Catène De Containers

I promised more impressive views from the hills above Toba, and here they are. They're not very hard to reach: the Hiyoriyama circuit is only a couple of kilometres long around the station and involves climbing around 50 m. Hinoyama is further away, further South and a little higher.

The views of the coastline at Toba were good enough for Hiroshige to use in his Famous Views from the Sixty-Odd Provinces to illustrate Shima province (though there wasn't much else, I presume, Shima province was tiny, it was just Toba and the neighbouring town of Shima - also Shima is 志摩 and not 島 "island").

Beyond the islands near Toba, lies the mainland again, the Southern part of Aichi prefecture across the Ise Bay (Minamichita and Tahara), which the car ferry in the above picture traverses.

Nagahama Castle Ruins

Like Hikone Sawayama, Nagahama Castle is not on the list of Japan's 100 Famous Castles, nor on the list of Japan's Next 100 Famous Castles. Like Hikone Sawayama, it was a pre-Edo period fort which was owned by clans which at some point landed on the wrong side of the unifiers of Japan. Little is left, and short posts mark where buildings would have been. It's a short climb from the base, and the view of Uchiura from this location is pretty good.

This part of Numazu, and the island in the middle of this shot, Awashima, is most famous for being featured in the anime Love Live! Sunshine!!, which I know nothing about but saw some hints of (train for another day). It's possible to see Mount Fuji from here on a good day. And... well, I could see some it...

It's a considerable distance from a train station, though there appears to be a bus stop at the base, but I was driven there by a friend so I don't know how frequent the buses are. We were also lucky to get on a quick boat tour out to Awashima and back, with the chance to see the castle from a the sea, against the hilly backdrop of Izu Peninsula.

Koishikawa Kôrakuen in the summer

This is my favourite park in the city and I've now seen it in three of four seasons, including exactly one year ago. As August in Tokyo goes, it was very muggy and overcast, and as soon as I touched the ticket, it started raining. As I hadn't entered, the person at the ticket office offered a refund, but this was my last day in Japan so if it was going to be a wet visit, so be it.

I did shelter for a bit as the rain was rather heavy, and it proved to be a shower, so it was mostly dry during the walk through the park. Well, I say "dry", but the air was horrifically humid, I was getting just as wet when it was raining than when it wasn't! And when the Sun peeked out, wow did it burn!

Through all of this, this one heron seemed to be chilling in the middle of the main pond. Heron? Hero, more like!

After the tour, I went to the Kantoku-tei tea house for some respite, a katsu meal, some tea... and a change of shirt!

Towers and trains at Oberwesel

Downstream from Bacharach and Kaub seen in the most recent posts, Oberwesel is a gorgeous town on the left-hand side of the Rhine, with many of its medieval walls and towers still standing. The railway was built alongside these walls near the river, and even goes between two towers, the Katzenturm (left) and Ochsenturm (right). Add the hills in the background, and it is certainly a spectacular train spot.

Here is another tower, the Haagsturm, in a view from the station platforms. (I just got off that train and failed to position myself in time to get the sign out of the way bottom left.) The two trains shown were the only types visible that day, as the intercity traffic was diverted to the other side of the river via Wiesbaden.

Further from the river, another section of town walls and towers runs through the hills. In the centre of the picture above, taken from the short but steep Elfenlay trail, is the Kuhhirtenturm (with raised drawbridge), with St Martin's Church rising behind it.

Oh alright, have a wider view from the Elfenlay.

Triberger Wasserfälle

In the heart of the Schwarzwald region of Southwestern Germany, we find the town of Triberg and its waterfalls. Following a fire in the early 19th century, the town was rebuilt with a high street that aligned with the falls. Here's how that works out today, from the opposite hill.

With the arrival of the railway, Triberg became a leisure hotspot. The falls were visited shortly after that opening of the railway by the ruler of the recently unified Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm I, for which a memorandum was carved into a rock. The writing is just legible:

"Zur Erinnerung an den Besuch der deutschen Kaiserfamilie am 30 September 1877"

In time, Triberg has become a renowned tourist destination for the falls of course, but also for all things related to Schwarzwald culture, such as typical costumes and music, cuckoo clocks and local food - Black Forest gateau of course, but also ham, which has a festival in the town next weekend. The entrance fee to the falls includes tickets to three of the town's museums and indoor attractions.

