Skip to main content

Kyoto: Railway Museum - 2 Prototype trains, model trains, a train museum and a train ride

AMAZING!! That isn't an adequate adjective to describe the Kyoto Railway Museum. It is the best that I have visited. Nothing in the U.S. compares. 

Kyoto has an enormous collection of locomotives and rolling stock — all in immaculate condition. The breadth of the museum's displays is outstanding. It goes way beyond a bunch of pretty trains in a building. 

We visited for an afternoon. I could easily spend a day and a half here. One reason I would not stay longer is that the display placards are in Japanese. Its a lot of work to try to translate each one using Google translate. Taking pictures of signs and translating isn't a strong point of that app. Next time, I’ll try Photo Translate.

Of course, we took the train to the museum. As we did yesterday, we took the Kyoto subway Tozai line west from our hotel to Nijo. Instead of taking the JR West train toward Saga Arashiyama, we took it the other way. Two stops to the station right outside the museum gates Umekōji-Kyōtonishi.  

The JR West Umekōji-Kyōtonishi station

Entrance to the Kyoto Railway Museum, just steps from the Umekōji-Kyōtonishi Station exit.

Our first stop in the museum was an outdoor display. We arrived in late morning and it was already hot. We were happy for the shade. 

The first locomotive we saw entering the museum.


The highlight for me was seeing a first generation bullet train consist. My parents visited Japan in 1969 and they told me stories of riding the train. I got a souvenir pamphlet from them and spent hours thumbing through it. This train was the space age manifested on earth. 

This is the first generation bullet train.

It was cool looking through the windows into an old coach. The seats looked pretty comfortable. You don’t find those on airplanes today. 



The coolest thing was having a chance to go into the cab car. I can only imagine what it is like to sit in the operator’s chair with the world coming at you at 130 mph. 


We also got a look at special passenger cars and an Osaka commuter train.


Osaka commuter train

Soon it was lunch time and fortunately, the museum provided. In the open air display, they had a dining car that was available for seating. Outside you could buy food. I had to buy an ekiben - this is a wrapped bento box. Typically sold in train stations for eating on the train. They are pretty good. I passed on buying the ekiben in a Shinkansen box. It was pretty cute, but I wanted a little more food. At the table behind me, sat a family with a couple of young ones getting a day at the railroad museum. I compared my U.S. railroad t-shirt with the Shinkansen t-shirt worn by a 4-year old rail fan. We bonded, despite the language and age difference. 


Ekiben dinner in the diner, at the Kyoto Railway Museum

From there, we went into the air-conditioned exhibits. Whew!


The main gallery of the Kyoto Railway Museum

A needle-nose Shinkansen
Side view of the needle-nosed Shinkansen (left). A good old fashioned puffer belly (right). Who would have thought that the Shinkansen trains pictured above are derivatives of this locomotive? Amazing growth in technology .



Japan has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world. However, the country was among the second wave of nations adopting this new transportation mode. The indoor exhibits covered roadbed, track, the history of railroads in Japan, model railroading, the influence of railroads in culture and food. It had several simulators. A nice signal and interlocking maching exhibit and an exhibit on dispatching, including a CTC (centralized traffic control) machine.


Model railroad display - no matter how large I make the photo, you'll still have to squint to see the trains. 
Interlocking machine exhibit
Signal exhibit
Japanese CTC machine -- very impressive.

We stopped by the main cafeteria, just in time for it to close. Oh, well. Likewise, we missed the model train show. The cafeteria has a great view of the JR West nearby yard and mainline tracks. 

view from the cafeteria

We got a drink of water and mulled our options. In less than an hour, the museum's steam train would be making its last run for the day. We decided to take a ride. We walked over to the station and paid a modest extra fare for the ride. 

This was not the locomotive that pulled our train. It's a different one, in the outdoor display area. 

The train was several cars long. Fortunately the open-air coaches had a roof. That gave us a little protection from the sun. 

Looking out from our coach. 


