For a short while I worked in the admissions kiosk at the Didcot Railway Centre. It was always interesting to meet visitors, some of whom had diverse backgrounds and nationalities, but the visitor who sticks in my mind was a Japanese railway enthusiast who actually enrolled as a member of GWS on that visit. We talked quite a lot about the fact that there is a strong enthusiasm for railways in Japan; he was also very interested that, many years before, I had actually been to Japan, and ridden its railways. Looking back on that visit, I can still sense the tension of what was, in its main event, either an adventure in the schoolboy sense, or an ill-thought out foolhardiness.
In was in the spring of 1965 that I crossed the inland sea and fetched up at Kobe on the main Japanese island, Honshu. Having read in about the tremendous improvement in Japanese rail travel in the late 1950s/early 1960s I was completely unprepared to find steam locomotives still operating. And I only discovered this by accident. My first outing was to spend a couple of hours on the platforms at Sannimoya Station, actually the main railway hub in Kobe. At this time the New Tokaido line, built to the standard gauge was very new, it had been operating for barely a year. Most of the rest of the JNR main line was still on and designations. Sleek and very modern looking, the first examples had run on the trains between Tokyo and Osaka in November 1958. The completion of the New Tokaido Line in 1964 meant they were transferred for use on other services, though I failed to note exactly what these were. My assumption was that they ran between Osaka and Hiroshima and further information on that would be welcome. They were twin four car units with driving cabs at the outward end of each train, 272 tons tare weight and maximum output of about 3,750 hp. One of these units, in their Tokaido line days was worked up to 100mph, an exceptional speed for a 3’6” gauge line. Developed further over later years, it is sobering to realise that all the survivors from these sets are in preservation.