At a total of 163 m over 7 drops, the Triberg Waterfalls are among the tallest in Germany. Triberg advertises them as the tallest, and a review check reveals some heated argument about the claim. I'm letting Wikipedia settle the debate: the claim is not correct, and it's not even close - the Röthbachfall in Bavaria is 470 m tall. However, Triberg undoubtedly offers the tallest easily accessible waterfalls in Germany, and they are still very much worth the visit. They are in the same size range as Nachi Falls in Japan.

The falls have also been used by Triberg in the late 19th century to become pioneers of hydroelectricity. Power stations were built at the top and the bottom of the falls, and enabled Triberg to become the first town in Germany with electric street lamps.

For an extra euro at the gates to the waterfalls, you can buy a bag of peanuts to try to attract the squirrels. As such, squirrels might come close to you whether you have some or not. This one still moved a bit too quickly to get a good photo.

All in all, the falls make a very solid start to a day trip in Triberg in the mid- to late-morning, and there's plenty and a variety of things to see and fill the afternoon after that.

Back to the Arzviller-Henridorff lock ladder

I took my own advice and returned to Arzviller to walk the full section of closed canal. It turns out the upper part is less overgrown and more active than the lower end. I'd only gone from the bottom lock, n°17, up to lock n°14 (under the railway bridge) at the time.

Starting from the top, the house at lock n°2 is a crêperie restaurant, while lock n°4 is a gîte complete with a private fishing pier. I counted four lock houses with some form of art going (n°2, 10, 13 and 15). The other lock houses are more or less well-maintained residences. There are no houses standing at locks n°14 and 17.

The Vallée des Éclusiers, or Lock-keepers' Valley, is well worth the wander. The quickest is either to drive there or cycle from Lutzelbourg station. But more on the logistics tomorrow - for now, let's enjoy lock n°9, probably the most dramatic on the route.

Strasbourg's tramway's 30th anniversary!

On this day in 1994, Strasbourg inaugurated - or rather, resurrected - its tramway network. Like many cities in France, Strasbourg had a streetcar system until the late 1950s, when it was decided that cars would take over. 30 years of worsening congestion and pollution later, the town chose a tramway, which had made a successful return in the mid 1980s in Nantes and Grenoble, over an automatic metro to revitalise its transit service.

Unlike Nantes and Grenoble, Strasbourg looked to foreign streetcar manufacturers Socimi and ABB, who designed a fully low-floor tram with generous windows. The Eurotram was at first a 33-metre vehicle (original form seen above), which quickly proved insufficient. A lengthened version, with an extra motor module and carriage, appeared in the following years.

Personally, I quite like this tram for the massive windows, the very mechanical sounds as it runs, and the fact that the warning bell is a real bell (later models have an electronic bell which... just sounds worse). A downside I have noticed, though not for me specifically, is that it has a low ceiling.

After losing out in the 90s, national constructor Alstom won the next round of contracts for Strasbourg's trams in the 2000s. The Citadis model, fully low-floor and taller than the Eurotrams, entered service in 2005. More Citadis trams arrived in 2016, with a new design that I really like, and with special adaptations to allow it to run in Germany, as the network crossed the border to Kehl in 2017, a first for a French tram operator.

Today, the network consists of 6 lines, crisscrossing the city centre and heading out into the suburbs. A 7th line is in the planning stages, due to head North towards Bischheim and Schiltigheim. Despite refurbishment, the Eurotrams won't be around forever, and new trams are on order - more from Alstom.

"Stick an aircraft engine in it" part 1 - Boeing Jetfoil

In the late 60s and early 70s, all branches of transport were hoping for an increase in performance similar to what the jet airliner brought to aviation, and the solution was invariably to use similar gas turbine technology, with invariably identical career trajectories when the oil crises hit, as, apart from in aviation, far more economical engine options were available. So I was very surprised to see this still active in Japan last summer:

This is a hydrofoil which uses gas turbines to power a pump-jet. Once it is going fast enough, it takes off and runs on foils, greatly reducing water resistance and achieving speeds up to 45 knots, over 80 km/h (which, on water, is very fast). I remember seeing exactly this type of vessel in ferry brochures when I was a child; Oostende Lines operated some between England and Belgium. The advent of the SeaCat, a class of huge Diesel-powered car-carrying catamarans, got the better of the hydrofoils and the hovercraft, which was incidentally another case of "stick an aircraft engine in it".

