Those two words sound like an oxymoron: freight isn’t fast. What usually matters most is high capacity and predictable delivery, even trains carrying perishables aren’t in a great hurry. For most U.S. modelers, a “freight” is something that trundles along at 40 mph (64 kph) or less, and “express” probably conjures up images of the old Railway Express Agency, which handled parcel and small package transport via express cars on passenger trains and other methods, until highways made it unprofitable (REA had stopped using express cars on passenger trains well before it filed for bankruptcy in 1975). High-speed trains also cost more to operate, not simply in fuel, but in terms of constructing and maintaining track to the more exacting standards needed for higher speeds.
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Tags: Freight, M250, Container

I’ve written about my model freight trains before, but that was nearly two years ago, and I think it’s time for an update. This time I’m going to talk about the trains, as well as the locomotives. As usual, the focus of my collecting is the area around Tōkyō, and thus the trains found there are what I am writing about.

Freight locomotives in the Tōkyō area tend to be electric. There are exceptions: in addition to switching duties, the diesel-hydraulic DE10 can sometimes be found moving short trains. One example of this is the coal train I’ll describe further down below. But for the most part these trains are operating over lines already electrified for passenger trains, and so it makes more sense to use electric locomotives. Read More...

Tags: Kato, Tomix, Kawai, Freight, EH200, EH500, EF210, M250, EF65, EF66, Container, DE10

Freight trains aren’t a major part of the Japanese railroading scene. With most of its industry on the coast, bulk freight largely travels by ship. And with the improved highways of the 1960’s and later, smaller freight had almost all moved to truck. Before its breakup, the Japan National Railway had already closed the bulk of its freight yards in 1985, leaving only a small quantity of mixed trains operating, in addition to unit trains of containers, oil, limestone and other bulk products. And most of those trains ran between port facilities or private sidings although there remain to this day a small number of freight yards (which are somehow different from the “freight marshaling yards” that were closed). Read More...

Tags: Kawai, Freight

Railroading in Tōkyō isn’t just huge railway stations and double-track commuter lines bringing people into the city from hours away, there are a number of much smaller railways, serving neighborhoods, industrial areas, or what have you. The photo above (from flickr, photographer: haribote) shows one of these, the Keisei-Kanamachi Line, (see also Japanese wikipedia) a mostly single-track line running 2.5 km through a residential neighborhood of Katsushika City, one of Tōkyō’s 23 special wards (which formed the original city of Tōkyō). The line runs due north from where it meets the Keisei Main Line at Keisei-Takasago station. The last station is adjacent to JR East’s Kanamachi Station on the Jōban Line.
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Tags: Freight, Micro Ace, Greenmax, Kato, Commuter

The boxcar is one of the earliest types of railway car, and they were in use in the U.S. in the 1830’s, almost as early as the first railways here. The earliest railway cars were probably flat cars or gondola cars, as the use of the latter to carry coal over rails predated the invention of steam propulsion (they were horse-drawn) by over two centuries, and possibly by much longer. But it didn’t take long for someone to realized that fully enclosing some cargo was important to protect it from the weather, or to keep it secure in transit.

Originally boxcars were used for both “less-than-carload” (LCL) shipments originating at freight stations and for whole-car shipments originating from private industry sidings. As LCL traffic shifted to trucks, or express baggage cars on passenger trains (essentially a specialized type of boxcar if you want to be pedantic) they were left to carry whole-car shipments that for one reason or another weren’t better carried in some other kind of car. Often a cargo first carried in boxcars would later have specialized cars developed to better meet its specific needs (automobiles were first shipped in boxcars, before multi-level autorack cars were developed).
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Tags: Freight, Container

As I’ve mentioned before, Japanese trains are often visually quite distinctive. The Nankai Railway’s 50000 series rapi:t is one of the most distinctive, and evokes images of Victorian engineering and Jules Verne science fiction novels. It operates as an airport shuttle service between Osaka and Kansai International airport (about a 30-minute trip). According to wikipedia it was designed by an architect working with the theme of “outdated future”, which suggests that he was trying to create the “futuristic” look found in early twentieth-century works such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Whatever the intent, the result is distinctive and unique, and very far from the utilitarian design that characterizes most western trains (or other machinery).
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Tags: Limited Express, Joyful Train, Freight, JR East, Mecha, Shinkansen, Shuttle, Commuter

Not much got done on the layout itself in October, mostly I’ve been running trains (as documented in an earlier post with a video) and doing a bit of electrical work (mostly the previously noted update to the power panel). I’ve spent a good bit of time on a couple of other things though.
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Tags: DC, DCC, Freight, Electrical, Container

It was a busy day in the village overlooking the Sumida River. A steady parade of trains rolled by on the embankment: commuter trains bringing workers to the city, resort trains taking vacationers away, and freights carrying commodities to and from the ports on Tōkyō Bay. But then, all days are busy on the railroads of Tōkyō.
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Tags: Video, Micro Ace, Kato, Operation, Freight

Kato’s DE10 freight locomotive isn’t new; they came out a year ago. But they promptly sold out, and I hadn’t been able to get one until just recently. There are two versions, a “warm region” model and a “cold region” model that adds circular windshield wipers and a small snowplow. Both versions operate in the Tōkyō region.
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Tags: Kato, DE10, Freight, DCC, Digitrax, MoW

My model railroad is primarily a passenger railroad. That’s not because there is no freight in Japan, or even in Tōkyō, but freight is definitely second to passenger service in a nation where most of the population lives close to ports, and trains have to compete with both trucks and ships. As a result, freight in Japan largely means containerized cargo and bulk products such as petroleum, although boxcars and other general-freight cars are still in use. Freight trains in Japan tend to be relatively short, often just a dozen or two cars, or even just a few.
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Tags: Kato, Freight, DE10, EF210, EH200, M250, Container

I’ve been spending some time recently looking at gas stations, which might seem like an odd thing to do. Well, okay, it is an odd thing to do. Read More...

Tags: Tomix, Structures, Freight