of places to go.

[railsquid]

On 1/26/2021 at 8:43 PM, mojo said:

 

 

 

 

This uncaptioned photo is Tachikawa, in case you were wondering.

[kuro68000]

22 hours ago, miyakoji said:

Great pictures @mojo.  Were you able to visit the Nagoya and Kyoto museums as well?  All three are new since I left Japan, they are at the top of my list of places to go.

 

I have visited the Nagoya one, but not Kyoto. Well I've been to Kyoto, just not the museum.

 

I'll post some photos of the Nagoya museum in due course!

[kuro68000]

On 1/27/2021 at 12:14 PM, railsquid said:

Wrong direction - that's Ebina, and the train is classic Odakyu. The train with the red stripe in one of the preceding photos at the same location is Sotetsu.

 

Ah, thank you! In that case it's probably at Atsugi or Hon-Atsugi. My wife worked at Hon-Atsugi for a short time and I went to visit her a few times.

 

Had one of the best haircuts of my life in Hon-Atsugi.

[railsquid]

6 minutes ago, mojo said:

 

Ah, thank you! In that case it's probably at Atsugi or Hon-Atsugi. My wife worked at Hon-Atsugi for a short time and I went to visit her a few times.

 

 

No, it's at Ebina, like wot I wrote. The big depot and the Sotetsu line are a dead giveaway.

[kuro68000]

7 minutes ago, railsquid said:

 

No, it's at Ebina, like wot I wrote. The big depot and the Sotetsu line are a dead giveaway.

 

Ah, okay, not sure why I went there but I must have!