In Japan…

The ferry we used to get from the airport to the railway. A bit off topic, but I needed a picture and it's too wet to go and watch trains.

I’m over 9000km from my modelling bench, which slows down modelling a bit. I can’t even take the boys and do some line siding: monsoon was delayed this year and it’s walloping it down with rain. Even if I was prepared to get my camera wet, I doubt you’d see the results.

After we arrived in Japan we managed to use a ferry, bus, and train to get to Ise. The sea was a bit rough so the catamaran was thrown about somewhat, but once we were on land we were all fine again and walked from the railway station to my inlaws house. It’s very satisfying to finish a 9000km journey on foot, even if it was only 500m.

I was able to see the JR (Japanese Railways) station briefly as we arrived. It still has the same 2-car stainless steel DMU’s, which look like a Sprinter built by Budd, and the geriatric single car units that crawl around the coast. Alongside the JR system is the private standard gauge “Kintetsu” line. It’s a bit like an interurban line with a fairly extensive network running to the coast and into the hills, electrified at 600vDC or 1500V dc depending on which source you read. I hope they know the difference. It also runs 1067mm (3’6”) and 762mm (2’6”) lines. It's interesting that the lines were obviously built using imperial measurements, but pretty academic as I can’t get any pictures. Hopefully the weather should improve tomorrow...