Tsurumi line - background, history, operations

[Nick_Burman]

While trawling through the web I found this page http://www.geocities.jp/hokarida/02_tsurumi_line/index02.html about the Tsurumi line. It's very interesting because it deals with the evolution of the line right to the present day - how the Tsurumi coastline used to look in the late Meiji era, the landfills, the construction of the Tsurumi Rinko Railway and so forth. Unfortunately the internet is not behaving well today so I'm unable to get the pages to translate properly...

 

 

Cheers NB

[Guest keio6000]

If i recall, the tsurumi line is, amazingly, featured on one of the densha de go series.  it's a neat little linea nd if your basement was big enouugh like some of the houses i saw on a recent trip to USA you might just be able to make a complete model of the line to scale!

 

i always thought its a pity that they removed the 103s from there.   surely there can't be *that much* of a savings to switch to some newer aluminum spamcan.  they could have left a friendly yellow 103 there just be there would it have been so bad?   to say nothing of that kumoha12 like a dinosaur from another age.

[miyakoji]

Thanks Nick, great link.  Lots of interesting pages, amongst them:

 

- track inspection: http://www.geocities.jp/hokarida/02_tsurumi_line/ts04-012.html

- plans to ride the main line and all branches: http://www.geocities.jp/hokarida/02_tsurumi_line/ts07-01.html

[Jcarlton]

Even with the stainless steel can it's a great line to ride and has a lot of flavor. It also is a last bastion of industrial switching. I'd love to ride the Kumoha 12.

[bikkuri bahn]

Even with the stainless steel can it's a great line to ride and has a lot of flavor. It also is a last bastion of industrial switching. I'd love to ride the Kumoha 12.

Indeed, a visit to the Tsurumi Line presents many scenes you can't see on your typical vanilla urban/suburban rail line, and far more fascinating than say, the Yamanote Line.  The modeller will go home with many ideas, all on a scale that's not too big. Recommended.

 

First station after leaving the Tsurumi Terminus, Kokudo Station:

Edited June 28, 2013 by bikkuri bahn

[Guest keio6000]

Indeed, a visit to the Tsurumi Line presents many scenes you can't see on your typical vanilla urban/suburban rail line, and far more fascinating than say, the Yamanote Line. 

 

Ok, I get and confur with the spirit of the message, even if I find the idea that the yamanote line is not that fascinating to be quite literally incredible. If you want to pick a boring spamcan line pick, I dunno -- the Yokohama line or something. :)

 

Cool video though.  ALong those lines, check out this photo.. it is from..

 

 

1990!

Edited June 28, 2013 by keio6000

[Jcarlton]

For everybody who's never been down to the Tsurumi Line here it is on video:

part 1:

part 2:

part 3:

[Jcarlton]

Just so everybody knows what we can't have anymore:

[Nick_Burman]

Even with the stainless steel can it's a great line to ride and has a lot of flavor. It also is a last bastion of industrial switching. I'd love to ride the Kumoha 12.

 

Sadly a lot of industry has shifted away from rail in the area. For instance, the only customer left at Ogimachi is the Taiheiyo Cement coal terminal; until 2012 (the last year Google Earth showed the existence of track inside the compound) there used to be a large tank farm (in fact it's still there) which had a large loading yard complete with its own switcher. Another couple of customers in the area also seemed to get chemicals in yellow TaKi5450 tank cars, all this disappeared. Even the flyover connecting the Tsurumi line to the Tokaido Freight Line over Hamakawasaki station is bereft of track. The only freight customers left on the branch are a couple of tank farms on the spur south from Anzen station; I think one of these farms is where the "Beitan" train (the train which takes jet fuel to an USAF air base) starts from. There are a couple of industrial oddities in the area: Toshiba at Umi-Shibaura which still uses its internal rail system (and is said to ship an occasional transformer by rail from time to time) and the JFE tube (?) mill on an island off Hamakawasaki, which has a standard gauge internal system used to move hot metal and slag around the furnaces.

 

 

Cheers NB

Edited June 29, 2013 by Nick_Burman

[Jcarlton]

I think that JRF doesn't want to deal with having to switch freight and service customers.  So unless, like the Anzen aircraft fuel tankers or the coal operation, both of which are trainload operation on a fixed schedule, JRF doesn't want to deal with it.  I can understand this, because terminal costs represent a big chunk of operating cost and having to switch for every little customer adds up.

[bikkuri bahn]

I find the idea that the yamanote line is not that fascinating to be quite literally incredible.

Difference of opinion, mate.  For a loop line that actually has interesting, and complicated operations (including run-throughs off other lines), along with a variety of rolling stock, check out the Osaka Loop Line.

 

 

I can understand this, because terminal costs represent a big chunk of operating cost and having to switch for every little customer adds up.

This is basically what JR-F is about- running down their non-container services, and eventually eliminating it.  For all the rhetoric of eco-friendly transport, they are shrinking their business by giving up anything that can't fit on a container frame to trucks or shipping (granted, rail freight has never been a majority mode of transport in Japan).

[Jcarlton]

Difference of opinion, mate.  For a loop line that actually has interesting, and complicated operations (including run-throughs off other lines), along with a variety of rolling stock, check out the Osaka Loop Line.

