The "Yokkaichi Bend"

[Nick_Burman]

BB mentioned Yokkaichi in another post, which made me remember a question... In "Far Wheels" Charles Small mentions the "Yokkaichi Bend", a very sharp curve in the middle of Yokkaichi on Kintetsu's Nagoya Division. At the time Small rode the line he mentioned the fact that Kintetsu was slowly widening the radius of this curve. In "Electric Railways of Japan vol.2" one can see on the map that Kintetsu took a different path through town that it takes today (the old Kintetsu Yokkaichi was right next to the JNR station), something corroborated by satelite pictures which show a very broad avenue connecting JR Yokkaichi with (today's) Kintetsu Yokkaichi - the probable ROW of the old alignment. Question is...are there any pictures of this bend anywhere? Or of Kintetsu operating through the old alignment? Oh, for the Japanese equivalent of Carl Bellingrodt...

 

Cheers NB

[Mudkip Orange]

I find it's sometimes helpful to translate the text and then do a Google Image Search with the Japanese characters.

 

I found this pic by grabbing the kanji for Kintetsu-Yokkaichi (近鉄四日市駅) off Wikipedia, then using Google Translate to get the word "curve" (曲線) and doing a search for 近鉄四日市駅 曲線

[bikkuri bahn]

Here is a map of the former route in relation to the current one. As you can see, actually it parallels the big street (Chuo Dori).  The name of the curve is the "Zenkouji Curve" (善光寺カーブ), named after the temple in the vicinity of the curve:

 

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:Yokkaichi_hist_map.png

 

A larger area map:

http://punt.jp/chunichi/machi/08_11_eki%20/img/p03.jpg