This specific class of hydrofoil takes the mantra to another level, as it was designed by Boeing, which named it the 929 Jetfoil. Production was licensed to Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Japan, which made boats for the domestic market. The Rainbow Jet is one of these, running between Sakaiminato on the San'in coast and the Oki Islands. I saw more of them at Atami in Eastern Shizuoka, providing transport to the Izu Islands. So, despite the astronomical 2150 L/h consumption (though to be fair, I can't find consumption numbers for equivalent foot passenger-only catamarans), Japan still runs them...

Wow, I basically forgot the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen in my run-down at the end! But yes, it is a complicated situation, with a stretch of line isolated from the rest of the network (there's that gauge difference explained above), and Saga-ken disagreeing on how to build the connection to the main Kyushu line. No clear plan yet apparently. :(

60 Years of the Tokaido Shinkansen!

On 1 October 1964, a railway line like no other opened. Connecting Tôkyô and Ôsaka, paralleling an existing main line, the Tôkaidô New Trunk Line had minimal curves, lots of bridges, zero level crossings. Striking white and blue electric multiple units, with noses shaped like bullets some would say, started zooming between the two cities as at the unheard-of speed of 210 km/h.

This was the start of the Shinkansen, inaugurating the age of high-speed rail.

The trains, with noses actually inspired by the aircraft of the time, originally didn't have a name, they were just "Shinkansen trains", as they couldn't mingle with other types anyway due to the difference in gauge between the Shinkansen (standard gauge, 1435 mm between rails) and the rest of the network (3'6" gauge, or 1067 mm between rails). The class would officially become the "0 Series" when new trains appeared in the 1980s, first the very similar 200 Series for the second new line, the Tôhoku Shinkansen, then the jet-age 100 Series. Yes, the 200 came first, as it was decided that trains heading North-East from Tôkyô would be given even first numbers, and trains heading West would have odd first numbers (0 is even, but never mind).

Hence the next new type to appear on the Tôkaidô Shinkansen was the 300 Series (second from left), designed by the privatised JR Tôkai to overcome some shortcomings of the line. Indeed, the curves on the Tôkaidô were still too pronounced to allow speeds to be increased, while all other new lines had been built ready for 300 km/h operations. But a revolution in train design allowed speeds to be raised from 220 km/h in the 80s to 285 km/h today, with lightweight construction (on the 300), active suspension (introduced on the 700 Series, left) and slight tilting (standard on the current N700 types).

Examples of five generations of train used on the Tôkaidô Shinkansen are preserved at JR Tôkai's museum, the SCMaglev & Railway Park, in Nagoya, with the N700 prototype lead car outdoors. It's striking to see how far high-speed train technology has come in Japan in 60 years. The network itself covers the country almost end-to-end, with a nearly continuous line from Kyûshû to Hokkaidô along the Pacific coast (no through trains at Tôkyô), and four branch lines inland and to the North coast, one of which recently got extended.

東海道新幹線、お誕生日おめでおう！

ICE 3 (Gen.1)

After visiting Karlsruhe Palace, I had a bit of time while waiting for a (packed) regional train South to wander around the station. There was quite a lot going on, as on top of the local traffic from S-Bahns to REs, busy intercity lines to Freiburg and Basel, Stuttgart and Munich, Mannheim and Frankfurt meet here. A chance to see my favourite German high-speed train: the Baureihe 403 ICE 3.

Entering service in 2000, over 10 years after the first InterCity Expresses, the ICE 3 was a revolution in European high-speed rail. These were the first 300 km/h-capable trains that weren't of a "power car & carriages" layout, using distributed traction (motors all along the unit) like Shinkansen trains. And a sleek shape to boot! They were designed by Alexander Neumeister, who also penned the 500 Series Shinkansen. Hmm, maybe that's why.

The ICE 3 would be the first example of Siemens's Velaro series, which would be an export hit: the Netherlands, Spain, China and Russia purchased this model. The type received a redesign in the late 2000s that I could only describe as "more beefy": the Velaro D was taken up by Germany, Turkey and Eurostar.