Our locomotive #8630


The ride was pretty straight forward, a 10-minute ride out and a 10-minute ride back. I think we were riding on an old switching lead for the engine facility. As we backed out of the station, we ducked under the JR West Sagano line. We were flanked by the Sagano line on one side and a park on the other. 

A few folks in the park seemed interested as we passed. Otherwise, our trip was of little notice. 

Things got interesting when we returned to the museum. As we were on the last run of the day, our locomotive, #8630, had to be put to bed. Everyone got off the train and headed to the roundhouse. 
#8630 heads on to the turntable. 

#8630 uncoupled from the train and eased on to the turntable. Then she was spun around. This was a first for me. I had never seen a locomotive, let alone a steam locomotive, turned on a turntable. When the locomotive was lined up with the correct track, she headed off for a rest for the night. I have a video of the locomotive being turned. Unfortunately I have never had success uploading video files to this blog system. Sorry. 😢  



The last run is over and #8630 has been put to bed for the evening.

We decided to walk downtown to get some dinner and then go home. On our way, we passed through the park that we had previously seen from the train. Our path paralleled the JR West tracks. I got a few close up shots of passing trains. 

Walking back to Kyoto station.

On the way to Kyoto, two trains are passing. 

As we strolled toward the station, we noticed a number of public sculptures. Some were rail-themed as you can see from the photo below. All in all it was a fun and tiring day. Tomorrow we will leave Kyoto by train headed toward Mt. Zao in northeast Honshu 

Train sculpture

# # #








Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in T-Trak: Laying track

Laying track on my new T-Trak module was not a complicated job. Still, the process hit a minor snag, providing a learning experience. My friend, Steven Cox is the owner of precisionmodelrailroad.com/ . His new firm builds laser-cut model railroad benchwork parts. The company offers helix parts, straight benchwork sections and T-Trak modules. The T-Trak modules are an early product used to test the concept. T-Trak is a modular system that uses Kato N-scale Unitrack. The idea is that if you have limited space its possible to get modeling and participate in the hobby. The T-Trak concept is young, born in 2000. It has international interest. In part, that’s due to the partnership between the T-Trak standards group and Kato. Steven sent me a pre-production T-Trak kit. It assembled into a 12-inch by 12-inch box. I’m not going to post a blog about building that kit because the current kit design is different. It took me a couple of hours to build the module. Most of the time was waiting for
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures in T-trak: Planning scenery for an urban module - Draft 1

Tokyo. That's the scenic subject of my T-trak module supplied by https://www.precisionmodelrailroad.com/ . It will be a representation, not a prototypical recreation. The scene needs to cover a 12-inch by 12-inch space. Actually, the street scene needs to fit into a smaller space. The tracks consume a three-inches by 12-inches. That leaves 108 square inches. Is this enough space for a plausible street scene? Of course. People are doing far more in less space.  My idea wa s to build a city street and buildings parallel the tracks. A cross street would dead end into the main road. At the intersection, we’d see an entrance to the Tokyo Metro. The intersection would have a traffic light. Initially I thought the cross street could meet at a 90-degree angle to the main street. The concern is giving the viewer a straight view to the backdrop. That could decrease the scene's plausibility. An alternative is that the cross street connects at a diagonal. Another possibility, the cross str
Post a Comment
Read more

Catching up -- I may not have been very social. I have been busy, though.

I'll catch you up, since my last post. I've been buried with a variety of issues.  I'm back from Japan. Most of those posts (and there are more to come) were published on an after-the-fact basis.  In December 2023 (just before Christmas), I developed a left inguinal hernia. Surgery fixed that on March 22, 2024. Just when it seemed that my health life should calm down, last week, I caught Covid. I'm still recovering from both. This spring, I sent myself back to college. I'm taking an architectural rendering class (using computers) and a Japanese tools and woodworking class. The architecture class is teaching me how to use Sketchup.  I'll use the skills from the rendering class to start designing custom structures for the B&OCT layout and Takadanobaba in Alameda.   I have historical pictures of four interlocking towers I want to represent on the B&OCT layout (Western Ave., Ash St. Jct., 49th St. and 75th St.)  Pictures of 75th St and Ash St. (If you zoom i
Post a Comment
Read more