Nippon Mining Saganoseki Railway

[stevenh]

Howdy all,

 

Had been browsing Kyushu after seeing wazzd's shots of Sasebo and found an old alignment from Kouzaki Station through to Saganoseki.

It seems there's zero english information on this line, but it'd be a great railway to model. Quite a few tunnels and winding track along the coast. Ending in a large industrial plant.

 

I was wondering if someone could help me translate the following?

Google tells me it is the "Nippon Mining Company", but then translates the hiragana to "Japan Box Office". Slightly confusing.

 

日本鉱業佐賀関鉄道（にっぽんこうぎょう さがのせきてつどう、通称 佐賀関線）

 

Either way, Japanese wikipedia has a page on the railway here:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E9%89%B1%E6%A5%AD%E4%BD%90%E8%B3%80%E9%96%A2%E9%89%84%E9%81%93

 

It seems that there was passenger traffic on the line, but the main reason was to access the Pan-pacific Copper Industrial Plant.

 

Great site on it here: http://homepage1.nifty.com/pyoco3/kyusyu/saganoseki/saganoseki.html

Even better, renderings of how it used to look: http://www.oct-net.ne.jp/~majdoctt/station/saganoseki_tetsudo.html

Yesss..... Photos of the diesels: http://www5.kcn.ne.jp/~namachan/newpage8.htm#日鉱佐賀関と宮交

 

Steven

Edited March 3, 2015 by stevenh

[Kitayama]

Nippon Mining Saganoseki Railway (both kanji and hiragana: nippon kougyou saganoseki tetsudou).

[Nick_Burman]

I have a Vicom DVD which shows a few seconds of this line.

 

Cheers NB