 

 

This is basically what JR-F is about- running down their non-container services, and eventually eliminating it.  For all the rhetoric of eco-friendly transport, they are shrinking their business by giving up anything that can't fit on a container frame to trucks or shipping (granted, rail freight has never been a majority mode of transport in Japan).

I agree, opereationally the Yamanote isn't exciting.  The traffic density sort of makes any operation that actually shares the Yamanote Line impossible, so while the Yamanote parallels other lines, nothing shares the line itself.  Visually that makes for a pageant as you have all those trains running together, but operationally there all on seperate tracks.

IN JRF-F's case only handling containers makes sense.  They have to operate as track speed with passenger and can't risk a broken coupler or small derailment mucking up the works.  With the 1067mm gauge JR-F doesn't have the bulk advantage that freight does here in the states, so no 100 ton covered hoppers and such.  It doesn't help that JNR gave up their classification capabilities a long time ago so you break or make trains.  Add all that to the easy access to coastal freight for bulk cargo and it's easy to see why JR-F is doing what it's doing.  Frankly if JR-F were smart, they would use the extra space down there near Hamakawasakie to build a ship container port connected by rail along the outer loop to a freight terminal near interior Tokyo and offer discount rates for maritime container pickup North of Tokyo so that truckers would pick up there instead of down near Odaiba and all the conjestion. That kind of shuttle service would save a lot of time for the truckers, who wait hours to pick up their containers and then have to get them out of southern and central Tokyo.

[Nick_Burman]

This is basically what JR-F is about- running down their non-container services, and eventually eliminating it.  For all the rhetoric of eco-friendly transport, they are shrinking their business by giving up anything that can't fit on a container frame to trucks or shipping (granted, rail freight has never been a majority mode of transport in Japan).

 I think JRF will retain its trainload business (as JCarlton mentions) however as I mentioned elsewhere, it will be up to the customer to furnish the freight cars (think Toho Zinc and its new tankers, for instance) if they want to send their goods by rail without loading onto a container. However I find the Japanese system of container handling very interesting, what with JRF and the various rinkai tetsudo drilling container cars into customer sidings. And JRF is regaining some traffic lost to other modes - steel for instance, containerized of course (witness the sheet and bar container carriers done in N scale by Hogaradoukou).

 

Speaking of different container ops, while roaming the Tsurumi area on Google Maps, I strayed north along the Tokaido Freight line to Kojima (?) Yard and started checking around the Kanagawa Rinkai lines radiating from there. Much to my surprise I found a miniature container pad along one of the branches. And by miniature, I mean it - the loading/unloading track must hold 6 to 8 flats at the most. And it's being used - on Google Maps one can see a parked stacker and both box and covered gondola containers, all white with blue graphics (which look like a reversed K). It's the perfect prototype for a layout... If you want to see it for yourself, look up Haneda Airport, then highway 409 (the road which goes directly from Tokyo to the Boso Peninsula across the mouth of Tokyo Bay), it's smack by it. It just shows there is a prototype for everything, provided you look hard enough.

 

Cheers NB

Edited June 29, 2013 by Nick_Burman

[Nick_Burman]

 Frankly if JR-F were smart, they would use the extra space down there near Hamakawasakie to build a ship container port connected by rail along the outer loop to a freight terminal near interior Tokyo and offer discount rates for maritime container pickup North of Tokyo so that truckers would pick up there instead of down near Odaiba and all the conjestion. That kind of shuttle service would save a lot of time for the truckers, who wait hours to pick up their containers and then have to get them out of southern and central Tokyo.

 

The problem is, there isn't much space left at Hamakawasaki, other than the yard itself. Everything else is so densely occupied that there seems to be little space left even for a koban... also the Keihin Canal (the body of water next to the yard) is unsuitable for modern container ships (too narrow and probably shallow, too...after all, it dates from the first decade of the 20th century). As if this weren't enough, you would have to contend with JFE, part of whose tube works occupies the plot lying between the canal and the yard - and they would't give up the land without a fight, be sure! The idea is good, but it would be better implemented IMHO over the other side of the bay in Chiba, along the tracks of the Keio Rinkai.

 

Cheers Nicholas

[Jcarlton]

The problem is, there isn't much space left at Hamakawasaki, other than the yard itself. Everything else is so densely occupied that there seems to be little space left even for a koban... also the Keihin Canal (the body of water next to the yard) is unsuitable for modern container ships (too narrow and probably shallow, too...after all, it dates from the first decade of the 20th century). As if this weren't enough, you would have to contend with JFE, part of whose tube works occupies the plot lying between the canal and the yard - and they would't give up the land without a fight, be sure! The idea is good, but it would be better implemented IMHO over the other side of the bay in Chiba, along the tracks of the Keio Rinkai.

 

Cheers Nicholas

That's true, there's a lot of extra empty space along the Keiyo Line at the moment. 

[westfalen]

Its the same story all over, its hard to find a freight train in Queensland these days that isn't containers or coal. My brother and sister-n-law, who are also rail workers, were talking just a couple of days ago about how none of us have seen a boxcar for a long time.

[Sacto1985]

Indeed, even here in California, boxcars are getting increasingly uncommon sights. I see a LOT of unit trains (grain especially), autoracks (mostly because the San Francisco Bay Area about 95 minutes is a major receiving port for cars imported from Japan and South Korea), trailer on spline car (due to the United Parcel Service processing center in Richmond, California) and double stack container trains.